In which bernse almost bites it and causes mahem!!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was driving to Costco last night down a 4 lane road. I was in the outside lane and wanted to pass someone ahead of me. I pulled into the inside lane and momentarily floored it to get by the guy. I felt something through the accelerator as I did that, kind of a “click.” When I released the accelerator, my Jeep stayed FLOORED. :eek: For those of you that don’t own one, while they are not a high-performance vehicle, one thing they do have is a lot of torque out of that straight 6, so it’ll get you moving in a hurry if its floored.

I was in forth gear at the time. I nailed the brakes to keep my speed under control. I tried to flip the accelerator pedal up with my foot as I thought it might have got caught under the floormat. The gas pedal moved freely so that wasn’t it. However, as I did that I had to let off the brake so I could move my foot around there so I sped up again. So, I put the brakes back on but they were starting to “stiffen up” (happens if you push the brake pedal rapidly several times.) Luckilly, traffic wasn’t terribly heavy. I put my 4way flashers on, kept my brakes nailed and pulled back into the outside lane. As I slowed to about 50, I killed the ignition and coasted over a snow pile into the ditch to get off the road.

I got out of my Jeep and played with the accelerator pedal. It moved freely. I opened the hood. My hood light was burnt out :rolleyes: so I couldn’t see anything, but I could tell my throttle linkage was stuck in the wide open position. So, I manually moved it and it snapped back to idle.

So, I got back in my Jeep, fired it up and it ran fine. I put it into 4Low to climb over the snow bank (good thing I was in a vehicle with good body clearance and 4X4 or else I would have been screwed) and made it to Costco without further incident.

I parked and killed the engine. For the hell of it floored it again with it turned off. It stuck wide open. I opened the hood and saw the problem. Luckily, there was light in the parking lot so I could see.

Somehow, my block heater plug came unfastened from where it usually is. The part that actually plugs into the wall fit underneath my linkage only when it was floored (the only time there was enough room for it). Then, once it was there it kept it from returning to a closed position.

I moved it out of the way and all was fine.

So, lessons for today:

#1 - Make sure you have nothing the could potentially interfere with your throttle linkage. Periodically check this. That was my mistake. :rolleyes:

#2 - If the same thing happens to you. DONT PANIC. Your brakes are enough to overpower your engine (as long as they’re in good shape they should be!). Keep your car under control and kill the engine with the key. Worst case scenario, I suppose you could dump the clutch or put it in neutral but depending on what your vehicle is, you could blow the engine doing that.

#3 - Change your underwear.

Funny enough, I was all calm and cool when it all happened. I just operated on instinct. This is a good thing. It didn’t dawn on me until later when I thought that it could have been a far different outcome if there was more traffic, on a different road or didn’t think straight and just panicked.

2

First of all, let me say, “Yay You!!” I’m glad after all was said and done you came out A-OK!

Second, in case something like this happens again, the Car Talk guys actually do suggest putting the car in neutral as you mention. Their take on it was that the engine running full-rev for the few seconds it takes you to slow and stop (shouldn’t) damage the engine and that (more importantly) you don’t lose power brakes and steering (which would happen if you turned the car engine off). But then again, they didn’t mention the “brake against the full throttle of your engine” method of stopping! :slight_smile:

I can only hope that in a similar situation I am as calm and collected as you!

3

One caveat about turning off the ignition switch: This will probably lock your steering wheel. This is not a good thing. I would change to neutral and kill the engine once I am safely stopped.

4

A warning about hitting the brakes with the car in drive - this makes it easy to lock a set of wheels and spin your car.

Brakes are normally proportioned so the braking force is properly split between the front and rear wheels (usually about 70% or so to the fronts). If the throttle is stuck and you leave the car in gear while braking, the engine will be fighting the drive wheels and effectively cut the braking force to that end of the car.

This could lock the rears in a FWD car, or the fronts in a RWD car, if there’s enough engine or the road is slippery. Which could lead to a spin.

Best to stick the car in neutral and then brake. Most all modern fuel-injected engines have rev limiters which will cut the gas to keep the engine from over-revving, keeping it from getting damaged. I’ve hit mine enough while racing to know it works fine :slight_smile:

Oh, my first post! I’ve been reading here for over a year though, originally came in to read the “funny things that happened during sex” thread.

-Jeff

5

I haven’t been in a car in years that didn’t have a safety device to prevent that… either having to push the key in or a button to push (like our Jeeps, Johnny)

But, if you are in an old enough vehicle that doesn’t have those safety features if a person panicked and didn’t move it to the off position it could happen. Even then though, IIRC, you still have some free movement of the wheel before it locks… but thats getting nitpicky.

I’d agree with that. It was actually fairly slippery (middle of winter here!) but not too bad. I suspect that ABS which is darn near standard now too should help that… but your point still stands.

Actually, in the process of the incident, I actually did think of the rev limiter and just doing that. I’ve actually floated a valve in my 300ZX Turbo though when it hit the limiter, so I don’t have much faith in them for not causing damage although mine was probably a fluke.