I worked at a large Lincoln-Mercury point for about a year and a half when I got out of the Air Force. Often the dealer isn't the only one who is "ethically challenged" and the people sitting on the other side if the desk can lie cheat and steal to. Has anyone considered the previous owner of this vehicle may of started the fraud by disabling the CEL? Understand the process in selling low end used cars, if it's a trade in the seller wants the most they can get for it, the dealer wants to buy it as cheap as they can BUT also wants to sell the car they have. The dealer makes a quick appraisal, at our store the GM/AGM walked around the car, made a quick look at the tires got in it started it up, looked for a CEL and tried the Air Conditioning. Since we really don't know if we're able to make a deal we're kinda of hesitant to invest much time in the trade in. If we get he trade for fair money and the appraiser misses something or the previous owner hid something (like a CEL light) it could end up if we repair and retail we loose money, so what happens? Often they go off to auction and the next dealer has to deal with it. Do we have any recourse against the previous owner who maybe deliberately hid relevant facts of the vehicle's condition to us the purchaser? No as we're so called professionals. It's back to the same argument of anti-trust actions or collusion among businesses. It's wrong for businesses to act together to fix prices but it's okay for employees to form unions to collude to fix prices for their labor? A saying the new car salesman learns early is "if they ain't lying they ain't buying", and it's more prevalent in big stores and big cities were the buyer and seller don't have a level of knowledge about each other.
Again the purchase was "as is where is" and the buyer agreed to that. with low end vehicles it's to easy to spend what the car is worth between purchase and repairs. Cars have become more complex, labor costs more both because of general economic factors AND the fact that more complex cars require a higher skill level to diagnose and repair and more costly tools to do so. Heck some of the scanners and readers have fees associated with them for each use or each data base downloaded or accessed.
Last factor to deal with is car owners often get the out of sight out of mind mindset. Thing go wrong and are "fixed" in an unapproved manner or even ignored. AS other posters have mentioned you can drive a car with a CEL light on for years, a steady CEL light means something's wrong and the car is running on a default value or program and you should have it looked at.....sometime. However a FLASHING check engine light means something is wrong, it is wrong enough to cause damage to the car or it might even quit and you should have it looked at SOON. Could the scenario be some little old lady takes her Buick down to the corner repair shop for a check engine light and Mike the Mechanic find it's an evaporation emission fault meaning there is a leak in the fuel vapor recovery system. The little old lady doesn't want/cant afford the $100s or even $1,000s of dollars to diagnose and repair the car because of a leaking vacuum tube buried up under the gas tank or deep in the engine compartment. The car is running fine but there is the potential for gasoline vapors to leak into the atmosphere. Mike the mechanic pulls the CEL bulb and Granny has her Buick back and is happy. Or the older gentleman with a Caprice wagon, nice clean car but for what ever reason he had a car/garage incident and the left front fender isn't like it came from the factory. Two-Three years later he stops buy a Lincoln Mercury dealer with his son because he sees a Sable Wagon he like. The Caprice isn't present but he works a deal with he trade sight unseen. When he comes to pick up his new Sable wagon the damage is noted, he told us the car was clean, and except for the left front fender it is. Did he lie? Or did he accept the damage to his car and it's been there so long he's actually forgotten about it, if he dwelled on it he would of gotten it fixed or traded much earlier. What happened? It was a clean car, except for the left front fender and we were in it heavy enough that if it went to the auction we would loose money. It went on the used car lot at a discounted price, it was a good car for someone who needed cheap reliable transportation or for some one who was willing to take a day and hit the salvage yards for a new used fender and if they couldn't find one the right color hit it with rattle can touch up paint. It was on our lot for about a week and was gone, think one of the used car sharks put a friend of his who did handy man work into it.
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Today's Featured Article - Listening to Your Tractor - by Curtis Von Fange. Years ago there was a TV show about a talking car. Unless you are from another planet, physically or otherwise, I don’t think our internal combustion buddies will talk and tell us their problems. But, on the other hand, there is a secret language that our mechanical companions readily do speak. It is an interesting form of communication that involves all the senses of the listener. In this series we are going to investigate and learn the basic rudimentary skills of understanding this lingo.
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