Engine Management Systems Are Dangerous.

The cars we drive today are far safer than the ones we drove when we first passed our driving test, but in my opinion they have one major design flaw that is so very dangerous that nearly go me killed on Thursday afternoon.

I passed my diving test in early 1972 (have had a clean licence since then despite all the miles I clock up) and was ready to take to the road in my very first car that I had bought for the grand sum of £20. It cost £30 to insure and back then you could buy three gallons of petrol for a pound. The car was a 1951 Morris Minor that had a split windscreen and more unusually the headlights were in the grill and not on the wings.

Owning a car back then you soon learned how to mix up the filler mix to repair holes in the body work and carried out so many repairs to the car yourself. Fitting those new spark plugs, fitting a new set of points (used before electronic ignition came along) were jobs we all felt were in our capability to undertake. Adjusting the carburettor mixture was also something you might have found yourself doing and you soon knew if you got the mixture to weak when you drove off and the engine was pinking like mad.

There were a number of other jobs you might have been happy to do yourself, such as fitting a new dynamo, or starting motor, cars back then were so very easy to work on. It was not all plain sailing owning a car back then, over heating always seemed to be a problem and I lost count of the number of times I had to knock someone’s door asking if they could let me have some water for the radiator.

Starting cars were also and art in cold weather, you had to know your car and who much choke it liked, get it wrong and you might be sat there a while trying to get the car started. Once you felt the engine was warm enough you pushed the choke back in, but often found you had to pull it out again as the car sputtered and was in danger of stalling.

Many cars back then did not have any seatbelts in them, I’m sure I remember you were not required in law to wear them anyway and it was nothing you worried about and there were no such things as airbags.

Yes cars have sure changed and safety is top of this list in modern cars, crumple zones and more airbags than you had balloons at your sixth birthday party keep you as safe as possible inside of the car and the greatest chance that should you be involved in a road accident, you will still be a live.

With the need to improve emissions etc, the engine management system was born, it takes care of everything nearly and we now find that our car has just got too complicated to ever try and carry out any work on it ourselves. No need anymore to try and get that choke in the right position, just turn the key and off you drive so smoothly as the management system works away adjusting the mixture.

The system monitors everything and is also designed to protect your engine from serous damage should something go wrong with the engine, perfect you might think, but its that engine protection that is badly flawed as far as I’m concerned and could end up putting you in very grave danger indeed.

My 59 plate van we bought new has now covered over 170.000 miles, we once got rid of our van when it reached 150.00 miles, but with trade the way it is these days, we have not been able to do that and for now have to try and keep this van going. Despite all the miles I have put on the clock, the van still drives much the same as it did the first day I jumped into it and its completely unmarked. It has gone wrong a few times and has had to have a number of parts replaced and to date I have had to be recovered on two occasions that were as far away from Newton that was possible.

It’s off the road now and will be repaired on Monday after what happened last Thursday, when I got back in the end that day I simply told my boss I was not prepared to take the van out on the road again until he got it fixed. I read somewhere once that due to the mileage I drive every year, I only have a 27% chance of not being involved in a serious road accident, that means there is a 73% chance that I will be and I’m sure those odds must go against me even more with every mile I do drive.

I can as close as I ever have done of not coming home from work last Thurday afternoon, yes there has been some close shaves in the past as some madman came around some corner on the wrong side of the road, or was coming at me head on as he overtook on a stretch we maybe shouldn’t have. But that was not the case last Thursday; my close shave was caused by the actions of the engine management system.

The engine has four electronic fuel injectors; they each have two electrical systems, one opens up the injector to let the fuel in and the other one closes it. Very efficient and not only makes the engine run properly, it also endures you get the most out of that very expensive liquid you have to put into it to make it go in the first place.

As the injectors wear they can develop faults, in the case of my van a small short happened and the engine management system cut the engine power right down so the engine was revving not much higher than it does on tick over. All done to prevent and damage to the engine itself, but its no fun for example if it happens when you are driving in the third lane of a motorway.

If it happens in a place where you can pull over and stop safely, you simply turn of the engine and wait a few minutes and restart the engine and off you go again with full revs and the van driving normally, but what you do not know is if and when it might happen again and what situation you then might find yourself in.

I set off very early on Thursday morning heading for Weymouth, the van just seemed fine and I did all the calls I needed to do in Dorset before doing a number in Somerset and then heading up to Weston Super Mare. But after leaving Weston and hitting the M5 the van just died on me and I was so thankful I was only in lane one as I was able to get straight onto the hard shoulder. I turned the engine off and waited a short while and then started it again and off I went. I was very nervous every time I needed to over take a lorry or other slower moving vehicle in the first lane, but grew more confident with each passing mile to undertake such actions.

But then when I got back onto the M5 after calls I did in Bridgwater, it happened again, so once again I stopped the engine and waited, restarted it again and set off again, this time doing as little over taking as I could. The van behaved itself for the next few hours until I was on the M5 going past Exeter.

I had got to the point where the M5 goes into four lanes as the left two hand lanes take the traffic onto the A30 and the right two lanes take the traffic towards Torbay and Plymouth.

I was in lane three that was really the first lane for traffic heading for Torbay and Plymouth. I was just about to pass a car that was in the second lane of the A30 two lanes when I noticed that driver was in the wrong lane and wanted to come over into mine. It was just at that point my engine died again and it could not have happened in a worse place.

I started slowing down and that caused a real problem for the car that wanted to come into my lane, I put on the hazard warning lights to show other drivers I had some sort of problem and quickly thought what I needed to try and do to prevent a very serious accident. I looked towards the central barrier and saw there was no room to be able to get the van beside it, so the only thing to do was try and get the van across the two lanes on my left and over onto the hard shoulder there.

By now the car that had wanted to come over into my lane had done so and as I looked into my left hand mirror I struggled to see a big enough gap to get over to the hard shoulder. But I was losing so much speed and knew if I did something very quickly, someone was going to drive into the back of me. I then saw a gap that I thought was big enough, but I had no revs and had to rely on what little speed I had.

I got across the first lane ok, but the incline of the road had slowed the van down even further and as I looked to my left, I saw this lorry was about to hit me full on side wards. That driver slammed on his brakes, smoke poured up from the wheels and he blasted me with the sound of his air horns. Thankfully lane two was empty and he managed to swing out enough to avoid hitting me.

He did not stop and when I turned off the engine when I got onto the hard shoulder, I felt a wave of shock come over me as I knew just how close I had come to dying or being very seriously injured. I sat there for a while to get myself calm before I attempted to drive the van back to Newton Abbot, it drove those last few miles without and further problems.

A small short in the injection system is not going to cause any major hard to the engine, why does the engine need to be shut down almost when one does accrue? The van could have just gone down to three cylinders until I could have found a place to park in a safe place. Yes it would have been very lumpy, but I would have still had enough power to get the van to a safe spot.

It would be so simple to have a system where you are at least given a warning that the engine revs were going to be cut down to next too nothing, a message could pop up saying that is what is going to happen in 60 seconds say, then at least you would have time to get the van off the road and not risk causing a road accident.

I was very lucky and my vast driving experience also played a big part that day, but I do wonder how a new young driver or a very old one would have been able to deal with such a situation. It is something that needs to be looked into and something done to ensure cars etc, do not simply cut out while driving at very high speeds.


Not sure the news that I'm still alive and well will please all readers of the TFF, but my boss at least was glad I'm still around to carry on doing the job for him I have done for the last ten years or so.