<p>^^^ I’ve heard her H works on cars so he’ll likely fix the problem easily enough - it’ll likely be either the spark plug or the ignition wire - it takes only a few minutes and not very many dollars to replace those.</p>
<p>I’m not a mechanic for a living but I do a lot of work on my own cars and I drive a very old car so I’ve learned a lot about them over the years.</p>
<p>JHS, I am still trying to process your comment about "the attendant " not putting the cap back on tight.Around here, I am the attendant. The only time you get help is at the one station that has full serve and then only if you are a cute teenage girl in a miniskirt.<br>
Back in the day, my boyfriend was a gas station attendant, gas was also under a dollar a gallon.</p>
<p>ebeeee: New Jersey, in its wisdom, has essentially banned self-help gas stations. As I understand it, the rationale is twofold – (1) this vastly expands the number of entry-level, dead-end jobs available to unskilled New Jerseyans, and (2) highly trained, professional minimum-wage pump jockeys will help minimize the environmental depredations caused by amateurs topping off their tanks and not jiggling the nozzle to avoid dripping gas on the ground. All this – and the extra amount of time it takes at the pump – would make you want to throttle New Jersey, except that the clever monkeys also have lower state taxes on gas than New York or Pennsylvania, so gas in NJ can run as much as $.30 cheaper per gallon than around where I live. As a consequence, when I’m driving long distances, I tend to manage my tank to fill up in New Jersey. Unfortunately, this is now the third time in five years that New Jersey professional gas station attendants have triggered my Check Engine light by failing to replace the gas cap correctly.</p>
<p>Fascinating…I had no idea. Good to know there is a wealth of entry level, dead end jobs in NJ. And I thought it was just the home of Bon Jovi. (Please laugh here…I can already here the California, governator jokes).</p>
<p>The trick now is to call into Car Talk on NPR and not tell them about your check engine light. Or at least, that seems to be what most callers do…</p>
<p>My husband’s toyota has the same problem with the engine check light coming on if the gas cap isn’t put on tight enough. Once, the light stayed on for a few months, until it was serviced. More recently, it stayed on for just a few days. Go figure!</p>
<p>I suggest going to the edmunds.com site and going to their forums (see top bar). Click on wagons and then on Subaru crew. That’s where you can find many of the answers to car annoyances.</p>
<p>I haven’t read the whole thread, so this may be a repeat. I have had it happen when my kid did not screw the gas cap on two clicks. It is suppose to go away eventually but never did.
Fixed it by disconnecting the battery, wait couple minutes, then reconnecting. I’ve been told this resets the chip in the engine. Easy to try.</p>
<p>Try a bottle of the fuel injection cleaner you can buy at your gas station that you add with gas to the gas tank when you fill up. That is what my mechanic suggested , and it did the trick.</p>
<p>I got gas in NJ two weeks ago… the day before having car troubles. I have never gotten gas in NJ before, and I forgot about their full serve rules. I got out, opened my gas tank, and was about to pump gas when the attendent looked at me like I was crazy. He asked what he could get for me and I said that I was fine and that I could do it myself. He replied with “not in New Jersey”… asked me how much gas I wanted and told me to go back to my car. I felt quite embarassed. I did enjoy that it was 30 cents less than PA though.</p>
<p>I assumed they had attendents to make sure there are no drive offs, as I know that is/was a problem here in PA. I didn’t even think about the topping off or whatever.</p>
<p>On a side note, when I went to get gas the next time I could hardly open the cap! The guy tightened it so far I thought I needed a wrench or something. But don’t you guys worry, I huffed, and I puffed, and I got that cap off!</p>