B
badnf0
Guest
Hi everyone, I need a little help diagnosing a problem with my folk's 1997 Disco with the 4 (3.9) L gasoline V8. I have not been able to replicate this problem thus far, but my Mom and Dad have reported that the car has almost completely lost power while driving (Dad said he was going under 30 mph, Mom said she was at highway ~65 mph speeds.) They say that flooring the throttle does not elicit an engine response and that the car will at most get up to about 10 mph allowing them to limp home. Their description is that it seems like "the accelerator pedal isn't connected to the engine." My dad said that when this happened he put the car in park and tried pulling on the throttle in the engine bay which caused the engine to shake quite a bit. It appears that turning off the car and letting it sit for a bit corrects the problem and every time I have driven it it runs like new. In both cases the car was only a few miles from home. No lights were illuminated on the dash and the speedo was working. Several things prevent me from quickly identifying the culprit: the engine has never stalled, it just loses power; the power loss does not cycle on and off, once the engine has lost power it appears to be non-functional until the car is rested; this has only happened 3 times in a year of very light use, every time I drive the car runs fine; the speedo still works.
My differential is looking like this:
VSS - Maybe, but the power is not cutting in and out repeatedly, it just disappears and doesn't come back until the car is turned off and left for a while; the speedo still works.
Throttle Position Sensor - Maybe again, no CEL light and don't know how to test this...
Fuel filter - After the first incident I changed this since it was due anyway
Fuel pump - Maybe again, not sure how to test this short of swapping in a new one; for this to be pump related the pump would have to be working in a limited capacity instead of completely broken...
MAF - Maybe again, but I don't know if a MAF would have these symptoms; no CEL
Is there anything here I might have missed? I am hoping I can replicate the problem this week but if I can't we only have my parent's description to work from. Any ideas on what it could be or what I should test and how it should be tested would be greatly appreciated!
-Omar
My differential is looking like this:
VSS - Maybe, but the power is not cutting in and out repeatedly, it just disappears and doesn't come back until the car is turned off and left for a while; the speedo still works.
Throttle Position Sensor - Maybe again, no CEL light and don't know how to test this...
Fuel filter - After the first incident I changed this since it was due anyway
Fuel pump - Maybe again, not sure how to test this short of swapping in a new one; for this to be pump related the pump would have to be working in a limited capacity instead of completely broken...
MAF - Maybe again, but I don't know if a MAF would have these symptoms; no CEL
Is there anything here I might have missed? I am hoping I can replicate the problem this week but if I can't we only have my parent's description to work from. Any ideas on what it could be or what I should test and how it should be tested would be greatly appreciated!
-Omar
