Seat Ibiza Engine Management Light

Chives

Chives

Chives

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2009
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Location
Wales
Hi guys,

I drive an 03 Seat Ibiza 1.2.
Tonight I was on the dual carriageway doing about 60mph when a yellow symbol came up, anyway turns out it was the engine management light. My dad (who bought the car for me) says that the previous owner had the same problem and that apparently the lambda sensor is to blame. My dad says that it is nothing to worry about and it is safe to continue driving, I however have little (no) confidence in what he is saying and wondered that you guys thought? :)
 
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Get it fault code scanned. Must be someone local who has access to a VAG-COM/VCDS cable. Won't take more than 2 minutes to do, and will give you a nice readout of what sensor/reading is throwing up the fault.

Take a look at the seatcupra.net forums, they have a section dedicated to sharing access to diagnostics, either by requesting someone to help, or by them offering services in a given region.
 
My engine management light was on more than it was off when I owned my first car, changed all kinds of sensors but ended up replacing the wiring loom to fix the problem.

My car was a crappy french clio though so you should have more luck but yes I would go with what your dad is saying and carry on driving, you might find it starts to misfire at low revs and have a very lumpy idle.

Try and get it to a garage asap but I wouldn't consider it not drivable.
 
The engine management light tells you the ECU is experiencing something it shouldn't. As long as the car isn't in limp mode, you'll be fine.

For example, if a maf sensor were to fail, the ECU would revert to default air mass values at certain engine load and rpm. The engine would run a little rich, and performance would be down, but it is still driveable.
 
paradigm said:
Get it fault code scanned. Must be someone local who has access to a VAG-COM/VCDS cable. Won't take more than 2 minutes to do, and will give you a nice readout of what sensor/reading is throwing up the fault.

Take a look at the seatcupra.net forums, they have a section dedicated to sharing access to diagnostics, either by requesting someone to help, or by them offering services in a given region.
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Hyper said:
My engine management light was on more than it was off when I owned my first car, changed all kinds of sensors but ended up replacing the wiring loom to fix the problem.

My car was a crappy french clio though so you should have more luck but yes I would go with what your dad is saying and carry on driving, you might find it starts to misfire at low revs and have a very lumpy idle.

Try and get it to a garage asap but I wouldn't consider it not drivable.
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Thanks both, sounds like I'd better get it checked out asap.
Problem is I can't get it checked out as my dad pays for everything for the car and I have no money of my own from which I can get it checked out, he's refusing as he insists its the lambda sensor and its fine to carry on driving (he's basing this on the last owner of the car saying that he had an engine management light problem and apparently it was the lambda sensor)
 
It could be a wide variety of sensors, no doubt the last owner replaced the faulty lambda sensor otherwise the light would have still been on when you bought it?

I would try your best to persuade him to at least let you take it to a local garage and let them hook it upto one of their machines and see what it comes back with. Only problem is those machines can flag up loads of errors once the engine management light is on making the problem seem a lot worse than it actually is.

Do you not have a local garage you can trust?
 
If you continue to drive & it is the sensor at fault, then you risk shortening the life of the cars catalytic converter, possibly leading to failure & your car breaking down.

I recommend getting it looked at asap
 
Matt82 said:
my small wager goes on coil pack/s or plug/s failing and the code being multiple random misfires
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Exactly this. Repaired two ibizas although a couple of years older with the 1.4 engine. One was plugs and leads to cure, the other was coil pack.

Multiple random misfires will also kill the catalytic converter if left long enough as unburnt fuel is being thrown down the exhaust.
 
Op, just take it to any small independent garage, and they will scan it for free normally. At worse they might charge you a tenner.

Pull your wallet out, we all want to know what it is! :)
 
Chives said:
Hi guys,

I drive an 03 Seat Ibiza 1.2.
Tonight I was on the dual carriageway doing about 60mph when a yellow symbol came up, anyway turns out it was the engine management light. My dad (who bought the car for me) says that the previous owner had the same problem and that apparently the lambda sensor is to blame. My dad says that it is nothing to worry about and it is safe to continue driving, I however have little (no) confidence in what he is saying and wondered that you guys thought? :)
Click to expand...

I have a standalone reader for VAG cars, assumimg yours is same as my missus' 03 TT that she had ( almost certainly is ) it should do the job, cover post both ways and you can borrow it, it will also reset the light for you
 
Hi guys,
Had some progress today. Firstly my dad has spoken to the previous owner who apparently had a technician come to look at the car when he first had the engine management light come on. The technician took out the sensor that monitors fumes on the exhaust, gave it a clean and put it back which apparently got rid of the engine management light. This is why my dad thinks it is the same fault now and is happy to leave it as it is apparently "nothing to worry about". Anyway a friend of mine has a universal fault code reader which we tried to use earlier on today in order to find out what the error actually is. The fault reader refused to work however and displayed a link error. Ahh car problems eh!
Would like to thank everyone for their helpful replies so far and in particular Rotty for his very kind offer - Thank you! :)
 
This could be a completely different eml warning to the one fixed before though, and you won't know unless you get it scanned. Also, a fault code from a sensor doesn't always mean a bad sensor. They can give things like short to ground, implausible signal, signal too high/low etc for many different reasons.
 
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