'99 Legacy CEL

[KnifeyMcShanker]

Sigh, so i just bought this Legacy off of craigs list, been a great car for about a week, now the Check Engine light keeps coming on and off.

 

It happened the first time when driving up a hill. It blinked a few times and then stuck on. After taking it back home, turning it off for a few hours, and then driving it again, it wasn't on.

 

Now, today I was driving home from work, I was cruising at about 50 in top gear, then it pops on again. I see a red light in the distance so I push the clutch in. Immediately after that the engine dies, and restarts again just fine. Babied it home and it is now sitting in my drive way.

 

Now here's the catch, the only close place here that has an OBDII reader makes you put like $200 down, even to just use it out front, and they give it back when you're done. The guys there are huge assholes about it too. Anyway, I'm in High School and parents are out of town, me and my friends are all poor, so I don't have 200 bucks.

 

Is there any easy way of diagnosing this problem? The engine is newly rebuilt, less than 1000 miles, the previous owner put about 800 on it and me about 200. I don't know how he drove it but I did not drive it hard. Checked all the vacuum hoses and they're all in good shape. I was told there was a small puff of smoke when I started the engine once, but I never saw it, and no one else confirmed it. It passed smog yesterday with flying colors... I'm stumped as to what this can be.

 

Any help will be appreciated, thanks in advance.

[KnifeyMcShanker]

Alright, just an update, I went outside and checked about everything I can think of that would trigger this. Checked fuel lines, took off airbox and the whole plastic intake assembly, etc., checked for crap on the inside, then put it back on. When I got to the spark plug wires I found that one of them came off REAL easy, like it wasn't even clamped on there. There was also some corrosion on the contact.

 

So I took some pliers and squeezed the end of the plug so that it bent to fit on there better, and got a wire brush and cleaned all the corrosion off. CEL still on but (and I home this isn't just a placebo-type effect) it seemed to run a bit better. I'm going to leave it off overnight and drive it for a few days and see what happens. Still if you have something else to add or that I should check please reply.