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2002 gp v6 service engine light

A

alok

New member
I have a 2002 GP 3.8 V6, with approx 166,000 on it. Car has been great, recently I been getting a SERVICE ENGINE light and the code is P0446. The car runs great.

I had this same code around 2016 and my mechanic (the one I had, I moved since then) immediately told me, check the gas cap, if it is on tight replace the gas cap . . . I did replace the gas cap and the light never came back, except in the last month or so.
I again tried to replace the gas cap, both replacement caps in 2016 & this time are GM (AC Delco) caps purchased at a GM dealer.

I have a code reader and there is one code in it everytime this has been happening in the last month, the P0446 , if I clear the code, about 2 weeks later it is back, I do not use the car much except local driving.

My question is why can I clear the one same code all the time and it seems to come back like "clock work" about 2 weeks later, same exact code? There are never any SAVED CODES per the reader.

If there is an issue why doesn't the code come back sooner, or does the system have away of checking itself, maybe waiting for say three of the same codes before it lights the SERVICE ENGINE light
?

Also is there something I can look for, that might be simple enough to find & fix, like a leaking hose for the evaporator system, where should I look? As I said the car runs great.

Al
 


I have a 2001 and went through the same thing. There's a long list of possibilities and for me it was a few of them. The last one on the list was the fuel filler neck. There's a smaller metal line for the evap system that follows the filler neck. I touched mine and it turned to dust. It's an easy check and a likely culprit.
 
Did not see my next post response/question I made, so I'll try again.

When there is a problem does the SERVICE ENGINE light come on immediately or does the system look for 2 or 3 of the same fault codes, within a certain amount of time, and then turns the light on?
If it does this it would eliminate any false indications, correct?
 
The system should collect data over drive cycles before it throws a CEL. If you scan it you may see a "pending" code.

Same as when it turns it off. Once you fix the issue and drive it for x amount of time it will re-check everything and if it's all good the CEL will go out on it's own.
 
I think I found the problem I hope!!!

I looked real close under the hood and found a small plastic line about 7 inches long with two right angles on it, one side going to a sensor (I think it is a sensor) going into somewhere and the other side connected to a bigger thing on the intake, the little plastic line was out of the thing (on the intake) that has two lines going in / out of it. One, the small plastic line & the other a larger diameter line.

There looked like there was no damage to the line and the hole it popped out of, hole & line looked clean.
I pushed the plastic line back in the hole it came out of, it felt like it went in nice and snug and hopefully this will fix my P0446 code.
 
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