Car in limp mode mid trip!

[Gravel]

Hi guys I'm in the middle of a road trip and my Check Engine Light has come on and my rev limit has dropped to 4k ish.

The car sounds fine, smells fine and drives fine apart from that. I am in the middle of a very beautiful nowhere and not sure what to do - I'm tempted to try disconnecting the battery to reset the ECU and see if it was a gremlin or a repeatable fault.

Any advice would be much appreciated - for now I'm going to take solace in a pint and a dram.

 

[Bravo73]

Have you got an OBD reader with you (or near anywhere with one, ie a garage)?

My car went into limp mode a few months ago. The error code (P1302) related to a high cat temperature. 

Cleared the code, let the car cool down a bit and it hasn't come back since. 

[CocoPops]

Yep, you need a code reader. Where are you?

[Gravel]

Cheers guys - I own several OBD readers but they are back at home. I'm just north of Ullapool at the moment.

[Gravel]

2 hours ago, Bravo73 said:

Have you got an OBD reader with you (or near anywhere with one, ie a garage)?

My car went into limp mode a few months ago. The error code (P1302) related to a high cat temperature. 

Cleared the code, let the car cool down a bit and it hasn't come back since. 

Interesting - I was doing a lot of slow speed hill climbs in 2nd and 3rd - I'm pretty sure the exhaust would have been.toasty! There were certainly lots of pops.and bangs of contracting metal when I pulled over for a quick stop.

[Bibs]

If you reset the ECU and it's a persistent error, the light will come back on. If you reset it and it's a temp error, problem solved. I can't see the harm in resetting it and seeing what happens but make sure you reset it after a period of inactivity, eg more than 15 mins after the last time the car was run, and don't get straight back in the car and spank it before the light has a chance to come back on, if that's what it wants to do. 

That said, if there any any garages close to you, one of them may be able to either lend you a scanner or come to you with it, for a small fee. 

[TBD]

You can always do 2 or three start-stop cycles, waiting a minute or two between sttarts. Many intermittent faults are erased automatically if they don't occur again.

[Gravel]

The CEL is still illuminated  but I discovered by accident that limp mode is gone all by itself. Hooray! 

[Bibs]

2 hours ago, TBD said:

2 or three start-stop cycles

I believe the codes are retained for 5 key cycles.

[Gravel]

Ta - it'll probably go away before I can scan it unless it happens again. Just bought some spanners and a socket set just in case!

[Gravel]

Well as I discovered mid overtake, the limp is back but without the light. I have been trying to do more rolling around at low revs but I guess the poor girl can't do endless hour's of hill climbing without a lunchbreak! 

[Gravel]

Many thanks to everyone who replied earlier. Car made it safely home after 1700 miles driving in 8 days. 

I couldn't find my scanner so got another from Amazon - apparently it haa thrown a P0171 which I believe is bank 1 lean. Any ideas why it might do that? It's either too little fuel going in or too much (unmetered) air but I can't see how that would behave like it's heat related unless something is cracked somewhere.

[Hangar 111]

Check for air leaks around the induction, particularly the hose joining airbox to throttle body.

Dave