Very strange incident involving a 360 wanting to throttle up while braking

I was driving my 2002 360 F1 yesterday in 4th gear. When I went down to 3rd gear and covered the brake before entering a corner, the car "throttled up" as if the gas pedal was still depressed and the car accelerated through the corner. Then, when I later came to a stop light and dropped the gears down it kept giving gas even though my foot was firmly on the brake! I was pressing down on the brake and the car was trying to go forward while in 1st....I had to let her just shoot through the intersection! Fortunately, a small one that was not busy at the time otherwise I probably would have just tried putting her in neutral or shutting off the engine, but it all happened very, very quickly. It would have also been a disaster if I had been behind someone else and been forced to drive in to the back of them if I didn't have time to shut off the engine, put it in "neutral" or take some other type of evasive action. What happened? It was as if the gas pedal did not rebound and stayed depressed after removing my foot? After shutting the car down and taking her out later in the evening, the situation did not happen again fortunately. What happened? Has something like this happened to any other F-owners?

 

Pull the floor mat out or try wearing narrow driving shoes. The throttle peddle has two rheostats in it, one operating opposite from the other if I remember correctly, to assure fail safe operation. For this type of failure to happen both would have to fail simultaneously with opposite type failures. Not impossible but highly improbable and I suspect the dashboard would light up like a Christmas tree. I have not seen any failures of this type other than floor mats shoved forward by the drivers heal under braking.

 

"Italian Cruise Control".

 

Thank you!

Had a bet with my lady that the next person who posted would say that.
She bet against.
$10 to me.

 

+1

When searching the pinout of the ECU (in order to record throttle position in the datalogger) we found there are two completely independent throttle signals (that get fed to *way* more places than you would expect btw!) and they damn well better agree with each other.... We were a little worried that the "load" placed on one of 'em by the datalogger might force them out of balance and hence cause problems, but fortunately "no worries".

Returning to the OP, I too suspect the intervention of the dreaded "Italian cruise control", particularly as you said it was fine later - The system *may* fail but I very much doubt it would fail "open throttle" - Much more likely to fail "closed" IMHO. If it did fail in such a way, I don't see it "correcting itself", and as Dave said, I would think all kinds of warning lights would come on......

Cheers,
Ian

 

Any failure of a proper and syncronized signal fro the 2 potentiometers will cause the car to go to a limp home mode and follow the data from the most probable signal. It will also limit throttle to about 20%.

Take your aftermarket floor mats and throw them in the garbage where they belong before they cause an accident.

 

I had a similar experience in my 400 recently when I hit the gas pedal hard. There were pinch marks in the driver's seat! Needless to say, the aftermarket floor mats are history!

Aidan

 

If you have aftermarket floormats, secure them with sticky backed velcro. Sticky side to underside of floormat and the velcro side grips the carpet. They wont move a bit after that.




Darrell.

 

You guys are great! I went and checked my driver's side floor mat - not sure if it is "after market" or not...do 360's come with floor mats stock? - anyway, one of the plastic hooks near the driver's seat that keep it locked in place was broken and the mat had slid off and was very close to the bottom of the gas pedal. It seems like the problem may be solved! I wasn't expecting such a quick and easy fix. (I figured a computer glitch that would require time and money!)