Loss of power

[Cheshire cat]

My daughter reported this one to me so slightly second hand.
Whilst driving up a long steep hill (metalled road), the Grenadier felt like it was losing power to the point at which she thought it might start to roll backward. She stopped the vehicle, switched the ignition off / back on and proceeded as normal.
She did seem to remember seeing the Transmission warning appear on the center console about the same time.
Anyone else experienced similar?

 

[Cheshire cat]

My daughter reported this one to me so slightly second hand.
Whilst driving up a long steep hill (metalled road), the Grenadier felt like it was losing power to the point at which she thought it might start to roll backward. She stopped the vehicle, switched the ignition off / back on and proceeded as normal.
She did seem to remember seeing the Transmission warning appear on the center console about the same time.
Anyone else experienced similar?

Just received a suggestion she may have inadvertently been in manual, 8th gear. A good thought and possible I would think. She had to ask me how to open the fuel cover and was it petrol or diesel?

 

[Shaky]

So what you are saying is the go anywhere Grenadier can’t even get up a hill in 8th gear.

Disgusting, Ineos should be ashamed of themselves, it was clear from the start that the choice of engine and transmission was a poor one

 

[Cheshire cat]

So what you are saying is the go anywhere Grenadier can’t even get up a hill in 8th gear.

Disgusting, Ineos should be ashamed of themselves, it was clear from the start that the choice of engine and transmission was a poor one

Plus too many buttons. I much prefer sub menus in sub menus to increase fan speed or temperature.

 

[MattA]

Even in manual mode the transmission control module will/should override the manual gear selection if the engine is labouring to much and change back to automatic gear selection with the appropriate gear

 

[KDJDGrenadier]

Is it possible the gear shift was inadvertently shifted to N when reaching for the volume control?

 

[DaveB]

Even in manual mode the transmission control module will/should override the manual gear selection if the engine is labouring to much and change back to automatic gear selection with the appropriate gear

My 4wd used to do that all the time
If I was in 5th gear and it was, labouring up a hill, it would dip the clutch, blip the throttle and drop back a gear.
Next series they made it better by removing the clutch altogether

 

[AWo]

If the gearbox manages this and a wrong gear could not be the reason (if!) could it be that the ECU went into emergency operation? ECUs are programmed to do this if anyhing is wrong, like temporary overheating etc.

I got that on my Td5 when the cooler was stuck with mud (thereby saving the life of my engine) or once with a Freelander 2, after I drove up the "Gearbox Hill" on Eastnor Castle.

I like ECU's doing that. I do not understand why people found ECU's so bad. Without the ECU sending my engine into emergency mode, it would have killed at least my head gasket.

AWo

 

[Blackbox88]

Plus too many buttons. I much prefer sub menus in sub menus to increase fan speed or temperature.

They should have made it all voice activated so we can talk to the car all day long
Better hope it doesn't start nagging back

 

[YellowLab]

Plus too many buttons. I much prefer sub menus in sub menus to increase fan speed or temperature.

Where are all the touch screens???? I want more electronics, wiring and panels. If the Grenadier is not as complex as a 7 series or S class with all the bells and whistles - how can I wade into deep water and survive????

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Even in manual mode the transmission control module will/should override the manual gear selection if the engine is labouring to much and change back to automatic gear selection with the appropriate gear

I've played with this a bit in my current rig in manual mode; it's not an IG of course so it depends on how they've set it up, but it does what you describe - protecting the bits and bobs when the manual ask is too great for what the computer decides is OK - so I have no doubt the IG has a similar system. The question is how it does it operate? What I've noticed on mine is the following:

1) If speed is high and one tries to force a downshift, it will only allow you to do this within a certain speed, depending on the gear. For instance, if I'm doing 60 KPH, it won't let me shift down below 3rd gear, which is good - doing so would cause the engine to rev way too high and cause damage. It will abort the shift and give me a dash message saying "shift denied, speed too high".

2) If speed is too low, it seems to treat the selected gear as the highest possible gear, but then will shift normally between the lower gears all the way up to that gear. So if I manually select 4th gear, it will shift through 1 through 4 as normal, but then won't go higher than 4, and the limiter will of course limit my speed as well. I actually don't like that - it's not really clear to me what gear I'm in at a given time, and there are situations where I want it to "hold" the gear, not shift through lower gears but not exceed a max.

I'd much prefer a simple system where the ECU has Green, Yellow and Red parameters - Green is when your RPM/Speed/Manual Gear selection is a-OK. Yellow is when you are on the outside edge of OK, and may need to pay attention to speed or RPM to ensure you stay within spec; Red is "we are gonna shift for you now because you're gonna break it". Correspond these to simple and subtle indicators on the dash if I need to know what the vehicle is thinking of the gear I chose, and I'd be thrilled with a car that let's me mostly lock it into gear as I need to.

Long story short though - losing power going up hill sounds like an unusual way to manage an automatic transmission in 2023, but it depends on how Ineos has it programmed to behave - does anyone else have time to go fiddle with the manual gear select and let us know how that works?


Really curious what the cause of this power loss might have been!

 

[mido]

I've played with this a bit in my current rig in manual mode; it's not an IG of course so it depends on how they've set it up, but it does what you describe - protecting the bits and bobs when the manual ask is too great for what the computer decides is OK - so I have no doubt the IG has a similar system. The question is how it does it operate? What I've noticed on mine is the following:

1) If speed is high and one tries to force a downshift, it will only allow you to do this within a certain speed, depending on the gear. For instance, if I'm doing 60 KPH, it won't let me shift down below 3rd gear, which is good - doing so would cause the engine to rev way too high and cause damage. It will abort the shift and give me a dash message saying "shift denied, speed too high".

2) If speed is too low, it seems to treat the selected gear as the highest possible gear, but then will shift normally between the lower gears all the way up to that gear. So if I manually select 4th gear, it will shift through 1 through 4 as normal, but then won't go higher than 4, and the limiter will of course limit my speed as well. I actually don't like that - it's not really clear to me what gear I'm in at a given time, and there are situations where I want it to "hold" the gear, not shift through lower gears but not exceed a max.

I'd much prefer a simple system where the ECU has Green, Yellow and Red parameters - Green is when your RPM/Speed/Manual Gear selection is a-OK. Yellow is when you are on the outside edge of OK, and may need to pay attention to speed or RPM to ensure you stay within spec; Red is "we are gonna shift for you now because you're gonna break it". Correspond these to simple and subtle indicators on the dash if I need to know what the vehicle is thinking of the gear I chose, and I'd be thrilled with a car that let's me mostly lock it into gear as I need to.

Long story short though - losing power going up hill sounds like an unusual way to manage an automatic transmission in 2023, but it depends on how Ineos has it programmed to behave - does anyone else have time to go fiddle with the manual gear select and let us know how that works?


Really curious what the cause of this power loss might have been!

I was gona ask the same question today but said let me see if any one have experienced this gear shifting or not shifting when u do or don't need it which kills the power ..I took the IG to the empty quarter in oman for a desert crossing for 3 days , and went extreme with it ,no doubt the car is fully capable and powerful as I was behind wranglers ,petrols ,land cruiser all modified except my IG .was a test drive took it from the agency for marketing the car and its capability..I witnessed the gear issue and asked my friends in dubai which the told me there is a company in dubai which r experienced on the B58 engine and the gear ..they tune bmw and the supra gr with a limit of safty ..so his car will be ready in 2 weeks n will update ones ibget all the info from him

 

[Hannes01]

Something similar:
Today I made a long highway trip (300km), mainly through France.
Constantly driving at 110/130 km/h with cruise control.
Suddenly the cruise control fails 2 times in succession - goes out.
After that, the car barely accelerates in 8th gear and won't kick down even at full throttle.
I then drove the last few kilometers home, it will be interesting to see if it runs again tomorrow!

 

[Eric]

Something similar:
Today I made a long highway trip (300km), mainly through France.
Constantly driving at 110/130 km/h with cruise control.
Suddenly the cruise control fails 2 times in succession - goes out.
After that, the car barely accelerates in 8th gear and won't kick down even at full throttle.
I then drove the last few kilometers home, it will be interesting to see if it runs again tomorrow!

Did you fill up in France? Petrol or diesel? If petrol I wonder if you have pick up fuel with some water contamination.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Something similar:
Today I made a long highway trip (300km), mainly through France.
Constantly driving at 110/130 km/h with cruise control.
Suddenly the cruise control fails 2 times in succession - goes out.
After that, the car barely accelerates in 8th gear and won't kick down even at full throttle.
I then drove the last few kilometers home, it will be interesting to see if it runs again tomorrow!

Any indication of dash lights or bongs, or was it just felt in the seat/RMPs?

I wonder about a spot of bad fuel like Eric said, but I thought IG's had filters intended to help with that - and maybe without the filters you'd be on the side of the road? Or maybe I'm mistaken on the filtration thing - but typically bad fuel will cause the vehicle to stumble and stutter a bit in a noticeable way (When it's happened to me on Non-IG rigs, it feels like the truck has the flu - coughing up a lung and generally out of sorts!). That could conceivable cause Cruise to kick out and for a shift to fail but at first blush this sounds like a confused computer.

 

[Cheshire cat]

I would guess at being an electrical issue for some of the reasons you have already stated. I would doubt if it was software but more likely a loose earth or other problem under the bonnet / hood. Others have had issues which boiled down to loose connections etc.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

I would guess at being an electrical issue for some of the reasons you have already stated. I would doubt if it was software but more likely a loose earth or other problem under the bonnet / hood. Others have had issues which boiled down to loose connections etc.

Yes and I should clarify my "confused computer" statement - that's often caused by exactly what you've said. Many already likely know this so I'm probably teaching the professors here, but the sensors that feed back into the CANBUS or whatever are all pretty dumb - they tend to be set up to pick up some variable via an electrical current that fits within a designated range. For example the throttle sensor on my bike has an 'acceptable' range of just a few fractions of a volt and that is hard-coded into the sensor from the factory. When installing it, it has to be installed at the right angle - and finely adjusted via rotation - so that when the throttle is closed, it reads the low end of that voltage range and that when the throttle is open it reads the high end of that voltage range, and in order to do that well it needs a constant 12v source that is fairly steady. If the sensor is rotated by even a millimeter, it reads a value that is outside it's approved voltage and throws a code. Meaning that, a surge of variation in power (like you've said, Cheshire, a bad earth) would ALSO cause it to think it's reading outside that range, which then confuses the computer.

I didn't mean to suggest this was a software bug as the software can only be as good as it's inputs - it COULD be a software bug but then likely a lot of folks would have a similar experience as the software is pretty universal, but a lose wire or bad ground is easily a side effect of refining production processes on a new car.

 

[Hannes01]

no fill up in France,
nothing on the dash,
must be elektrikal error

 

[Lord Ripon USA]

The op should check the trans fluid.

 

[Dinose]

I was gona ask the same question today but said let me see if any one have experienced this gear shifting or not shifting when u do or don't need it which kills the power ..I took the IG to the empty quarter in oman for a desert crossing for 3 days , and went extreme with it ,no doubt the car is fully capable and powerful as I was behind wranglers ,petrols ,land cruiser all modified except my IG .was a test drive took it from the agency for marketing the car and its capability..I witnessed the gear issue and asked my friends in dubai which the told me there is a company in dubai which r experienced on the B58 engine and the gear ..they tune bmw and the supra gr with a limit of safty ..so his car will be ready in 2 weeks n will update ones ibget all the info from him

Yes u r right. This is really annoying me too. Waiting for ur update. Thanx