Intermittent ets light

Shemp · Post by **Shemp** » 02 Jan 2012, 20:02

For the last week, I've been getting my ETS light has been coming on intermittently on my 99 v70xc. It usual takes about an hour of driving before it lights, which seems to happen only when my foot is off the throttle, although today it came on after a few minutes. The light does go off after the car has been turned off and restarted, sometimes coming back on, and other times staying off for the rest of the day. The car has no drivability problems, other than the slight variation in idle speed it has had since I bought it in April. Following Xemodex's diagnostic chart, I cleaned, and then changed the mass air flow sensor, but that had no effect. My code reader shows no error codes. I was planning on changing the etm in the spring, but I'm wondering if this is the beginning of the end of the original etm, and I should change it now before it fails on me 100 miles from home. Another post on here mentioned the brake position sensor can also trigger the ets light, is there a way to check that sensor to see if it is the problem, or is this the type of thing that only the dealer can read the codes for. I'm basically trying to determine what the most effective way of resolving the problem, without wasting money on parts that aren't bad yet. The car has about 109,000 miles on it, and I put about 2-3,000 miles a month on the car for work, so having it running well is important.

Post by **mikealder** » 03 Jan 2012, 12:51

Have a look at your ETM while its still in the car, if its got a white sticker on then it's the original, if the sticker is yellow then it's a replacement.
Have you considered removing the ETM and giving that a good clean as they do carbon up which can cause the throttle butterfly valve to stick, this often shown up as revs dropping off at idle and taking a while to recover to the normal RPM it should hold.
If its the original ETM then I would expect it to be on its last legs, 100K isn't bad and 12 years old is bloody good going as they usually fail before then - Mike

Shemp · Post by **Shemp** » 04 Jan 2012, 13:29

It is the original throttle body, I knew when I bought the car that I'd be replacing it, figured if it made it until the end of the year I'd be doing good. It may be worth replacing it now just to avoid having it fail at an inopportune time. Just wanted to see if anything else could be triggering the ets light that could need to be checked or replaced.

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