I was accelerating hard and I think my belt slipped on my 19% pulley and the car hit limp mode. I pulled over turned off the engine and looked to see it the belt was still on. It was. I started the car and it ran fine. I cycled through 5 more starts and the light went off and I went for a 100 mi drive in the mountains. ( "I also like to live dangerously" - Austin Powers).

I'll take the car to R Speed next week to check the belts. If this continues I may go to 17% or back to 15%. I wonder what would happen to my UNichip tune?

 

My MINIs virtually unmodded, but I was wondering.....what happens when the car hits limp mode. I have this mental image of a MINI chugging and wheezing slowly down the side of the road, but that can't be accurate........or is it?? How driveable is it really?

 

Have you tried Viagra?

 

Last winter,like not this one ,but the one before,I was motoring in a heavy snow storm.I made it to my driveway,after 50 miles in 6-8 inches of snow.I stopped at the end of my driveway to have a look to see if I could get in.No problem,get back in the car,no throttle responce.turn the car off and on 3-5 times,seems ready to go,plow through the snow around the block,park,goes like snot the next morning.At my next dealer visit I ask for a code check,seems the intake was plugged.Snow

 

That would be the solution for 'limp hung mode' - completely different.

 

Bob, it most likely was not belt slip, as it would not cause an emergency limp-home mode. You shouldn't have cycled the ignition, because now we can never know what the CEL was for.

 

Were you per chance going uphill and at high revs? If so, this has happened to me twice and I have read of it happening to many others. I think the correct code was "misfire in cylinder x"

 

Unichip is probably wat caused it.

Mine went into limp mode on the factory pulley running crap gas from
Shell (v-power). Unless I used Mobil the car was never 'safe.'

 

There are lots of threads about tune modification etc. The Unichip will be off for WOT, but it shouldn't be too bad, as there are tons of sensors on the car to let it know how much air is there. The fuel trims during part throttle should take care of the rest.

Nothing to do now except see if it happens again, and if it does, scan the code (and the freeze frame data as well). That's the only way you'll get any insight at all.

Kenchan: Be carefull assuming that the Unichip is at fault. There doesn't seem to be enough information to draw any conclusions. And with no fault codes to go on, we are only left to guess.


Matt

 

SpiderX, from what I’ve read your car has been prodded and probed a lot lately. The first thing to look for is a loose sensor connector. There is a cylindrical connector with ribs located near the driver’s side motor mount. Twist and pull to disconnect the two halves, look for moisture or dirt, clean and reconnect. If it pulls apart without twisting, then you’ve found the culprit. A faulty engine harness can also cause the mode to occur. Pull the intercooler and check for looseness at the injector connectors, also look for abraded wiring to the injectors (or a small burn hole). Take care when clamping the boots/bellows for the intercooler when reassembling; a loose fitting IC boot is a common cause of the fail-safe mode. I’ve had the loose connector as well as a shorted injector wire both cause the fail-safe mode. Of course, you could have just over revved, and that would be what to expect as a result.

 

I don't agree with this - there should still be a stored code, even if the SES light is off. The light is off because the condition that caused it is no longer present, but the ECU still logs the code until it is cleared with the scan tool.

My understanding of "limp-home" mode (when the EML light is lit) is that it is a fail-safe mode that the ECU will enter when there is something in the landscape of sensor data that doesn't make sense. It certainly is possible that if you were hitting it pretty hard you caused one of the sensors to go "out of bounds".

Check the code and let us know.

With my previous MCS (2002) I had several occasions to savor the fun associated with "limp-home" mode. It is most properly enjoyed when it kicks in at 60+ MPH in heavy traffic.

 

BigBrownDog-I think Matt means that there were no codes posted here so
can't assume what caused it.

Matt- I have my suspicions.

Off the car, no problem.
On the car, problem.

That was my issue. Got better gas, no problem either.
there's a lot of things that could trigger it, but that
Unichip seems to offer little to no retardation or much
margin for error correction.

 

I agree with your disagreement, lol. It doesn't make sense for the ECU to clear its' own codes, but that's what I've found happens in reality. Once you cycle the ignition 5 times and the light goes away, it clears out the code. If you hook up a scan-tool, it won't show a stored or pending code, unfortuantely. That said, if the CEL doesn't come back, it was just a random occurance and not a real problem.