Hi all

This is my first post on the forum, I live in England and have a '91 RS V6.
I have a question about a problem I had the other night.

First of all the car has been well cared for (regular services) but smells a little rich to me. I was driving on the motorway (highway?) for about an hour when suddenly the engine started to misfire badly. The 'Service Engine Soon' light came on too.

I pulled over and restarted the engine and it wouldn't even idle without throttle input. So I waited ten minutes and tried again... and everything was fine!

Being an hour from home and on a busy road with no hard shoulder I opted to get a tow home, but I'm a little baffled. Does anyone know what might be going on here?

Thanks, Matthew

(edit: just noticed the glaring error I made with my login name too!)

 

The first thing you need to do is find out what that SES light came on for. As long as you didn't unhook the battery the trouble code will still be in computer. There is an article on how to do this in the tech. article section. All you need is a paper clip. Find out which code it is and will be able to give you much better help.
Good luck
Alex

 

Just an update...

The car has been at the garage for a week as I've been on a training course with work, they have rung and said they found a split vac line and this has cured the problem. So I will be getting the car back on Friday... but I will still give the computer a scan just in case,

Thanks

Matthew

 

Nice. Glad it was a simple fix.

 

Just a quick update... so I took the Camaro on exactly the same journey as last time yesterday. Strangely enough exactly the same fault occurred at exactly the same place! (Pretty weird huh?)

So I rang my buddy who mentioned something about mobile telephone masts/signals interfering with the ECM. Thought it was maybe a long shot but I knocked my phone off and made the rest of the journey there and back no problems! :S:S:S

 

hmm, never heard of anything like that, plausible tho. if it really is that then you can wrap the ecm in some sort of signal blocking material.

 

Yeah pretty weird, found this web page: http://www.emcuk.co.uk/awareness/Pag...Automotive.htm

Just a little snippet:

"Modern engine management systems, ABS, airbags and many other systems on a modern motor car depend upon the correct operation of electronics, and of the software that runs on the electronics.
Unfortunately, all electronics (and software, because it employs electronics) can be made to malfunction by electromagnetic interference (EMI), and the motor car’s electromagnetic environment (both internal to the car and the outside ambient) can be very arduous.
It isn’t hard to see how the use of a hand-held cellphone in a car (which is a commonplace activity despite being specifically prohibited by most car owner manuals) or a vehicle mobile transmitter installation that has not been done correctly or has suffered damage or corrosion, could expose certain vehicle electronic sub-assemblies to RF fields at frequencies and/or levels to which they were never tested."