During hurricane wilma, my gf's car got a tree on it and its going into the shop for 3 weeks. My car will be in the shop after hers, but we need to get around somehow. However, she cant drive a stick so I traded my dad cars. he has the ralliart, I have his Jeep. I gave him my car last night.

Dad calls me today and tells me my car is stalling. Its the first time he tried taking it out. I drove about 10 miles in it the day before to run to the mall. Five miles there, sat for 3 hours, 5 miles back, sat over night. It was fine. Two days before, I filled it up when it was VERY low on gas. The station I filled up at just opened that day due to lack of power from the hurricane. I think it might have had some bad gas.

Here is what happens:

When the car is turned on, it starts up and stalls out right away.
If the car is turned on while the gas is pressed, it starts up, revs high and keeps running. Once the RPMs drop below 1500, it stalls.

To fix this, my dad tightened the throttle calbe so that it idles at 2k RPMs for now, just so it is drivable.

I am not sure if its a fuel problem or air problem, but its not getting one of the two properly. Given the gas station situation, I am guessing bad fuel. I have the RRM piggy, which requires me to run higher octane. I filled with 98 oct, so the pump was labeled. I reset the ECU and checked the electrical contacts, and its all good (actually, my dad did all that with my guidance over the phone. he's 100 miles away).

What does this sound like to you guys? Any advice for diagnosing with limited access until the weekend? My dad is a fairly good mechanic (he figured out the throttle cable adjustment hack on his own), but his toolset isnt that great. Thanks guys!

 

Yeah I had a problem like that in one of my old cars I fixed up the tank had some bad gas in it from it sitting so long inthe cold weather with condensation building up from me turning a heater on and off inthe barn so I think the tank developed some water in it... but once i drained the tank pushed the lines it ran fine...


good luck I havent found the fuel lines in our cars yet going to increase the size of them for more fuel flow to compensate for more air flow...

 

Sorry to hear that man. I hope that it is just some bad gas, let us know what happens, sorry I can't help, haven't experienced it.

 

if it's bad gas, you can take off your gas cap and smell it. bad gas stinks.

 

It could be the fuel regulator, pump or filter... definitely sounds like a fuel problem to me... It doesn't sound like a MAS problem... maybe throttle positioning sensor... I would check that first... I haven't had that happen but the same thing was happening to my brother's Bonneville and it turned out to be the throttle position sensor...

 

unplugging the Mass air sensor fixed the problem. its either the RRM piggyback or the sensor itself causing the problem. I'm gonna take the piggy off tonight

 

Not sure if this is of any help but I just had my car serviced first 1500klm and drove the car no problems then the car started running rough then the check engine light came on, checked all possible problems vaccuum hoses etc the Mitsi mechnics came out could not find the problem with there hand held diagnostic machine so I asked if they had knocked the hotwire sensorwe took out the panel filter looked inside the intake pipe and there wrapped around the hotwire was a moth!! what appears to of happened when checking the car over a moth was wedged inbetween the ripples on the filter and went un-noticed when they replaced the filter they reversed it so when driving the moth became dislodged and entered the intake pipe which was lucky that it got caught on hotwire - problem solved

see even new cars have bugs in them to be sorted out - check your intake pipe you never now what may of happened

 

That's pretty punny.

 

It was pretty funny.... that a single moth could cause such an effect

have retold this story on another forum and they are having a good laugh as well - which is fine with me I suppose that I am luckier than most as I have been thru just about every situation with cars as far as them having problems and just about know everytime what to look for and where to look for it - which means I don't panic or get too stressed about it

 

Side note - if the station was affected by the hurricane, the chance that there is water in the gas is really high. I'd say take a look at that route as well, and put some gas line dryer into the tank to see if it helps.

 

the gas was run out and new gas was put in yesterday. No difference.

Its the RRM Piggyback or the MAS

 

Ok, I checked it out yesterday. The RRM Piggyback caused all the problems. My MAS is fine. I unhooked the piggy and it ran perfectly with the MAS turned on. THE CEL light was on for about 100 miles, but its off now (probably after the ECU had to relearn). I checked all my wiring and it was fine. I reset the ECU memory a few times with no sucess. Once I unhooked the piggyback, the car idled fine and drove fine. Infact, it feels like I GAINED torque! I guess I'll have to give RRM a call, as I am pretty disappointed that my $400 investment in their product could have caused some serious damage.

 

At least you were able to find and fix the problem, there could of been a problem there from time of manufacturing it... but I will still be fitting the GReddy E Manage due to it being a one time price and my car will be tuned to within the parameters of what the mods can do for the car - in other words it will have the best tune giving the best performance

 

The samething happened to me today... only i dont even have any mods, and havent filled up with gas lately.

 

Keep us updated, lots of us have the piggyback as well, if it caused a problem would be nice to hear about it beforehand.