Loss of power / rough idle and stall ?

celer · **Joined:** Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:28 pm **Posts:** 12

Hi, I have an 05 CRD that nearly stranded us today on one of passes in Colorado.

So I got this CRD last year with bad rockers and a bad turbo, put new rockers, timing belt and turbo on it and then blocked off the EGR, added a lift pump and did a GDE ECO tune on it. It's been running pretty nicely for about 15k miles.

(AFAIK it the torque converter TSB was done about 100k ago and there is no evidence of it slipping or having any other problems yet)

Today while we were coming down from a pretty steep pass (Jones pass in colorado, which we'd just gone up in 4-low) it lost power after coming around one of the switch backs. So it sounded ok but with the pedal to the floor it would barely move. (No clouds of black smoke, the fuel filter pump primer was firm).

So we shut it down.

We tried starting it about five times, each time it would start, and the engine would idle very roughly and then shut down after a few seconds. Each time we checked the fuel filter pump, and it felt firm, and the lift pump was running as expected.

We never got any codes....

So after a few minutes of letting it sit it started right up and ran fine the rest of the day.

Stupid me for noting having tools on us....

Any ideas what this could be or hints on diagnosing it?

papaindigo · **Posted:** Mon Aug 04, 2014 10:39 am

Even if you don't have a CEL on you could see if a Dealer can pull a code, cost ca. $50, or since you are apparently in Colorado you might check with Sir Sam, Ft. Collins I think.

As to the symptom it's rare but not unheard of. I experienced a similar episode some months back at a long traffic light, construction, I shut the engine of and when I restarted the engine ran like a piece of junk. No power, shaking, no smoke, could barely move the vehicle. Ran down the road a bit tried a restart, no improvement. Limped about 1/2 mile to a parking lot, shut down, popped hood, looked around for a couple of minutes, restarted and it ran just fine, no problem since. See chat at viewtopic.php?f=5&t=78359&hilit=engine

Hexus · **Posted:** Mon Aug 04, 2014 11:13 am

Both of these sound like an air-in-fuel issue, that all of us have experienced randomly, that scared the crap out of us, then magically went away.

papaindigo · **Posted:** Mon Aug 04, 2014 11:57 am

Mine was not typical air in the fuel as in a filter head that needed bleeding, I checked, but it's possible somehow that a bubble got into and passed thru the system. It certainly did scare the crap out of me.

celer · **Joined:** Fri Jan 17, 2014 8:28 pm **Posts:** 12

so when you guys experienced this the primer pump on the filler head was still firm?

papaindigo · **Posted:** Mon Aug 04, 2014 1:58 pm

In my case primer was solid as a rock, was the first thing I checked when I popped the hood.

thermorex · **Posted:** Tue Aug 05, 2014 9:50 am

You can try disconnect the battery when that happens, wait for few minutes and try again. Also, you may have some oxidation on the computer wire plugs, even if you see everything nice and dry. I'd advise to monitor the way your engine runs, and if anything seems awkward, disconnect the battery, remove the wires from the computer, clean the connectors and assemble back, this will more than likely take care of those unknown gremlins that cause apparent random issues.

jlg89 · **Posted:** Mon Oct 12, 2015 5:53 pm

This has happened to me twice, and the secret is, indeed, to turn it off for at least a couple minutes. You have to give it enough time for the computer to completely shut off, which takes more than a few seconds. I really hate the fact that I occasionally have to reboot my Liberty...

CGman · **Posted:** Tue Oct 13, 2015 1:14 am

A similar thing happened to me the other day. I started up and drove though a parking lot, when I got to the road I stopped and the engine was running really rough at idle. I turned onto the road and gave it some gas and it perked up, but not as quick as usual. As soon as I got to 30 mph I let off on the gas and it started stuttering again like it was missing a cylinder. I put it into Neutral and pulled into another parking lot. As soon as I gave it some gas it would run fine but when I took my foot off the gas it would stutter again. It made no sense so I just shut it off and started it up again...shazam, everything was back to 'normal' !! :dizzy:

Loss of power / rough idle and stall ?

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