I recently gave my 1996 960 sedan to my fiance and we just paid the taxes and did the inspections today. I had no idea that with the check engine light being on that the car would automatically fail, but besides that there were 2 other codes that popped up. The first code came up as an evaporatorative emissions contol system malfunction, which I have no clue what that has to do with (but sounds expensive) and the second was a random-multiple cylinder misfire detected that I'm assuming has to do with the spark plus and wires since I forgot to replace them. Can anyone tell me what these problems may be, and also if there is a way to reset the check engine light myself after I fix the problems?? PLEASE HELP!!

 

Typically the evap code throws when one of the small vaccuum lines in the evap system (fuel tank to charcoal canister) is ruptured or dry rotted or something like that. check the vaccuum connections where they leave the fuel tank and follow the vaccuum lines all the way back to the charcoal canister. I had a similar experience with a different vehicle and was able to fix it for under $10.00 with a vaccuum line.
good luck.

 

check engine reset is fairly simple. Unhook the negative terminal on your battery and wait a few minutes, rehook it. The codes in the computer will clear. Be sure to have the code for your radio handy though, because power outage causes the security feature to activate. At least in my '93 it does.

 

And would you say that the rapid-misfire would be the spark plugs and wires? Anything else I should check for?

 

Is the car running rough?

 

I think pturner is correct, look for a bad vacuum hose or rubber fitting. The rubber elbows are famous for rotting out on the under side, so from the top they look fine, but underneath all of rubber may be missing.

I also think the two codes may be related, if there is a vacuum leak, then the cylinders will be getting too much air, which can cause a mis fire.

Once you do find the cure, it will take awhile for the car to ready for it's next emissions test, it takes all kinds of driving scenarios to ready the computer, it may take a couple of weeks, longer if the car is rarely used. By disconnecting the battery cable to erase the fault code, you also delete the history of readiness on the systems that are working. A code reset is the best way to do it.

DanR '94 964 352,000 miles (118,000 on the new engine)

 

Thanks everyone for your help. I am going to check all of these things out tomorrow. As far as the car running rough, it does start a little rough when we start it for the first time every day, but every time after the first time it starts up fine. This only happens when the car sits for about 10-12 hours.