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Stalling... a bit.

12223 Views 13 Replies 8 Participants Last post by  rumblestrip
Okay, so I'm man enough to admit it.

I've been driving for upwards of 25 years and let's say I've stalled, or nearly stalled my new, one week old F55 MCSD more times than I've stalled any other car during the entire time I've owned those previous cars. Drama aside, that's stalling it twice and nearly stalling/recovering about four times. Even after such monumental errors, I do consider myself to be a reasonable driver.

After you've stopped giggling, thank you very much, I genuinely want some advice here.

I've already read a couple of threads on the issue and I think it's kind of the same thing. The most noticeable time I stalled the car was on a roundabout - noticeable in terms of outright scary as cars were behind me and heading for me. Not good.

Part of me wondered if it was simply my driving style, but again, I'm struggling to see how I can effortlessly drive cars with such differing handling capabilities as a Ford Focus and a Merc SLK and never stalled either and be so worried about this one.

So I've been playing about with the car today, trying my best to stall it to see exactly what the issue is and if I can recreate the circumstances. I think I may have it, but I could be wrong.

Now, as it's intermittent, I really have struggled getting to the bottom of this but my gut feeling is that it has a greater chance of happening if I need to quickly get away, but at the same time, don't need to keep moving very fast. Such as waiting to get onto a roundabout, or, as happened today, turning right into my driveway across a road with oncoming traffic. In both those instances I needed to move quick, but needed to keep it in first. The sensation I can kind of feel is that I have my foot on the gas and give it a fair amount. As soon as the gas is transferred to accelerate the car and my foot is raised off the clutch it almost feels as if not enough fuel is being transferred thus stalling or nearly stalling the car.

Something else has occasionally happened and I don't know whether this is a safety feature or something to do with the start/stop. I think that on a couple of occasions the car has stalled, or almost has, it has started again of it's own accord, in a split second.

So I'm left wondering what to do. As before when I've had issues I've posted on line before calling the service centre as other people's view certainly help.

So, do let me know, especially if you have a cooper SD, or anything really. Of course, this issue relates to the manual/stick shift. The auto (and I have one of those too) has it's own peculiarities.

Views, even the positive ones with nothing to report, please folk!
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Sport mode may help with your fuel to clutch ratio, but it might not solve the root issue.

I have one idea. When you come to a stop, do you put it in neutral and let the clutch out until right before setting off again? Sometimes I did this and would catch the car right in the middle of an auto off and it would confuse the car a bit. It always started back up right away, but I could see how it might behave differently on a diesel. I've since stopped doing this.

Try driving around for a few days without the auto off feature enabled to see if it has anything to do with your issues. Something else you might try is never letting your foot off the clutch when coming to a quick stop/start situation.

All the above is predicated on the notion that you put the car in neutral and let the clutch out when coming to a stop, of course. If you don't, it must be something else.
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