Since I've had the car (bout 5 years) I've been insanely fortunate not to have my check engine light come on. Well, after my long road trip home to VT, the bastard finally decided to pop on as soon as I got here. After thinking the usual "that figures" or "what the hell am I gonna do now" I got my wits about me, popped the cover off, peeled the tape back and tried checking the codes with a flathead screwdriver like the instructions say. Well, that was a no go cause the screw in there was a dinky little Phillips type. Anyway......found the appropriate driver, turned it clock, then counter clock and I got 5 long pulses then 5 quick ones. (0505) Checked the ECU decoder and it told me "No failure recorded/detected"

Phew...looks like I dodged a bullet, but I'm curious, why do you suppose the light came on? My car was loaded up a pretty good bit for my 1150 mile drive but the car performed wonderfully and the car seems to still run great with no ill effects other than the light popping on. I do live on a dirt road and the roads around town are pretty rough. Reckon the bumpy roads triggered the light? So where does this 05/05 code come from?

 

You might want to use a computer from autozone or so to be sure. Nonetheless, your story sounds similar to my first CEL, it was a 300 mil journey and as i got home the POS turned on. turns out it was my o2.GL

 

Aye. Autozone might be a bit hard to find around here since I taint in the ATL anymore but I'm gonna pop down to a buddies shop and have him re-check the codes for me just to be sure.

Now, did yours come up 0505 but ended up being an o2 sensor or did the code come straight up as an o2 prob?

 

came up straight as an o2 code, which is the only difference in our prob...sorry. But yeah get it computer tested and see what happens.

 

AZ scanners are teh suck though, with the next model up you can check the fuel trims, I've seen o2's eat away gas mileage and you can look at the fuel trims to see that situation, allthough vacuum leak and maf can cause them to be erratic also. If you do go to AZ, they can at least also check the pending codes, certain codes must happen X number of consecutive times before they will illuminate the light and become readable with the screwdriver, but even if those codes happen once they can be read as a pending code with a scan-tool. Chances are whatever tripped your light is still in there under pending, however I wouldn't worry about it, 1200 miles does funky stuff to cars.

Off topic, but three seperate times I did long trips in gm 4-cylinder's (two different cavaliers and a saturn) and ALL THREE TIMES after 800 miles continuos it burned 4 quarts up and started getting noisy or lit up the oil light

 

Also you can check if the ECM actually holds the codes by triggering one manually. For example remove the coolent tempreture sensor socket (or any other non critical sensor) start her up, stop, and stat again. This is because the MIL has a two trip detection logic for most cases.
If the MIL lights up, stop the engine and fix the socket back up and start it again. The MIL should now not light up.
Now switch the engine off and check if the code is stored. If the code is stored it means that the ECM memory is functional.