Fuel Inertia Switch - Public Annoucement

Just thought I would help anyone who runs into this...lots of info on the 360/430 but nothing I could find on the 488/Pista/F8

Driving the freeway home from Monterey Car Week last night I had the unfortunate event of hitting a rock on the freeway at speed - it was about the size of a baseball and couldnt avoid it by the time a saw it. It created no visible damage, but will need a respray under the front lip (which I had JUST done)....anyway.

The car detected it as an emergency and cut the fuel off and threw the hazards on. Not fun. The fault was "Fuel Inertia Switch Activated". All cars have these to avoid an event where there is a real collision and the fuel pump is pumping fuel and creating a catastrophic event.

I didnt have the service manual with me, and had never experienced this before. Went straight to the forum and could find the reset procedure but the location remained a mystery. For the 360/430 its under the drivers seat. In fact, everything I read said keep looking there. Turns out its not - LUCKILY, I had very good friends driving up with me and one close to home and found some on line literature.

So for those that ever experience this -

1. Engine off
2. Go to the battery in the footwell
3. disconnect with the quick connect
4. reset location is on the right side of the battery box (hidden behind the carpet.(you will feel a ;click, like a GFCI plug resetting)
5. reconnect the battery
6. car should start.

plug looks like this - and captured a pic of the battery box indicating the location.



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yeah, not sure if this is a safety precaution or part of the reset procedure, but it was easy to use the quick connect while I was in there. After I reset the switch and reconnected it started right up. Keep in mind this is a physical switch so no option to reset through disconnecting the battery or closing/locking and walking away etc will do the trick. its a GFI for the fuel line.

It just happens that the rock I hit gave a nice smack (need to replace a cracked fender liner) against the cowl in the battery box area and must have read it as a collision. Super simple to reset....once you know where it is!

 

page 63, and page 235 of the Owner' Manual. Other than pressing the switch itself, there are no instructions about disconnecting or reconnecting the battery, so the fault may clear after hard reset on the switch without it.

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agree. With instructions that I found here for some of the earlier cars, it had a battery disconnect and switch locations were different as well. It didnt take much for it to trigger and was surprised to not see anything on the forum specific to the 488/F8.