Symptoms of P0204
- Check-engine light, often with a misfire feel from one cylinder.
- Rough idle, hesitation, or a slight loss of power.
- Higher fuel use, or in some cases a fuel smell.
Common causes of P0204
- A stuck, leaking, clogged, or electrically failed injector.
- Injector wiring, connector, or driver-circuit faults.
- Low fuel pressure or contamination affecting injector behaviour.
Useful checks before replacing parts
- Check cylinder 4 injector power, control circuit, connector fit, terminal tension, and harness routing near heat or vibration.
- Compare injector resistance, current ramp, or balance data with other cylinders if testing equipment is available.
- Review misfire counters and fuel-trim behavior to determine whether the circuit fault matches the symptom.
How serious is P0204, and can you keep driving?
- Urgency
- Moderate to high
- Safe to drive?
- Short distances only, and not if the engine is shaking.
An injector fault ends up in one of two places: too little fuel in a cylinder, or too much. Too little leans that cylinder out under load. Too much washes the bore and sends unburnt fuel into the catalytic converter, which is the expensive failure. If the fault has turned into a felt misfire, treat it with the urgency of a misfire code rather than a sensor code.
Clearing P0204, and making it stay gone
Clearing P0204 with a scan tool switches the lamp off; it does not fix anything, and it throws away the freeze-frame snapshot the car saved when the fault set. That snapshot is the most useful diagnostic evidence you have, because it records the load, RPM and temperature at the moment the test failed. Read it before you erase it.
Left alone, the lamp goes out on its own once the monitor that failed runs and passes on three consecutive driving cycles. The code stays in history after that, which is how a workshop can still see it. Disconnecting the battery is not a shortcut — it clears the stored codes and every learned fuel-trim value with them, so the car relearns from scratch and the underlying fault simply sets the code again.
On vehicles from roughly 2010 onward there is also a permanent DTC, which no scan tool can erase at all. It clears only when the monitor genuinely passes. That is deliberate: it stops a code being wiped in the car park outside an emissions test.
What P0204 costs to put right
There is no honest single figure for P0204, and any page that gives you one is guessing. The code names a circuit or a failed monitor, not a part — the same code can be a chafed wire, a connector full of water, or the component itself, and those are three very different bills.
The number worth budgeting for is diagnostic time. An hour of it is almost always cheaper than the second part you buy after the first one does not fix it, and parts fitted on a guess are rarely refundable once installed. If you are getting a quote, ask what the diagnosis found rather than what is being replaced — a injector fault traced to a specific cause is a repair, and a list of parts is a hopeful shopping list.
Questions people ask about P0204
What does P0204 mean?
P0204 points to an injector circuit malfunction on cylinder 4. The control module detected a problem in the electrical path for that injector.
Can I drive with P0204?
Short distances only, and not if the engine is shaking. An injector fault ends up in one of two places: too little fuel in a cylinder, or too much. Too little leans that cylinder out under load. Too much washes the bore and sends unburnt fuel into the catalytic converter, which is the expensive failure. If the fault has turned into a felt misfire, treat it with the urgency of a misfire code rather than a sensor code.
What causes P0204?
The usual candidates are a stuck, leaking, clogged, or electrically failed injector; injector wiring, connector, or driver-circuit faults; low fuel pressure or contamination affecting injector behaviour. The code tells you which test failed, not which of those did it — that is what the checks on this page are for.
Will P0204 clear itself?
Left alone, the lamp goes out on its own once the monitor that failed runs and passes on three consecutive driving cycles. The code stays in history after that, which is how a workshop can still see it. Disconnecting the battery is not a shortcut — it clears the stored codes and every learned fuel-trim value with them, so the car relearns from scratch and the underlying fault simply sets the code again.
Does P0204 mean I need to replace a part?
Do not replace cylinder 4 parts blindly; a damaged harness, loose terminal, or control-driver issue can set the same code.
How much does it cost to fix P0204?
There is no honest single figure for P0204, and any page that gives you one is guessing. The code names a circuit or a failed monitor, not a part — the same code can be a chafed wire, a connector full of water, or the component itself, and those are three very different bills.
Related OBD-II codes
These nearby injector entries can help compare wording and pin down the fault area.