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CEL causes EyeSight freakout

4K views 8 replies 8 participants last post by  Carl Abrams 
#1 ·
Had my first trip to the dealer service center today. :)

When I got in my car this morning, the check-engine light was on. After some expletives (the car is 3 months old), I checked out some of the usual culprits. What was weird was that EyeSight was disabled, the lane departure warning was disabled, and even the blind spot detector was disabled. One other warning light was on, too, which I haven't yet checked the manual to identify.

After a couple hours at the dealer, it turned out to be just the gas cap. This was strange since we last filled up five days ago, but I'm not sweating it.

After talking to the tech, he told me that many of Subaru's systems, when faulting, cause other warnings down the chain. Apparently EyeSight is connected to the fuel system line sensors. Seems strange to me, but it clearly happened. He said he even had a customer whose fuel pump failed, and it forcibly activated X-mode. :)

Just posting as a public service announcement. Looks like a benign issue, but undoubtedly someone else will see it happen.
 
#2 ·
This isn't just a Subaru thing. Many if not most newer cars will disable non driving critical features when a CEL comes on. Presumably this is to annoy you into getting whatever is causing the CEL fixed sooner than later.
 
#7 ·
Very true. A coworker of mine was having troubles with is late model Rav 4 last winter. He repeatedly had the CEL come on and unfortunately it occurred during some of our worst snow storms last year. The Rav 4's AWD also shuts down when the CEL comes on.

He was pretty irate. At first he presumed that the CEL was on 'BECAUSE' his AWD was not working. But then the dealer told him it was a safety feature. Turning off the AWD was by design meant to encourage him to return to the dealer rather than ignoring the CEL.

Driving in to work through that nasty weather was not supposed to be so difficult.

Anyway I've been curious if our OB's are so afflicted. I haven't had mine long enough for winter driving to find out.

Bear
 
#3 ·
If you are at all mechanically inclined and have any flavor of an android device, one of the many knockoff ELM327 bluetooth adapters (around $20) and the Torque app will prove useful at random times. They read OBD2 codes and while they can't do any of the more advanced subaru specific stuff, i'm certain that you could have seen that the code was something related to the evaporative system which is nearly always a gas cap problem.

Also, even if you did check everything and retightened the gascap, it would have taken a few drive cycles for the light to go off on it's own.

While it may seem dumb to deactivate eyesight with a gas cap code I'm guessing subaru takes the throw the baby out with the bathwater approach and deactivates as much non essential systems as possible when the CEL light is on. You wouldn't want eyesight active during a misfire event, for example.
 
#5 ·
My four month old limited just had the same problem. CEL came one yesterday and ES was disabled with it. Today drove it a little and on the way back home, CEL went away and everything seems to be back to normal. another thing I got today was something about memory is full and can't do track log anymore. You guys think these are all related? Going to bring car in for the 3k service soon. Hoepfully they can figure it out at the dealership.
 
#9 ·
One comment, one question:

Comment - I end up telling everyone when I do delivery that a loose gas cap is the first thing to check if a CEL comes on. And I also warn them that the whole dash will light up like a Christmas Tree if that happens as well. Just go replace the gas cap, drive it for 10 minutes, shut it off, give it a few minutes, and then restart it and see if the code goes away. Probably 90% of the Subies (not just Outbacks, but Foresters, Legacy, and everything else) that we see come in on a flatbed are simply gas cap related. The other 10% are on their way to the body shop...

Question: Why are you going in for a 3K service? Since the service interval for new Outbacks is 6K / 6 mos.? Is it simply because you want to do so? I'm just curious - if it's something your dealership told you .... um .... I'm not going to say they're wrong, but ....
 
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