Help! Serious problem with dropping to idle instead of accelerating!

[jefferios]

I have never heard of this before on SCOA. Hopefully jw, or another member can find something in the search. I'll keep my eyes on this topic to see how it pans out. Best of luck!

[smartHHO]

Originally Posted by jefferios

I have never heard of this before on SCOA. Hopefully jw, or another member can find something in the search. I'll keep my eyes on this topic to see how it pans out. Best of luck!

Ok, if you read about Little Red, which is less then two weeks old, I had a similar issue. What it ended up being is the electronic unit on the site of the throttle body most likely had a cold soldier joint on it and broke loose thus not letting me get any acceleration out of it. So, after Round Rock Mechanics talked with France's tech support, they tested the harness, and if it was not that, it was definitely the Throttle Body. They replaced the Throttle Body and all is well. I think that maybe yours has took a dump. The ppl at your dealership probably have no clue about the car's physical workings or the electrical workins. You push your pedal, which being electrical sends a message to the throttle body eventually which dumps the gas. All is electrically controlled. If the signal does not get there, then you get no movement. That is my best guess at what your problem is and if it is under warranty, tell them to start checking in that area. If they don't call smart USA and start your complaints. It will get fixed.

[jwight]

There's a link to smartHHO's thread on page 1; calling smart USA won't help as the OP is in Canada - but same idea.

[SuperGeek]

Loose connection, bad ECU, could be a lot of things... if one dealer can't reproduce it, maybe try another dealer, giving them the full history. Don't make them think you're trying to pull a fast one, but explain that you want a second opinion, maybe their techs will have experience with a similar problem.

Smart corporate might need to get involved if they do that sort of thing in Canadialand. Here we get more attention because we're a brand new market. You have a safety issue. An ESC shutdown will have sensible loss of traction and a flashing yellow triangle, which you would have mentioned. A bumped key would shut off the engine totally.

A loose ground or bad ECU could manifest differently... try driving at night over bumpy conditions to see if that alone triggers the shutdown. Big bumps for mine cause ABS clicking and the power-down but the car makes it clear that it happened for a reason.

[jonnysan]

Originally Posted by jetfuel

... man...you have good memory...doing a search...for whatever is worth..

jetfuel

I'm on here 3 times a day doing more reading than writing most of the time and I can honestly say that I have not seen any such thing on here yet about this topic either.....

The search feature is not the be all to the end all...that's for sure.

[jonnysan]

Originally Posted by smartHHO

Ok, if you read about Little Red, which is less then two weeks old, I had a similar issue. What it ended up being is the electronic unit on the site of the throttle body most likely had a cold soldier joint on it and broke loose thus not letting me get any acceleration out of it. So, after Round Rock Mechanics talked with France's tech support, they tested the harness, and if it was not that, it was definitely the Throttle Body. They replaced the Throttle Body and all is well. I think that maybe yours has took a dump. The ppl at your dealership probably have no clue about the car's physical workings or the electrical workins. You push your pedal, which being electrical sends a message to the throttle body eventually which dumps the gas. All is electrically controlled. If the signal does not get there, then you get no movement. That is my best guess at what your problem is and if it is under warranty, tell them to start checking in that area. If they don't call smart USA and start your complaints. It will get fixed.

The accelerator is the slave and the throttle body is the master. If the slave doesn't signal the master OR the master doesn't get the signal for some reason, the throttle will not respond and that fits the malfunction description just right.....

[jimvw57]

I would be escallating this problem directly with the higher ups at Smart. Sounds like the car is not dependable enough to be on the road until it is fixed. The dealer shrugging their sholders is not an adequate response.

THe suggestions so far all sound like reasonable things that they should be checking out. It would be helpful to know what they have tried.

[MrJack]

Dropping to idle unexpectedly has happened to me three or four times, always in automatic mode. It cannot be replicated by my service center.

The circumstances have always been the same for me. I will be driving between 55 and 65 going up an incline steep enough to require gradually more accelerator pressure to maintain speed. Suddenly the engine drops to idle as if a downshift is about to happen. But no matter how hard I press the pedal, there is no downshift, just deceleration.

After the second time this happened to me, I quickly shifted to manual mode and downshifted. This restored the accelerator to normal operation.

I drove my car manually for several weeks with no problems. Then I tried automatic mode again. One day, while increasing accelerator pressure to maintain speed up a hill, the car dropped to idle as before. I immediately switched from automatic to manual mode, downshifted, and all was well.

Now I drive in manual mode all the time. This is no trouble for me because I prefer manual over automatic anyway.

My car is a 2008 Passion Coupe that has been driven 11,000 miles. The dropping-to-idle problems happened between 4K and 8K miles.

Like I say, my service center can find nothing wrong and cannot replicate the problem. They've never heard of anyone having this difficulty before.

MrJack

[smartHHO]

Originally Posted by jwight

There's a link to smartHHO's thread on page 1; calling smart USA won't help as the OP is in Canada - but same idea.

Ya, I remembered that when I had posted and was like oh well, the idea should stick. hehe.

[smartHHO]

Originally Posted by MrJack

Dropping to idle unexpectedly has happened to me three or four times, always in automatic mode. It cannot be replicated by my service center.

The circumstances have always been the same for me. I will be driving between 55 and 65 going up an incline steep enough to require gradually more accelerator pressure to maintain speed. Suddenly the engine drops to idle as if a downshift is about to happen. But no matter how hard I press the pedal, there is no downshift, just deceleration.

After the second time this happened to me, I quickly shifted to manual mode and downshifted. This restored the accelerator to normal operation.

I drove my car manually for several weeks with no problems. Then I tried automatic mode again. One day, while increasing accelerator pressure to maintain speed up a hill, the car dropped to idle as before. I immediately switched from automatic to manual mode, downshifted, and all was well.

Now I drive in manual mode all the time. This is no trouble for me because I prefer manual over automatic anyway.

My car is a 2008 Passion Coupe that has been driven 11,000 miles. The dropping-to-idle problems happened between 4K and 8K miles.

Like I say, my service center can find nothing wrong and cannot replicate the problem. They've never heard of anyone having this difficulty before.

MrJack

Mine was in auto mode too, but swapping quickly over to manual did nothing for me. So, I am guessing different senerio, and maybe different part or even just programming? Anything is possible on these cars with so much electronic control.