Gibbo_UK

Hi there

Yesterday I fitted some Steeda Charge Motion Delete Plates. Installation was done as per instructions and great care was taken. Upon connecting everything back up and re-connecting the battery I connected my Xcal2 and re-flashed my car with a tune from Doug for the Charge Motion Delete Plates. I started the car up and left it to idle for 10 minutes or so and then took it out for a short drive and all was fine.

This morning I drove to work and gave the car some hard driving like I normally would and again all was fine and I could feel a little more power in the upper RPM band.

However when I was driving home this evening about 15 minutes into my journey during acceleration from approx 2000RPM in 3rd gear upto approx 4000RPM the engine just cut out as if it had stalled, I lost everything including power steering and the in-car dash was displaying Fail-Safe mode! Thank god it was a quiet road and I was doing only approx 50mph!!!

Eventually I roled to a stop and at this time was getting really worried, thinking its either gotta be the new modification or something with the new tune. I attempted to restart my car and all it did was turn the engine/starter motor over but it refused to fire up. I tried this a couple of times and no luck. Now I was getting really worried fearing the worse that maybe something was really wrong with my engine.

So I gave it 2 minutes and tried to start again and even though the car took a little longer to start it fired up and ran fine, no strange noises or smoke from the exhaust. So I proceeded to carry on with my journey home but did not accelerate hard and kept the revs below 3000rpm. Once I got home I reved it a few times upto 5000rpm and it seems to be running fine.

As you can imagine I want to know why my car has done this and am really worried it might do it again.

1. So has anybody experience Fail Safe mode before, is that what normally happens?
2. Why has it happened to my car?
3. Would any damage have been caused?
4. What should I do next, remember I am in the UK so have nobody to ask for help.
5. Will the car still be running in some kind of fail-safe mode still even though it says nothing on the dash?

I am gonna email Doug and give him a call as he will hopefully be able to help.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and please do help and/or post your experiences please if you have had the same happen or know others who have had problems.

P.S. The only thing during fitting the Steeda Motion Plates I did not know what to do whether or not to connect the actuator motor back up. So I left it connected, right thing to do?

Galaxie

Were there any trouble codes recorded?

Gibbo_UK

Hi m8

I connected my Xcal2 and told it to read DTC's but it is not finding any......

I have called Doug (Bamachips) and he thinks its the race tune been a bit too aggressive on the throttle settings. He has adviced me to flash to the performance tune and see if that cures it. If so he will do me another race tune.

Just hoping it don't happen again........

KrisHorton

The only time I ever experienced a random Failsafe Mode was when my tuner had input the wrong rear end gear ratio into my tune. Every time I hit 60mph it would go into failsafe, but never kill my motor, just 4 cylinders (limp home mode.) It never threw any codes, it just went into Failsafe. I just had to pull over, cycle the key, and it'd be okay. Occasionally I'd have to turn of the check engine light with my tuner, but that was really it. I took it back, he noticed he input 3.73's instead of stock and he fixed it and no problems since!

Kris

TerpGT17

I had failsafe mode a few times...it was related to a bad throttle position sensor. My car would idle wildly and the engine would surge as it could not tell how much throttle was being fed in. I got it replaced at Ford and the car works fine now. I'd watch out for codes P2106 and/or P2135 if it keeps happening, there's a TSB for them related to the throttle position sensor

Gibbo_UK

The car idles perfectly and the throttle seems to operate perfectly.

Flash to the performance tune last night as Doug suggested, gave it a little run all seemed fine. Approx 30 minutes into my drive to work this morning the same happened again but only under partial gentle acceleration in 2nd gear. Car just cut out and went into fail-safe mode, so I rolled to a stop, waited a minute and started the car back up. When I got to work I turned the engine off, connected up my Xcal2 and told it to read DTC's and still it found nothing. Am I doing the right thing to check error codes? Surely there must be an error code generated when the car does this but it does not seem to be doing one?

I have checked all connections and everything is fine and I've tried disconnecting the Motor actuator as some people said they never bothered re-connecting it and still no difference.

I have emailed SCT for a canned tune to see if that makes any difference but at the moment am at a loss and worried. Has anybody ever had issues like this after fitting Steeda Motion plates before?

Thanks

Andy

05YellowGT

I live near Steeda and got one of the first set of plates they installed , in fact they did dyno pulls on my car to determine the gains. It took a long time for them to get the tune correct to where the computer wouldn't go into fail-safe mode with the plates. They were using the SCT at the time and didn't offer the Predator then. Later when they started offering the Predator , I got one. However , it was a canned tune from Diablo and not one that Steeda had worked on like the SCT. It too would cause the fail-safe mode , and since I also live near Diablo they used my car to work out the tune for the plates. In either case , it took a lot of work on the dyno with a car that had the plates to get a good tune ...

Hatchman

Sounds like something is wrong with the plates.

Gibbo_UK

Hi there

Can't see how something could be wrong with the plates as they looked fine on visual inspection.

They are on the correct way round I believe as the Plates had LH and RH printed on them which matched up with the LH and RH sides on the intake manifold.

TerpGT17

I'd still keep an eye out for those codes, my engine wouldn't throw codes every time it went into failsafe, but the way in which your engine is suddenly shutting off is pretty much what I experienced(in addition to my erratic idle). You're doing the right thing checking for codes afterwards, keep doing it, you should see some soon if this keeps happening.