A severe blow to my hybrid karma today - the "Service Engine Soon" light came on half way into my commute to Boston. The car still ran fine and continued to get excellent mileage for the rest of the commute - about 20 miles. When I got to work I read the manual - hey, I'm only at work - what else did I have to do - didn't seem to be any rush to have it taken care of - so I called the dealer and made an appointment for the 24th when I'll be on vacation.

I did some surfing on the net - remember, I'm only at work - what else did I have to do - and found directions on how to read the codes and what they mean at nissanclub.com:

http://www.nissanclub.com/forums/new...edure-07s.html

At lunch I walked over to the parking garage and ran the procedure - it took a couple of trys to get it to work - and pulled the code 0133 which translated into "Oxygen Sensor Circuit Slow Response". I cleared the code from the computer and after driving home from Boston and running errands tonight it hasn't come back on.

I think I'll keep my appointment with the dealer on the 24th and if it hasn't come back on by the 23rd I'll cancel and continue to monitor. I hate to have to do the dealer thing unless I'm sure it's a real problem and not a one time transient thing - the emission system has the California warranty for 10 years or 150,000 miles so it's not like there's a big rush. At the worst it would mean a trip to the dealer to have the sensor replaced but they would probably only reset anyway and see if it would come back on before replacing anything - exactly what I'm doing. As long as it continues to run fine and keeps getting good mileage I'm going to try to not loose any sleep over this.

My wife's 2005 Passat had to be brought in four times in two months to get the same light taken care of - didn't have the convienent method to pull the codes with her car.