Tonight while driving on the way home as usual the CEL just came on out of nowhere. I stopped the car and started it again a couple minutes later after picking some stuff up at the store and the CEL is still there. The car still runs fine. No problems with idle, engine runs great at all RPM levels (VTEC still kicks), nothing is different that I can tell.

Any idea on what this could be? I won't be able to get this checked out for at least two days due to work, so is it safe to keep driving this thing? I just put $1600 worth of repairs into this thing less than a year ago, so I have no idea why I'm dealing with a CEL.

Also, what's the worst case scenario here? I hate to sound like a n00b, but is there a chance that I'm going to have to drop another $1000+ into this vehicle that only has 108,000 miles on it and just had a pretty nice list of things re-done on it?

 

take it to Autozone and find out what the code is.

 

I'm not sure on what worst-case scenario could be...but from my experience one cause of a CEL that doesn't change your car's running performance (idle, throttle, etc) could be a bad O2 sensor. It's happened to my Prelude and my wife's IS300 and in both cases the cars ran fine, it was just annoying to have that light on constantly (that and it can affect your gas mileage). If it is one of your O2 sensors, an OEM replacement can be pretty expensive, but I'm sure you can get creative and find one cheap online, or you can get an aftermarket one for like 50-60 bucks at an auto parts store...Hope that helps.

EDIT: but yeah, do what KRON said and check the code before you go around buying stuff...