I am so excited I am to join this forum. I just bought my 1st Ford! I own a 02 Escape XLT 4x4 with 93K miles on her.
The idle air control valve was replaced before I test drove, and bought her.
I live in a rural area, and I have significant physical disabilities. The reason I am bringing this up is that I do not know if I am stranded at home for the moment or if it is okay to drive my new car.
When I started my car this morning the idle was rough. Same with the car in reverse, then the check engine light came on after driving for 50 yards.
I have so many plans for my new car. This will be a blip in the big scheme, it just does not feel like that at the moment.
So, Hello from the beautiful Santa Cruz Mountains! Jeez I have been so spoiled owning new cars. I wanted to get our of the monthly payments and maintenance schedules and get into a car that I own. Well, I did it!

 

If you can get to an Auto Zone or Advance Auto, they have a code reader. Will do for free. An O'Reilly store will let you borrow their reader. You must leave your drivers license. After getting the code(s) with O'Reilly's reader, you can clear the code(s). Once you have the code(s), you can decide what to do. A hard code will come back.

 

Thanks Maint007 there is an Auto Zone here in town. I will go now and check back here when I know what code(s) came up. I am hoping it was the fuel cap. I noticed how loose it was when I re fueled on Friday. After I posted here, I cleaned the built up greasy gunk all around the base of the cap and the entire area under the fuel door. The idle has evened out quite a bit and the check engine light is still on. I am not thrilled about driving her but do think that this may have been the problem.

 

Well, in the State of California it is not illegal for both O'Reilly to loan code readers, and for Auto Zone to offer this service at no cost.
California Consumer - zero
California Professional Auto Tech - 1
Seriously this is just wrong
I wonder if it is legal to sell to Calfornia resident from Amazon?

 

I had an Hyundai Elantra with a loose fuel cap. After seating it, the code cleared itself in a couple of hours. They say about 20-50 miles.
I am in Missouri.
Auto Zone does not offer to read the codes for free?

 

I live in the state as you do Maint007 and yes they do read the codes for free because I've been there done that. as for the other thing this person is having trouble with their car, if you can find the tool through Amazon then by all means do it, because it ain't right for them to sell things to every where else but Cal. residents.

 

Oh sorry my reply was worded incorrectly. It is not legal for Auto Zone to offer code reading for free. It is not legal for O'reilly to loan code readers. Both told me that this is fairly recent. Professional Auto Techs won a lawsuit with the complaint being that these services were affecting profits. Amazon will sell me a code reader.

 

Code read "cylinder 5 misfire" once I drove the 25 miles to the seller of my Escape. The engine was running perfectly on my drive. He cleared the code, and paid for diagnosis since I have only owned the car for 10 days. There are many pros and cons of mountain life. Here is a con I didn't see coming. A rodent decided to look for nesting material in the engine compartment! A 3" area of casing of wiring harness but no wires are now part of that lil buggers nest! What the what? Okay now on to placing poison in my engine compartment and not killing or making any of my 4 pets sick or worse.

 

usually if one has a rodents nest located in the engine compartment all they have to do is get rid of the nest and the rodent will find some other place to nest without using poison