check engine light

I was driving home from work and my check engine light came on. when i got home I noticed this strange smell was comming from my xj and it seemed to feel a little warmer under the hood than usual. Any suggestion on what the problem could be?


thanks,
Ben

You're not giving us much to go by. Since there's about 150 things that can trigger a Check Engine light, your best bet is to haul yer butt over to an Auto Zone or Advance Auto in the morning and have them read the codes for you.

I really didn't see anything or hear anything out of the ordinary. The light just came on. The battery went dead last week, but that was because someone opened my glove box and didn't close it all the way. The exaust pipe has been rattling from when i was trying to take it off and the bolts broke on a clamp so i couldn't take it the rest of the way off, and i haven't got around to fixing it. But that would cause the problem would it? Is it still cool to drive? I don't want to screw anything up.

The check engine light can come on for many things. The light on a 97+ OBDII takes 5 cyles to reset on its own. Thats 5 cold, warmup back to cold cycles then it resets. Like eagle said, take it to AZ and have them read it out. I had mine go on about 4 years ago on a long steep 5 mile downgrade. I was all set to shotgun it with O2 sensors, plugs, cap, rotor, wires, the works. Then a guy named rags told me about the 5 cycle thing and I went with that, it went out two days later.

I took it to auto zone today, they plugged it up. It had the wierdest problem, it was running lean and rich. What in the world would cause it to do that? Anyway the guy reset the light and it hasn't come back on yet.

I take it you XJ was just running in the parking lot when they hooked up the tester. That is normal since the vehicle is not under load. Bascially it trying to fine tune and it can't ever get there. Also the definition of lean and rich may be only a few points off the optimal fuel/air ratio.

In other words "nothing to worry about". It shows your computer is actually doing it's job. Don't go looking for problems, if you have one it will present itself. We all like working on our XJs and in time you will figure out when to let sleeping dogs lay.