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Wow! I am overwhelmed! Thank you so much, all of you, for your concern and replies.
I have some sort of good news to report. I went in to see the dealership right after my original post. This time, I was able to actually speak with the mechanic...previously always the service manager.
My interaction with the mechanic was much more satisfying. He was able to hear my situation, and related to me that he had not gotten the whole story initially, so he was very happy to have been able to speak with me to learn all of the information I could give to him. With that, he was able to start figuring out more of what he should be looking at. One of the things he did do was swap out my gas pedal for one from his "guinea pig" car (since he knew that it was a working one). He figured this might be one of the possiblities. I drove it around the city for a bit before heading home, hoping for the problem to happen with him nearby. It did not recur. I headed home....it happened twice....sigh.
On the upside, the service manager did assure me that if it happened and we required it, we could arrange a rental and he would cover the cost.
With all of the suggestions you folks have been forwarding, I can now go back to this mechanic with the results, and see if that can steer him in the right direction. Thank you!
I have also finally been contacted by Smart Canada customer service, who have opened a file and initiated communication with France and Germany to get the issue resolved.
In reply to some of the posters, switching to manual mode did not resolve the issue. Also, it wasn't a case where it stalled, so leaning into the key wasn't the source of the problem either, but thanks for reminding us to check these things.
I will be calling the mechanic tomorrow to give him the new information you folks have been providing, and will post back once I have some more feedback.
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
dropping to idle??? for me, i would step on the accelerator and the car would not respond. i would see the tach go past 4000rmp and close to 5000rpm. i would then ease up and let the engine drop to 2000 or so and reapply the gas. and the next gear would finally take in.
this is in auto mode.
By "dropping to idle" I mean that the RPM's drop to 900 no matter how hard I press the accelerator. It is the same thing that happens during normal automatic shifting -- only mine does not automatically shift.
For me, when I say dropping to idle, I mean as though you were sitting in park with the car running...no accerlation, or movement...if you were in park and revving the engine, that would be the equivalent. So, I went from driving along, and then, pressed the gas - nothing but the sound of the engine running...and a big chevy symbol rapidly approaching in my rearview!
Oh, and they are going to replace the throttle body this week and try that! My thanks again to all posters!
dzieman - If you hear the sound of the engine revving in response to the gas pedal and it's not stuck hard down around 900rpm then it's quite probably a transmission-only issue. I think most of us here have been assuming the only thing you hear is the engine pittering along at its low, idle speed unresponsive to the gas pedal.
My apologies, I did not mean to say that it was "revving" when it occured, I meant to say "running". It just goes to idle. I will re-read my posts more carefully in the future...my bad!
im having a similar problem my smart will idle when i go from drive to reverse and vise versa.....What i did was turn the car off then back on and it was fine......i called the dealer and they said it might be the clutch.....so im taking it in tommarrow.....lets hope thats it....ill let ya know if it does.
Wow, I'm glad I am reading this thread. Twice this week I have been driving and my car just quit. In both cases I was going quite slow, once just starting up from a complete stop. I just assumend that I had somehow hit the key and turned the car off, I do have a large wad of keys all on one keychain...mostly so I can find them in my purse...anyway, I will have to pay more attention if this happens in the future.
At the very least if this were to happen to me at high speed as has been reported here I at least have an idea what to do. On the other hand, if it is just me and the keys, I know what to do about that too.
Today
Linear Mode
