Cali Broke

On my way from LA to Rapid City, S.D., in a 2010 California, a trip I have done three times before. (Actually that's just part 1 of the whole trip.) Car throws a "engine control system failure". I'm just 18 miles from the Salt Lake City dealer, but of course they are closed now. I'll call them tomorrow but in the meantime since I'm stuck for the evening, does anybody want to guess what I'm in for?

 

A long wait and a large bill.

 

I had the same failure and the dealer could not find anything. Blamed it on a loose gas cap. No problems or errors since. My original post:

Engine Control System Failure
https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/index.php?posts/146139158/



Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat

 

Had same thing happen two weeks ago, my car, a 2011, under warranty. I drove it home 5 miles and called the dealer, they sent a truck out 100 mi. Picked it up took it in. Read an evaporative system problem code. Service rep asked if I had filled the tank while the car was running, said no he said well it all looks good now. I was leaving for a short stay in FL so they kept it until I get back next week. He said they would check to see if it would repeat. I’ve heard nothing in the last week.
Looks like no problem.
I wish these transient issues would clear themselves after a restart or a period of time.
I’ve put 12000 miles on my car in less than 18 months, first problem I’ve had except for electrical glitches caused by crummy OEM battery tender.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. I did fill the tank shortly(ish) before the fault. Also I spent what seemed like hours in a stop-and-go traffic jam (that rivaled any that I have experienced in LA) just before the error came up. Hopefully no biggie.

 

Ditto. Is the car in limp/reduced engine power mode?
T

 

I got the same message this spring shortly after taking the car out of storage. No diminished performance or other issues. Brought to nearby McLauren dealer (run by former Ferrari guy, who also services area Ferrari's) and they attributed it to a weak battery. They ran diagnostocs and then cleared the fault and also recharged the battery. No issues since. Took about 1 hr of service time.

 

This is often caused by overfilling your fuel tank. Do you cease filling after the first time it auto clicks off?

 

It's probably no big deal. You have to learn not to freak out every time the car throws an OBD2 fault code.

I posted a long explanation about this particular fault code on FChat a while ago - my dealer told me I habitually overfilled my gas tank and the extra gas completely soaked the EVAP system charcoal canister (designed to absorb gas fumes in the fuel tank). This probably caused a spurious pressure reading in the fuel delivery system which threw a "catch-all" fault code, incorrectly blaming the engine management system, instead of the knucklehead overfilling his gas tank.

If your car has this condition, it will clear once the charcoal canister dries up. STOP OVERFILLING YOUR GAS TANK. Stop filling your gas tank once the gas pump detects the tank is full enough and stops. Don't play with it - Ferrari dealer labour rate will cost you $160-$200 an hour, just to confirm what I said above. Replacing a totally dead charcoal canister will set you back even more. The canister can dry out and work again if you haven't been "doing this for too long".

FWIW, I used to program control systems and there were other people in the industry, not me, who took short cuts and just bundled various fault conditions under a single text warning message - we called that a "catch-all". They are useless warning messages - some programmers are lazy and don't care. However, we coded detailed specific text warnings for each fault that the machinery was able to detect, which was SOP in the US company I worked for.

Unfortunately I think the continual lowering of standards in the computer industry has affected fault codes in the OBD2 sphere - lazy programmers freaking out car owners for nothing.

Image Unavailable, Please Login