Shant Fabricatorian
21st October 2004, 11:48 PM
Coming home today in driving rain on the freeway, the spluttering started (naturally, it was in a concrete canyon with no room to pull off), then a few seconds later, fortunately once out of the single-lane canyon, it coughed and died. Take it from me, getting across four lanes of uphill gradient freeway onto the left-most lane (no hard shoulder) with no power sounds a lot more fun than it actually is. Did I mention there was spray and speeding trucks just to make things interesting?
Got it across ok, but I didn't have a clue what to do. I was about 150m from the nearest exit, 150m past the nearest entrance, so no help telephones within sight, and of course, Murphy's Law, I'd forgotten my mobile at home in the rush. It must be the first time I've ever left home in the Beta without it...
But what do you do when the car is resolutely not going anywhere? You sit there. Luckily, after a couple of minutes I tried to restart, it fired (!?) and I got out of there quick smart.
Now, the hard part (well, perhaps not so much). Once I was off the freeway the car kept running, though there were a few severe hiccups on the way. The car was quite low on petrol - I'd been planning to fill up on the way home - and it briefly crossed my mind that maybe I'd run it too far, but I don't think so, because it still fired. The problem, as I discovered on a stretch of quiet road afterwards, was sustained full-throttle running, or close to 100% throttle in any case. Hence the problem on the freeway and hence the hiccuping when I tried to accelerate away.
I'm thinking it's one of two possibles. Possibility one, probably less likely, is that the low level of petrol in the tank meant that the pump drew some gunk at the bottom, clogging the carby. Though I did put in 5 litres or so and the car was pretty ok after that, only hiccuping once on the test run which could have been the final vestiges of some gunk. Possibility two is some problem with the float. There's been a suspicious pool of residue petrol forming on the inlet manifold lately so I'm suspecting it's the latter.
One final point to ponder though. Just before it started hiccuping for the first time, the oil temperature gauge was rather higher than I've come to expect. That was my first thought when it died on me, something to do with this mildly raised oil temp. It wasn't in the danger zone, to be sure, but noticeably higher all the same. Strange thing though was that water temp was perfectly normal and it hasn't hit above 15C in Sydney all day. But the problem didn't reappear for the rest of the drive, it ran at normal oil temp, and oil and coolant levels were all fine when I checked them now. Just one of those things, I suppose, but I don't like not knowing why.
Got it across ok, but I didn't have a clue what to do. I was about 150m from the nearest exit, 150m past the nearest entrance, so no help telephones within sight, and of course, Murphy's Law, I'd forgotten my mobile at home in the rush. It must be the first time I've ever left home in the Beta without it...
But what do you do when the car is resolutely not going anywhere? You sit there. Luckily, after a couple of minutes I tried to restart, it fired (!?) and I got out of there quick smart.
Now, the hard part (well, perhaps not so much). Once I was off the freeway the car kept running, though there were a few severe hiccups on the way. The car was quite low on petrol - I'd been planning to fill up on the way home - and it briefly crossed my mind that maybe I'd run it too far, but I don't think so, because it still fired. The problem, as I discovered on a stretch of quiet road afterwards, was sustained full-throttle running, or close to 100% throttle in any case. Hence the problem on the freeway and hence the hiccuping when I tried to accelerate away.
I'm thinking it's one of two possibles. Possibility one, probably less likely, is that the low level of petrol in the tank meant that the pump drew some gunk at the bottom, clogging the carby. Though I did put in 5 litres or so and the car was pretty ok after that, only hiccuping once on the test run which could have been the final vestiges of some gunk. Possibility two is some problem with the float. There's been a suspicious pool of residue petrol forming on the inlet manifold lately so I'm suspecting it's the latter.
One final point to ponder though. Just before it started hiccuping for the first time, the oil temperature gauge was rather higher than I've come to expect. That was my first thought when it died on me, something to do with this mildly raised oil temp. It wasn't in the danger zone, to be sure, but noticeably higher all the same. Strange thing though was that water temp was perfectly normal and it hasn't hit above 15C in Sydney all day. But the problem didn't reappear for the rest of the drive, it ran at normal oil temp, and oil and coolant levels were all fine when I checked them now. Just one of those things, I suppose, but I don't like not knowing why.