I was driving home last night in 3rd gear accelerating and all of a sudden the car lost all power, and the rpms just dropped all the way to 0 when the motor shut off. I still had electricity of course, but no power from the motor.

Once I had stopped on the side of the road i tried to start and it ran for about 2-3 seconds around 500-1500 rpm bouncing around then died again. I tried restarting it just a couple more times and no luck, at that point it didn't really want to run at all - even for a few short seconds. I had the car flat-bedded to the dealership today, but service is closed... They'll have to look at it Monday.

The car does have a BMC air filter, k24s, and tuning. Thats about it. A month ago my mechanic warned me that those air filters are known to kill MAF sensors... so i'm wondering if that finally happened to me?

It was completely sudden, the engine's power was out light a light-bulb. Which is why it leads me to think its electrical - i.e. the MAF sensor blew out. BTW, no CEL has come on; though I guess it's cause it won't run long enough now to throw a code?

Have any of you guys eperienced this? Have any ideas? thanks!

 

You did have gas in your tank, right? I dont think dead MAFs would cause a complete shutoff.. could they?

 

Damn. Well the orange gas light IS on... but it said i still had like 10 mi till empty... I hope to god those things can be wrong - I was boosting the hell out of it all the way home

Is it possible that it could be wrong on its calculation and I just ran all the gas out of it? Again the gas light WAS on when this all happened... it had been on for a little while, i was gonna get gas in the morning since it was telling me i still had a little more range to go haha

 

Yeah, unfortunately, I wouldn't trust any car's sensor once it displays a range as low as 10 miles. I say get a can of gas and get your car back from the dealer

 

YES that will do it-- the gas part

hint:

 

Haha,
Great... Very true. I know it wasn't smart to be hauling *** in it with the orange light on, but I figured with a range of 10 miles, give or take, i was safe... Being that i have turbo/fueling upgrades i'm going to assume it doesn't take into account the added need for even more fuel by my system and is thus off on its estimates.

I feel like a dumbass now. I need to somehow get inside the service dept. tomorrow, throw away the note i left on the service writer's desk (who was not there today - whole dept. was closed), get my 2nd key back, put gas in the car, and drive home - pretend nothing ever happend.

If I have to go in Monday morning and embarrassingly explain why i've come to get my car, even though I wrote a long note about how I broke it... that'll suck haha. Somehow i must get inside that dealership and destroy all evidence!!!

Ockham's razor is a *****

 

I remember a time 2 years ago, driving to the gas station with "56 miles to empty" showing, and running out of gas 1/2 mile from the station. I stopped trusting those gas readouts.
(This was in a BMW but the idea is the same.)

 

Man I sure hope you ran out of gas, it's lame but cheap. Good luck LOL

 

Well if you didn't run out of gas...it is the fuel pump or a ruptured fuel line inside the tank.

 

i have a green porsche it never runs outa gas !!!! i never trust my milage read out think it computes your current speed vs rpms to come up with a good guess

 

Sorry to hear of your misfortune, and I hope it really was just a lack of gas issue. This thread is handy since I've been relying a bit on my range computer to help me know when to get gas. The lowest I've let it go is about 20 miles, but I haven't had the car very long and definitely need to know not to rely on it much, particularly since I'm planning on a road trip soon.

Is there any consensus when the gauge (not the range indicator) is to be particularly trusted to tell us that we're really close to empty? What I mean is, once the orange warning light comes on the gauge itself, how far do we typically have to go until empty, assuming non boosted highway driving? If I recall correctly, my range was still over 80 miles to go when the warning light came on.

 

I recently ran mine down until it changed to "---" and was fine. I think mods will change the prediction. Mine is stock for now...

 

The miles left to empty estimate is based on the fuel consumption averaged over the last few minutes and the estimate of the fuel left in the tank. Even then, you have to get some experience with your car and what the estimate really means for your car.

In my car, if I am doing highway driving, the light comes on when about 3 gallons remains in the tank and the gauge estimate 65 miles. On the track, the gauge goes down to "---" because sloshing of fuel in the tank messes up the estimate of the fuel remaining, and I get about 6 or 7 mpg on track. I can tell I am really low on track when I get a fuel pick up problem coming out of a hard turn. Symptoms are a lot like the ones you described in your car.

Hope it is something as simple as this.

Jon

 

According to the documentation....when you get the "----" display, that means you have less than 9 miles to go before you run out. That's cutting it a bit close...and If you were boosting with the organge warning light on, plus you inferred you have an aftermarket fuel regulator on there???....you just probably messed up the computer's ability to accurately gauge the remaining miles.....I'd bet you just ran out of gas. You like to live on the edge?? When I get the light, I switch to the "miles remaining" feature and back off on the pedal...you can actually watch the miles remaining increase, and usually get to a station before it gets down to 10. Never had a problem....although last week, I did let it go a little further...and ended up putting in 16 gallons....I must've been on fumes.

 

Let's clarify something....the 996TT fuel tank has a hump in it. The fuel level sensor is in the upper part of the tank. The estimate of fuel level is entirely an estimate based on current MPG and where the fuel was at the last time the sensor read the fuel level. There is very little probability one could predict the amount of fuel left to <10 with this system.