Scottish Elises

been taking the OHs car to the train station in the mornings for the past week.
Over the past few days or so, a light appears on the dash (a diagram with a car and spanner) and remains on.

I've looked in the book and it says its a fault in the engine electronics - take it to a dealer to get it diagnosed.
When this light is on, it runs like an absolute pig - More so than usual

are the dealers the only ones that can sort it? or will the usual automotive sparky be able to run a diagnostic?
its a 52 plate corsa

Any auto sparky can put a OBD reader on it and give you the fault code - then it'd be a case of checking t'internet to see what it actually is...

..is what I'd do anyway.

bet it's either lambda sensor of MAF sensor gone.

I had a hire car a couple of years ago and similar light appeared (yellow I think) and it ran awful!
Because it was a hire car didnt bother about it, but later found out that it had put the engine mgmt into a safe mode, hence why it was running cr*p...

Hope you get it sorted!

she wants to scrap it and buy a new car
im going to get it fixed.

ive pointed her in the direction of lings for a fiesta or a fiat 500 at much cheapness... but she thinks it all sounds a bit dodgy!

i was aiming for a CTR, but she hates the look of them...

wimin, eh? you cant live with them... and you cant live with them

ps.
When the above warning light is on, the temp guage is at zero and as soon as the light goes out (after about 5 mins driving), the temp needle shoots up and you get power back.
The heaters have also packed in. When you press the button to get the drivers window to come up on auto, it reaches 2 inch from the top and then hits a limit, winds back down and then locks all the doors!! WTF!!???

something just aint right!

she's right - scrap it - cars are so cheap now, why bother fixing such a retarded motor

Is the heater blowing but just cold air, or is there warm air coming out of the vents but no heater blowing behind it?

I would be checking the earthing of the chassis, battery and engine - weird electrical faults often come down to bad earths.

If the heater is blowing only cold air I might be concerned there was an air lock in the system, and that the air bubble was spending a lot of its time sitting right where the coolant sensor is, so the coolant sensor sees the engine as cold when it's actually hot. This would certainly piss the ECU off.

More likely, though, is that the coolant sensor is faulty or there's a loose wire or bad earth feeding the coolant sensor - the ECU sees that the engine temperature is out of reasonable range and decides to go in to limp home mode.

Cheers,
Robin