A couple of weeks ago, the check engine light turned on in my car, and it gave me an alert that it was running low on power. Since I’ve had it for less than a year, I called the dealer, who informed me that it might be under warranty, but if the fault wasn’t due to a warranty-covered problem, then they would charge $170 to diagnose what was wrong. That seemed kind of steep to me, so I took it to my mechanic.
He found out the error code had something to do with the hybrid system, and he wasn’t equipped to fix it, so (now more confident that it was, indeed, a warranty-covered issue) I drove off to the dealer in Augusta.
They took a look at it and noticed something screwy seemed to be up. After more investigation, they discovered a rodent had gnawed through one of the electric cables in the engine compartment. So while the code was serious looking, the cause was much more mundane. (And definitely not covered by warranty.)
$730 later, I now have a car that has no check engine light on. I felt bad shelling out $2,000 for Ferris when he went on his raisin cookie binge, but I tell you: I feel even worse for having to spend that much on a stupid mouse. As near as I can figure, they started camping out in my car because it was warm(er) back when we had that long spell of sub zero temperatures.
I’ve never been a fan of mice, and this latest run in with them hasn’t really changed my mind . . .