Automatic Stalled

[Kryten]

Hello again, my 2004 2.0 litre automatic T-spirit stalled this morning when attempting to accelerate from stationary to turn into main road, just completely died, quite scary as narrowly avoided accident, can anyone shed some light on this, many thanks.

[Flackadder]

Absolutely no expert here, but as the weather is getting colder engine takes longer to warm up. May need a service or something. As it has only happened once, I would let it go. You may have just accelerated at point where choke was coming off or something and a million to one chance things went wrong.

[Thermal]

I would let it go...

Sorry, but that's the wrong approach.

This (completely dying off...) should not occur, in particular not with an automatic.

As the cause is unknown, it may well happen again and next time you may not be so lucky and get run over by a truck! :(

I would have this checked... ASAP.

[Kryten]

I would let it go...

Sorry, but that's the wrong approach.

This (completely dying off...) should not occur, in particular not with an automatic.

As the cause is unknown, it may well happen again and next time you may not be so lucky and get run over by a truck! :(

I would have this checked... ASAP.

Thank you for the response it is appreciated, I have only had the car about 6 weeks from an independent garage and was told/assumed it had been serviced.

FLACKADDER: the engine was at more or less normal temp. I had driven the car for about 8 miles then it was parked for about 15 min. max. before starting it up again and the problem occurred about 30 seconds later!

I note that there have been other owners on here who have had this problem and also many who seem to think that an idle speed of about 400 to 500 is rather low when in "drive", does the ECU need updating or resetting maybe?

The car despite its age has only done approx. 37,000.

[Phoenix999]

This sort of problem could and did occur in years gone by with carburetor cars, it used to happen to me rarely when I had an old V6 Ford. In those days it could happen due to various conditions such as temperature and with the choke just coming off which caused a slight imbalance of fuel and air.

I have to say that stalling with an auto should not really happen with modern ECU controlled and fuel injection driven cars.

If this was to happen to me I would certainly get it checked out if only for peace of mind when considering the safety factor.

Please keep us updated as to your progress. Good luck

[Flackadder]

Yep! Should not happen.....thats true. I am sure there is a reason. On the other hand, and I am just as bad, expect that I have and automatic...what could go wrong!! Engine stopped. There are many reasons this could have happened. I would be causious of it happening again....it may never.

[Kryten]

Yep! Should not happen.....thats true. I am sure there is a reason. On the other hand, and I am just as bad, expect that I have and automatic...what could go wrong!! Engine stopped. There are many reasons this could have happened. I would be causious of it happening again....it may never.

Thank you for your replys and yes I will keep you updated as to any future developments or actions to remedy the fault.

[Thermal]

One of the nice things of an ECU is, that it records a history of unusual things that have happened in the form of diagnostic codes.

For some situations, a snapshot of all the engine's status is dumped into a "frozen screen" for offline analyses.

Possibly, that happened during your recent scary event.

For many abnormal events the "Check Engine" light would come on, but in this case the ECU may have thought that this was obvious and continued to collect the data for the frozen screen.

I recommend going to a Toyota garage and have it hooked up to their Tester.

This may be a serious fault, since a complete blackout is so... unusual in modern cars.

[Kryten]

One of the nice things of an ECU is, that it records a history of unusual things that have happened in the form of diagnostic codes.

For some situations, a snapshot of all the engine's status is dumped into a "frozen screen" for offline analyses.

Possibly, that happened during your recent scary event.

For many abnormal events the "Check Engine" light would come on, but in this case the ECU may have thought that this was obvious and continued to collect the data for the frozen screen.

I recommend going to a Toyota garage and have it hooked up to their Tester.

This may be a serious fault, since a complete blackout is so... unusual in modern cars.

Thank you, I think under the circumstances I will contact my local Toyota dealership, explain what happened and see what they recommend, no doubt they will ask me to bring the car in so they can hook it up and read the codes from the ECU, I will let you know the outcome in due course.

[Kryten]

One of the nice things of an ECU is, that it records a history of unusual things that have happened in the form of diagnostic codes.

For some situations, a snapshot of all the engine's status is dumped into a "frozen screen" for offline analyses.

Possibly, that happened during your recent scary event.

For many abnormal events the "Check Engine" light would come on, but in this case the ECU may have thought that this was obvious and continued to collect the data for the frozen screen.

I recommend going to a Toyota garage and have it hooked up to their Tester.

This may be a serious fault, since a complete blackout is so... unusual in modern cars.

Thank you, I think under the circumstances I will contact my local Toyota dealership, explain what happened and see what they recommend, no doubt they will ask me to bring the car in so they can hook it up and read the codes from the ECU, I will let you know the outcome in due course.

Okay, update as promised.

Had my local garage take a look at the car today, (independent, not Toyota) no codes from the ECU, which is a good thing - nothing major.

They said the "butterfly" which I think is the same thing as the "throttle body" was very dirty/black, so they cleaned it all out.

Now, I've only driven the car about 12 miles since, but it seems much, much better (not just psychologically because it has been in a garage), but because now, when the car is stationary in "drive", the rev. counter is at 600-700 rpm, whereas before it was around the 400-500 which did feel a bit low to me, so maybe the butterfly was a bit sticky.

This would certainly tie in with some other posts which I have read on here, basically saying the same thing with regards to the throttle body.

So the upshot is, if you are experiencing similar symptoms, then have your garage clean up the throttle body, I'm not guaranteeing that it will cure your problem, but it is certainly worth a try, thanks to all those who replied to my original post.

[Flackadder]

Thanks for the update. The 400 - 500rpm is quite low. I would say mine always shows 700 when warmed up.