Total power loss

Here's an interesting one, I was driving home yesterday, towing my caravan at about 93 kph, 100 indicated on the speedo, when the car just lost power and I had to pull over, Now I am a ham radio operator and was talking on the radio at the time and I suspect that rf from the radio might have interfered with the computer system? Once I pulled over I turned the engine off, restarted it and no problems, I drove the remaining 200k's with no issues, there were no extra lights on the dash or anything like that, so I assume it wasn't in limp mode, has anyone else had anything similar happen to them?

Sounds like it overboosted and went into limp mode. Heard of it a fair bit on earlier D40's.

I thought it might be limp mode except the implication was it was steady driving.

It's never happened to me before. Rich's D40 is 4 years old, and it's possible that there's an imperfect electrical connection somewhere, perhaps it's a battery terminal that's a little loose or has some corrosion in it.

I'd start there. Pop the bonnet and specifically look at the positive and negative battery terminals, remove and clean them (make sure you have the radio PIN handy, or use a jumper pack to keep the car's system powered). Also follow the negative lead down and make sure it's not damaged and firmly attached to the engine.

If that all looks okay, there are a number of fuses and relays in the engine bay that could suffer from exposure. I'd pull each of the relays out of the box that sits behind the battery and re-insert them - this should clean their contacts.

Start with that, hopefully one of them will reveal something a little out of the ordinary and you can come back and tell the rest of us so we know what to go checking under OUR bonnets!

Don't discount your HF interference theory just yet. HF can interfere with all sorts of things electrical/electronic. On boats I have seen it light up entire switchboards, turn electronic light controllers on and off, interfere with electronic throttles and on one occasion cause a bow thruster to run (didn't this create a state of panic on the way down the river). I would recommend trying the radio again under the same set of circumstances - frequency, power output, vehicle speed. Just try and do it with no other traffic around. The bad news is that if it is the radio there is very little you can probably do to try and fix the problem short of moving everything to try and get seperation between cables etc and even that would only be experimentation - NOT a guaranteed fix. You could try a few different frequency bands. The bow thruster I mentioned earlier used to fire if the HF was used on 6MHz. On the rest of the radios range it was OK. Only other thing you could do is get in contact with the radios manufacturer/distributor and see if they know of the issue and any possible fixes. You could try Nissan (HaHa) but I suspect you would be wasting your time.

Regards

Scott

Thanks guys, I'm sure the electrical side of things is all ok, as I have just completed my second battery install, and had to reolace the posative battery terminal, and I had a fair look arround while I was at it. Is there and visual indication that it has gone into limp mode ie a light or something?

I am very familliar with RF interferance and the weird things that can happen, and this remains my prime theory as to what happened, I don't think it overboosted, as I was cruising on the flat at the time 2000 rpm. I f it was the radio I'll probably have to learn to live with it, Thanks for the input anyway..

In limp mode, your engine will run but won't let you rev beyond about 2,000rpm or so. You shouldn't be able to go faster than about 80km/h.

thanks Tony, sounds like it was in limp mode, I still suspect the radio interference was a contributing factor, I'll just have to keep an eye on it.

If it went into limp mode then Dave's initial idea of an overboost is likely to be on the money. Were you accelerating just at that time, like to climb a hill or pass another vehicle?

If that's what did it, while you would think it shouldn't overboost, it may be something that it only does when certain exceptional circumstances all occur at once. It's probably not anything to overly worry about.

Rich64 said:

Here's an interesting one, I was driving home yesterday, towing my caravan at about 93 kph, 100 indicated on the speedo, when the car just lost power and I had to pull over, Now I am a ham radio operator and was talking on the radio at the time and I suspect that rf from the radio might have interfered with the computer system? Once I pulled over I turned the engine off, restarted it and no problems, I drove the remaining 200k's with no issues, there were no extra lights on the dash or anything like that, so I assume it wasn't in limp mode, has anyone else had anything similar happen to them?

Click to expand...

Book in with Nissan and ask them to do a FUEL PUMP LEARN RESET>
When ever the fuel line pressures are upset(eg fuel filter replacement) this needs to be done.
My D40 had 2000kms on it when this happened.
Since my dealer did this reset feature in the ecu it hasn't done it since.

NATS plays up with interference, owners handbook section 3-3to 6. Only 2 cents worth to add.

Hey guys
i just put my navara D22 in for a service at a local mechanic now a code comes up saying my fuel pump is in error and my car goes into limp mode everytime i turn it on. the engine light wont go off. the mechanic says my fuel pump is stuffed but reading this forum thread im thinking it needs a "Fuel Pump Learn Reset" from nissan.

we tried disconnecting the battery, and he tried resetting all errors but couldnt get rid of this error. Any ideas before i book it into nissan as i think they will sting me big for this problem lol. Any advice would be great

Cheers