Help me ppplease! Tonight when driving to the gym I stopped short at a red light, then maybe revved a little on the clutch when the light went green (I was on a hill). My Z began bucking like a bronco and wouldn't rev past 2500 rpm. I feel a loss of power as well under 2500, and to top it off, i smelt this weird smell eminating from the exhaust when I came home. I popped the hood, and every 10 seconds or so it would chatter and idle real rough. Anyone have any ideas??? HELP!!

 

By the way my car has 2300 miles and is VIN 14XXX ...

 

Well guys, I need no replies ... cause my car is FIXED!! I magically popped the hood, gave my engine this weird and sad look , then started her up again ... no chatter, no rough idle ... then i took her for a spin around the block, revved her up to 4-5 grand with no problems , and she seems good as new. I'm thinking since I had 50 or so miles left on my tank (digital readout), and when I came to an abrupt stop on the hill, the gas jostled around & created air bubbles or something like that. I dunno, I'm no mechanic. All i know is that I had a happy ending.

 

good job bro

 

Actually, it sounds a bit like you went into the limp mode on the ECU. Something to do with opening the door contacts will reset that. I don't remember the specifics, but I've heard of a car going into that due to the accelerator pedal potentiometer (sp) going out of range.

 

Yeah, it was limp mode.....my buddy installed the AEM instake and managed to put the car into limp mode right after (something about excessive moisture from directly spraying the inside driver fender well too much at the car wash or something.....it acted the same way. Dealer reset his though.

not much to worry about unless it persists. then check the throttle thing and pull error codes from the ECU.

 

Thanks guys, I'll bring it into my dealer and have them check it out.

 

Sounds more like some air in the fuel line than limp home mode to me. Since the Z has a returnless fuel system any air that the pump picks up has only one place to go - out through the injectors. That means major stumbling & loss of power until the air is purged from the lines. Limp home mode will reduce power & RPM but shouldn't run that rough.

I've had engines run rough and try to stall out from running low on fuel when stopped on a hill or cornering hard on an entrance ramp. Since they were conventional systems with a fuel return to the tank they cleared up as soon as the pump stopped sucking air. The Z is going to take a lot longer to recover.

 

I looked in the shop manual, and there are a couple of specific mentions of 2400 rpm limits in certain error code situations. I thought I'd read that before, which is what I still suspect he saw.

 

If it was an error code wouldn't I have had my check engine light come on on the dash? I saw no such lights ... just not able to rev more than 2500 rpms. It's weird that it went back to normal after I turned the car off.

 

It is definitley electronic and not bubbles because of two reasons.

The problem went away when you turned the ignition off and on and not when you drove out the bubbles.

Also, the same thing happened to me when I had 10 miles on the car. I stalled it on a hill when someone turned left in front of me at an intersection. I fired it back up before I stopped rolling and probably before the system turned all the way off. I was in a hurry to get out of the intersection and a little pissed off.

Anyways, this happened after that and I pulled over and shut it down. I waited a second and started it again and have never had that problem again. This was back in February.

 

My 04 M/T roadster has hesitated/stumbled on 3 or 4 occasions. Never stalled, but went "limp" when I was demanding full throttle. This happened after downshifting to 2nd or 3rd as I was turning into fast moving traffic. Not a pretty sight, nor a safe one.

 

That's a good idea. Nice to get them to document anything just in case the problem appears once more.

 

ZPikeZ

I'm glad your situation resolved itself. The best part is that it came to a "Happy Ending" and you know how we all like "Happy Endings"

Happy Motoring.........................

 

sounds like limp mode to me too.

Check teh electrics and see if any are wet. Air flow meters are bad for this.