Help!!! My Elise will not go past 20MPH…

[grober02]

[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3]I’ve had my Elise for 6 months now and have driven it 5,000 miles with no problems. This morning, however, when I pulled out at a busy intersection, the car bogged down as if I had it in 3^rd or 5^th gear. I check to make sure I was in 1^st gear, but the car simply struggled to move. When I pulled off the road and put the car in neutral, it idled at about 3,000-3,500 RPMs unsteadily. The temperature seemed normal at about 185 degrees—I was only driving for about 3 minutes. And, the check engine light illuminated—solid. There is absolutely no acceleration to the put where it barely makes it up a hill. Has anyone experienced a similar problem? My dealer is 2 hours away, so I’m going to have to tow it. Any advise/experience would be greatly appreciated![/SIZE][/FONT]

[leebagley]

I love my Elise; it is my daily driver and I have put 20,000 miles on it since I bought it six months ago. However, from the moment I first drove it, I was concerned about how rough the engine ran.

I had owned my Elise for one month in January of this year when I experienced problems similar to yours: occasional lack of power, rough idle, misfiring, missing, running on three cylinders but when it devolved into running on two cylinders and the engine malfunction lamp stayed on solid, I knew it was serious. I am quick like that.

To make a long, sad story short and sweet, I limped to my dealer 200 miles away and he immediately discovered that the spark plugs had failed because they were sitting in pools of water. The insulators had all cracked wide open and the plugs were shorting out.

He explained that the spark plugs sit on top of the engine in a depression. Water enters the engine compartment when it rains and fills up the spark plug depression. The plugs eventually fail because they are not designed to operate well underwater.

He changed the spark plugs and the engine ran better than it ever had; those insulators may have already been cracked when I bought the car because it had sat outside on the dealer's lot for a few months.

Check the insulators on your spark plugs.

Then, and forever after, park your elise on a slight slope with the left side of the car lower than the right side. The trough that the spark plugs sit in is open on the left end. By parking in this manner, the water which enters the spark plug depression can drain out.

Just another British idiosyncracy; and I'll bet you thought you were buying a car that you could use outdoors!

[daveeddie]

I am probably a little late with this post. But what you described is called "limp mode". Certain CEL triggers will cause the car to go into limp mode - characterised by the car not accelerating past 30 mph and running extremely rough. The CEL will need to be cleared and the root of the problem identified.

[LARRY22331]

http://www.elisetalk.com/forums/show...ight=limp+mode