Mazda 323 (1998 - 2003) - 01 1.6 Intermittent flashing engine check lamp

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Sat 6 Oct 2007 16:56
01 1.6 Intermittent flashing engine check lamp - Mazda Owner
Hi All!

This concerns a Mazda 323 1.6 2001 model year.

I used to own this car but passed it to a friend.

Recently he's been having a few problems with the engine check lamp illuminating. At times it flashes (indicating a serious fault). When this happens the engine appears noisier than usual (call it a grinding noise if you like) and the performance is poor (limp-home mode presumably?).

He's been to a Mazda dealer, twice, and they cannot find any fault. By the time he's arrived at the dealer the light has stopped flashing and has gone off. Now, I was of the understanding that the ECU stored the fault code, but perhaps I wrong!

Has anyone had experience of this problem? Whilst I owned the car I had the engine check lamp come on and it was a defective knock sensor to blame (known 323 problem).

Any help greatly appreciated...he's ripping his hair out in frustration!

Subject line tweak

Edited by Webmaster on 08/08/2009 at 04:44

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Sat 6 Oct 2007 17:18
Mazda 323 Intermittent flashing engine check lamp - Screwloose
MO

Very odd that the dealer can't find a code? These are normally very good at self-diagnosis and they do store fault-codes.

Try somewhere else.
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Thu 11 Oct 2007 23:38
Intermittent flashing engine check lamp - Cyd
.....By the time he's arrived at the dealer the light has stopped flashing and has gone off......

By this, do you mean that he continues to use the car for several days after the fault appeared before he gets it to the dealer? If so, this could be why there's no fault code. OBD is only required to store codes for a certain number of ignition cycles after last occurance of fault and then it can self-reset. I think it's 20 IIRC. He should go to the dealer straight away when the fault occurs (or at worst next day).
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Fri 7 Aug 2009 20:49
Intermittent flashing engine check lamp - Mazda Owner
An update!
A new ignition coil pack stopped the engine-check lamp flashing.
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