Heavy accleration then no power???

[Ivo]

I was at a set of lights yesterday and launched full throttle up to about 75km/h. Eased off then coasted to the next set of lights. Light when green and I went to drive off but had no power at all, it was as if the turbo was not working. I went through 2 more sets of lights about 200m apart and decided to pull over and stop as people on bicycles were going past me I switched the engine off waited a minute or so then restarted. Full power again. Its was fine for the rest of the trip and has worked flawlessly today.

There were no warning lights on the dash and the engine was at operating temperature. Has this happened to anyone else? Any ideas what it could be?

[BrianJ]

I have never had that problem, but think I have read about it being possibly caused by the engine management going into limp mode due to turbo boost being out of range.

There are two good forums here that may be usful in finding out what happened:

See T5 section
http://www.brick-yard.co.uk/forum/default.asp

http://www.vwt4forum.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=37

Brian

[Ivo]

I just posted it in the brickyard, and have just joined the t4forum.

[andrew]

g day ihad similar prob with a non vw turbo and the prob didnt goaway after switching off was there for few days before i found the wastegate acuattor was stuck open bit of lub spray and few taps with the spanner it was all good again

thats my thought

[Guy_H]

That is purely limp mode - it could be caused by any number of engine faults. If your car is unmodified, take it to your local dealer & check for fault codes, if it modified, take it to the people who modified it.

It could be fuel / air / intake / exhaust - only time spent with a diagnostic tool will tell for sure!

[Ivo]

Its going it for a full service tomorrow. Hopefully they can shed some light on what caused it. Hopefully nothing to serious.

[Seano]

A Land Rover I used to have went into limp mode as a result of the engine crankcase being overfilled with oil at a service. Turns out the oil pressure switch is a very sensitive beast......going into limp home mode whilst 100km out of town was no fun.

Local garage said after I told them the problem and then they fixed it...."but we only took about 700mL out of it!".......naturally, my response was "Why was it there in the first place?"

Best of luck with it but I'll wager there's a confused sensor in there somewhere.

[cam_bourke]

hey sorry to bring this back up but this is exactly what happened to my car today! i took it for a full service and its still doing it. Did you find a fix for your limp mode?

Cheers.

[Sunny43.5]

Our T5 occasionaly goes into limp mode once when it was over reved in manual mode [only have done it once learned from that incident] or sometimes when turning a corner to go up a steep hill where we live it just dies and crawls . Turn off and on again instantly fixed . As ours seems auto tranny related VW only want to replace the whole gearbox as they told us they won,t service it . GRR any way three years on its still going with only the occasional lumpy change from 5th down to 4th

[T5Pete]

just do the same again and get the turbo going at full tilt. could be a sticky waste gate on the turbo causing overboost and car going into limp mode. should cause an engine mgmt light to come on and a fault to be logged tho. is the van chipped?