Toyota accelerator recall

The US reportage seems to point fairly clearly at non-OEM floormats jamming the pedal, and driver error. Could be survived by turning the engine off or shifting to neutral (rev limiter will usually protect modern engine, but if it blows up then what the hell... ) or even just braking hard.

There's a long history of these panics in the USA - started with Audi back in the 90's, when a fake 'unintended acceleration' problem was hyped by the media

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Same rumour has since been directed at many foreign car makes, Honda, Lexus, BMW etc. Seems quite possible that it's a combination of poor driver control and targeted dissing of imports.

Reply to
Steve Walker
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Surely most modern engines have electronic management systems which would cut in to control over-revving?

Reply to
Steve Walker

I think you'll find a rev limiter is built into the ECU of anything with electronic injection. Which is almost all cars after cats were introduced ca. 1993.

The diesels-burning-their-own oil thing is different - turning them off, and killing the fuel, doesn't help; neither does the ECU killing the fuel when it hits the rev limit. That's not what's burning.

My Toyota - far older than the recall - has on the key:

Insert. Turn 1 click: Lock off. Next click: Accessories on (radio etc) Next click: Ignition on. Last click: Start.

One click back from run kills the spark and the fuel injectors but does nothing else.

Andy

Reply to
Andy Champ

Which is how many cars these days?

Reply to
Clive George

I've owned around 15 cars dating from 1950, mostly British. I'm not aware if any of them had a rev limiter - the older ones certainly didn't. Without a rev limiter the engine will scream up to maximum revs, and pistons and con rods will start coming outside the engine in a few seconds.

I have heard of a case where a lady lifted the bonnet of her Jaguar while the engine was running, and the bonnet catch caught hold of the accelerator mechanism and the engine over revved and blew up.

In another case someone was using cruise control in his Jaguar and moved into neutral, and the engine over-revved and wrecked itself. So Jaguar altered the design to turn cruise control off in that case. Yes I realise these happened a long time ago but there are still plenty of old cars on the road out here in the colonies!

Reply to
Matty F

I remember that in the early days of steering locks there were a number of accidents, so manufacters were *required* to change the locks so the steering wouldn't lock until the key was removed. In any case when the accelerator is stuck while you are on the motorway doing 100 miles an hour, you don't need to turn the wheel much.

Reply to
Matty F

Have you ever witnessed this phenomenon? (Hint: the correct answer is, "No, I haven't.")

Reply to
Mr Fuxit

Obviously you have never had a car engine stop on you while you were driving along. What a load of tosh. And of course if it isn't an auto, take it out of gear as soon as you can if you want to coast.

Most cars also allow the steering to be unlocked with the car engine stopped. there is usually a position between 'off and .ignition' where steering unlocks, radios play etc etc.

If the vehicle is a runaway turbo diesel (dieselling on its own

hard to get with EFI.

Only old mechanical injectors or a split fuel hose pumping fuel into the intake somehow does that. 99% of cars have electric fuel pumps and injecors. Switch them off.

No.

servio assistance gets lost pretty quickly once that engine is stopped and you are in neutral also steering assistance. NOT nice.

I think all of them are wrong, frankly.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

"Tinkerer" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Toyotas in the US bear very little resemblance to Toyotas we see - even, in many cases, where the badge is the same.

But the way in which this covers virtually every model suggests there's something more fundamental, quite possibly in the software or some other shared component. Which we may very well see in Toyotas here.

Reply to
Adrian

I think all of mine are like that as well

Or at least the lock frees up at position 1 on the key, 2 is run, 3 is start, 0 is off/lock.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

over revving if no rev limiter fitted.

Still thats better than being dead.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Jags (since about the XJS 3.6) are autos, (not sure about the rebadged fords tho)so rather then rev limiters, they simply change up a gear. I am not sure what hapopens if you hold the box down and go for the rev limit. At that price, I wasn't going to try..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Umm. here and there on race tracks, yes..

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

In message , Matty F writes

So ...

given a long enough stretch and a following wind, Drivels Prius could almost get up to 30 mph

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Reply to
geoff

Yes, had it happen to me once while on the wrong side of 80 during an overtake - at that kind of speed the lack of PAS wasn't a problem, and the deceleration wasn't anything out of the ordinary, just surprising (couldn't hear the engine anyway with the top down, so it was a quick glance at the rev counter which showed that something* had gone amiss). I stomped on the clutch and braked it to the nearside verge. Braking performance was quickly impared of course, but not dangerously so.

  • broken power connector to the ignition coil, as it turned out.

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules

It's not fuel which does it, it's engine oil - as it says in the bit you quoted. Stopping the supply of diesel doesn't help.

There are two ways this normally happens - oil seals in turbo and crank case breather.

Reply to
Clive George

The Natural Philosopher gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Or shagged turbo seals. It's more common than you'd think.

Reply to
Adrian

handbrake

Diesel. Diesels will quite happily run on their own lubricating oil if enough of it can get into the combustion chambers. Either down worn valve guides, past the rings or from a failed bearing in a turbo. No amount of switching off, rev limiter or ECU control is going to stop it, the "fuel" is not under any control. The only way stop it is to block the air intake or stall it. Blocking the air intake is not likely to be an option on a modern car so that only leaves stalling.

I don't think you'd get the brakes of a modern car to fade trying to stall a lube oil burning diesel. I have had brakes fade on me but that was near the bottom of a very spirited descent of 1000' over a few miles with lots of bends and using the brakes rather than the engine.

My experience of brake servo is you get one normal application with no engine, a very half hearted second application, then sod all assistance and you'll be pushing the pedal with as much force as you can muster to get any brake at all.

Steering servo dies with the engine. That's arguably worse than the loss of brakes as you'll really have to heave the steering wheel to get any movement.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Depends. Valve float is the first thing to happen on a pushrod engine - the springs just can't keep up. So the valves stay open and the engine misfires limiting the revs. Some designs might break a conrod or crank - but not all.

Reply to
Dave Plowman (News)

Following wind countered by the wind coming from his gob, though. If there's no wind, he just goes backwards.

Reply to
Jules

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