Miata Mailing List: October 1997, Message #17
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From: 	"Will Brown" <wbrown@comet.net>

Subject: OBDII story and other curiosities

Date: 	Wed, 1 Oct 1997 01:25:05 +0000



Back when my '96M was brand new, I had it in and out of the dealer 

with what I thought was a problem with surging under light 

throttle and idle bobbles.  They replaced a *lot* of (expensive) 

stuff during the first few months of the life of the car.... get 

this:



They claimed, in the same visit, same diagnostic session, that one

02 sensor was totally bad, and the second was so close to out of

spec that they replaced it too.  My understanding of OBDII is that

the computer is not supposed to let that type of thing happen.  The

car never showed an engine error light the whole time.  It is also

my understanding that dealers are supposed to know what they're

doing.  (meaning, they could've been replacing things just for my

benefit, hoping that placebo would make me think they fixed the

problem)



Further curiosity - I knew nothing of the mailing list back then -

but now thinking back, I swear the dealer had to've used the list's

collective wisdom to help fix my car - some of the verbage the

service manager used to describe his information gathering didn't

make sense at the time, but in retrospect he must've been talking

about the list, or some Miata.Net related entity.  Further evidence,

after referring to this 'unknown' (to me) resource, he changed the

plug wires...  :)



\/\/    ---->    Will Brown    ---->    Charlottesville VA

http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Downs/7061



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