Pour a cup of coffee. This is a long one.
I was driving in Great Basin park heading up to the peak and my car stuttered. I had a loss of power though it kept going. It started to buck a bit. Fortunately I reached a turn off and pulled over. The idle was going up and down. No heat issues. No warning lights on the dash.
My first guess was a sensor or computer issue. I had run Torque prior to the trip and everything was fine except for the "rich to lean" issue I have always had. [More on this later.]
This being Nevada, I decided to gamble and turn off the car then restart it figuring that might clear the issue, i.e. give it a boot. I started the engine and all the problems went away. Not being totally crazy, I gave up on the hike and drove back to the hotel (about 66 miles). No problem.
I figured my best plan was to make my way to Vegas and visit the Infiniti dealer. On the way to Vegas, it started to buck. I pulled off I-15, stopped the car, started it, and all was fine.
The Vegas dealer did the full diagnostics ($145 I think). They found a couple of codes for the transmission, but they were probably old,. The ECU had a fault. They cleared it, and the fault didn't return. The ECU is about $1k to replace and about a week to get there. Given that the car was running fine, they suggested just drive home to Ca.
I had one more bucking session in the Mojave. Stop and start cleared it.
Now all the problems were in high heat, but it isn't like a never drove in the desert before.
I'm thinking of checking the ground connection to the ECU. Perhaps pull it and spray the contacts.
Any other suggestions?
Edit:
The dealer has no idea about the Rich to Lean error message. It doesn't show up in their diagnostics
I was driving in Great Basin park heading up to the peak and my car stuttered. I had a loss of power though it kept going. It started to buck a bit. Fortunately I reached a turn off and pulled over. The idle was going up and down. No heat issues. No warning lights on the dash.
My first guess was a sensor or computer issue. I had run Torque prior to the trip and everything was fine except for the "rich to lean" issue I have always had. [More on this later.]
This being Nevada, I decided to gamble and turn off the car then restart it figuring that might clear the issue, i.e. give it a boot. I started the engine and all the problems went away. Not being totally crazy, I gave up on the hike and drove back to the hotel (about 66 miles). No problem.
I figured my best plan was to make my way to Vegas and visit the Infiniti dealer. On the way to Vegas, it started to buck. I pulled off I-15, stopped the car, started it, and all was fine.
The Vegas dealer did the full diagnostics ($145 I think). They found a couple of codes for the transmission, but they were probably old,. The ECU had a fault. They cleared it, and the fault didn't return. The ECU is about $1k to replace and about a week to get there. Given that the car was running fine, they suggested just drive home to Ca.
I had one more bucking session in the Mojave. Stop and start cleared it.
Now all the problems were in high heat, but it isn't like a never drove in the desert before.
I'm thinking of checking the ground connection to the ECU. Perhaps pull it and spray the contacts.
Any other suggestions?
Edit:
The dealer has no idea about the Rich to Lean error message. It doesn't show up in their diagnostics