Postby linker » June 7th, 2009, 2:42 pm
Driving early this morning the car shifted into OverDrive 10Km/h later than usual (OD usually at 130KM/h but this time it changed to 4th gear at 140Km/h). I shrugged this off and wanted to see if it would occur again. So at the next traffic light, when it was safe to proceed (green light and no vehicles were crossing) i floored the accelerator. 2nd gear fine, 3rd gear fine, 4th gear ... WTF???? From 3rd gear to OverDrive the throttle seemed to have become stuck!!!! The RPM remained at ~3000 RPM even though my foot was off the pedal, did not feel like the accelerator had any play so i concluded that the throttle was stuck. Now i needed to slow this car down to a stop!!! Decided to engage the brakes (since it has been proven that you can slow down the car if not stop it by engaging the brakes even if the throttle is engaged) but the brake felt stiff and did not seem to be slowing the car. RPMs still at about 3000...Next I decided to downshift to see whether i can slow the car, so i disengaged the overdrive, no response from the engine... still at 3k rpms...shifted to second gear.... still at 3k rpms... all the while i am still playing with the throttle to see if i can get it to loosen up..pedal remained depressed (i think) even with my foot off.... placed the car back into 3rd gear... then neutral to check at which point the throttle was stuck... RPMs went up to redline so i shifted back to 3rd...brakes still do not seem to be able to be depressed... all the while i am playing with the throttle pedal... then suddenly i got movement again on the pedal...brakes started responding..i safely brought the car to a halt on the shoulder and inspected the throttle cable... i could not see any evidence that the cable has a loose strand..The rest of the drive home, everything worked like normal, of course, i kept it at 60kmph
To summarise:
Throttle seemed to get stuck at 3K rpms after OverDrive
Downshifting did not have any effect (i.e. overdrive off, 2nd gear)
Brakes felt stiff and did not seem to be holding
Idle speed is normal
Questions:
1. Why did the brakes feel like they were not working?
2. Could this be a transmission issue? The shifting did not affect the RPMs or the speed of the car. recently i have been driving with the Overdrive off while accelerating in order to keep the engine at higher rpms then manually engaging the Overdrive at about 120-130KM/h. could this contribute?
3. Is it the throttle cable?
4. Could it be the butterfly? i ruled this out as it worked fine after i stopped.
Any suggestions/advise will be greatly appreciated. I will be taking the car to my mechanic's to have checked out.. just wanted to let the rest of the tuners know of my experience...
