Mountain man

Here is the situation:
'03 9-5 Aero sportcombi with two kayaks loaded on the roof, and a lightly loaded rear end and a passenger in the car. Was going about 75 mph. A jerk behind me was riding my rear bumper like it was a hot woman. I got pissed off about it so I hit the gas to pass the car next to me so I could pull over. After flooring the gas pedal the car seemed to only slowly accelorate, then downshifted, and then did kind of a slow-motion lurch. That's when I suddenly noticed the blinking CEL. I know you're supposed to pull over and shut off the engine as soon as you see this, but before I could change lanes, it shut off.

My first guess is I overloaded the engine or overboosted the turbo. But I don't know for sure. After driving a little while longer, I pulled off into a gas station and shut off the engine for a few minutes. Starting it back up, I got the all-ok from all the dash lights. I havn't seen it again since then, but the fact that it showed up has me freaked out.

Any ideas on what might have happened?
Would the CEL code still be in something like a "history" or back-log that a OBDII check can pull up?

Roto

Only way to find out is to connect to an OBD2 scanner and check. Some codes don't store if they're no continuous. A combination of load and heat could have made one of the sensors malfunction for a brief moment. Could be an indication of something going bad, but if it didn't store a code there's no way to find out.

Mountain man

I'll take it in to a parts place and pull the code if it stored. At least I'll get it for free rather than paying $100 at the dealership.

Mountain man

Well, it turns out that the auto parts place can't read it if it's not on. Since the light was on for only a few seconds, their reader wont capture the code.

Any way I can get it without forking over $100 to plug it in?

Roto

Well... how do you feel about putting a carputer in? Sure, it's more expensive, but with a CAN connection you can see things in realtime and it can look quite impressive too.

Mountain man

I don't know a whole lot about that. I did a little reading about such a device, but that was about it. I was looking into what I could use my OnStar junk for. Since I don't have the service, and since I think mine is also the defunct analog system, I was hoping to integrate a bluetooth device to the car's audio interface. That way I wont need to have the stupid thing dangling off my ear when I talk on my cell.

Back on subject, what would the possibilities be? I know one guy said I probably dumped too much fuel in at once and bugged the O2 sensor by the instant full throttle. But a friend of mine who knows a good deal about cars said that was unlikely for a car with injectors and ECU, and I may have had detonation. Detonation freaks me out, and I REALLY hope thats not it. But that could potentially occur by the waste gate sticking shut for a brief moment right? Over boosting?

I almost want to instigate the car to do it again, but the fear of ruining something expensive has me holding back. It'd be a dumb way of troubleshooting.

Roto

I doubt that the dumping too much fuel was the case. Narrowband O2 sensors are too slow to react to something like that. A wastegate sticking shut would have caused a boost spike which can be catastrophic if it climbs way too high, but that should have set off a permanent code and so would detonation and misfire.

Mountain man

I'd say the whole ordeal from flooring the pedal to letting of and freaking about the blinking cel lasted a whole 6 seconds. I want to say it lasted longer, but in instances like this, the brain exaggerates time. Since my eyes were on the road and then the blinking cel, I can't say for certain where the boost needle was. If detonation would have caused a permanent cel, then that couldn't be it. I found something on another forum that pertained to older, different Saab model that the cel would blink a certain number of times to indicate a specific problem. Don't know if that would have been carried on to the later model years or not.

One other thing came to mind- my car has just over 85k on it. . . . should a spark plug replacement be in order? I've got to go to the dealership Monday to order a belt shield, and back again for an oil change on Tuesday. So I may be able to pry some info from the techs.

Roto

I change the plugs quite often... the plugs is what the car uses to detect knock. The plugs and the gap on them are very important to knock detection.

Mountain man

So I could try replacing my plugs? I suppose it wont really hurt, and maybe help as a preventative maintenance.

What would you recommend I throw in? Any special specs to use when installing?
I understand this might not help solve this issue, but I might as well do it.