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Tremor nearly crashed itself after shutting down on snowy climb today

zimm

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Location
Virginia
Military
Retired Navy
Current Ride
2023 Tremor 3.5EB
Current Ride #2
2015 JKUR
Climbing a very steep driveway with a foot of snow. Mode was "deep snow", rear locker engaged, I have a front limited slip. I was making slow but positive progress at 4-5k rpms all the way to the top. As soon as I was about to level out- the truck shuts down, throws itself into park, and I go sliding at high speed all the way down the hill with no brakes or steering. Even the dash cam quit when the engine stalled.

Why in the hell would the truck shut down like that and go into park? Could have totaled the truck or even killed me.

Here's the dash cam feed.
 
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I can't help you but man that's wild. hope you can figure it out. i can hear sound just fine. just gotta turn it up loud and i can hear the engine.
 
Oh sweet there is sound! I thought it was muted. I think I may have overworked the engine- all but the last few seconds are sped up, the full climb was 1 min 50 seconds.
 
Reminds me of porsches shutting down.
It was happening in high-speed curves, the most likely cause was a loss of traction from lateral forces disrupting the engine's ability to draw fuel through the fuel lines. That caused the engine to briefly starve for fuel resulting in a sudden loss of power which, in turn, lead to the engine management system thinking something was wrong and killing the engine to prevent further damage. So, you'd be tooling along in the twistiess and the engine would just die in the middle of a high speed turn. To compound things, I remember reading that, since the engine was shut down due to perceived damage, the car would lock down and you couldn't just restart it.
 
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That's odd and very disturbing. I can't think of a good reason for that to happen, but I may have seen something on a YT truck test that may have relevance. It's a guy snow testing his Ranger Raptor (also an EcoBoost) and has issues with an engine power cut that he tries to reproduce. Rising cylinder head temps are mentioned later in the video, so it could be an engine protection issue with the programming.

I'll link it and try to provide a couple relevant time indexes.
38 minute video. I hope this proves a little helpful.

The video is indexed to 14:00
First power cut issue: ~15:40 (suggest watching to ~20:20
Return to the hill to try to replicate and power cut again: ~24:50
More testing and increasing cylinder head temps noted at 30:00+


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Hard to tell but the rpm’s sound high and it almost sounds like the drivetrain is not engaged in 4x4 correctly.
 
How much gas was in the tank? I have read about trucks not starting when left parked inclined like this with not too much gas in the tank. Obviously because gas not getting to the pump.
 
That's odd and very disturbing. I can't think of a good reason for that to happen, but I may have seen something on a YT truck test that may have relevance. It's a guy snow testing his Ranger Raptor (also an EcoBoost) and has issues with an engine power cut that he tries to reproduce. Rising cylinder head temps are mentioned later in the video, so it could be an engine protection issue with the programming.

I'll link it and try to provide a couple relevant time indexes.
38 minute video. I hope this proves a little helpful.

The video is indexed to 14:00
First power cut issue: ~15:40 (suggest watching to ~20:20
Return to the hill to try to replicate and power cut again: ~24:50
More testing and increasing cylinder head temps noted at 30:00+


.
.
read the third reply down as u think this post explains what happened in detail. It seems it a combination @PYLDRVR engine protection and what is stated in third post in that YouTube video.
 
Maybe already solved, and I don't think this is it at all, but was your door closed all the way?
 
Door was closed and tank was 3/4 full. I think the engine pulled power and shut it down after almost 2 mins of high rpm tire spinning.
 
I don’t know how I missed all those trees. Here’s where I stopped. I guess the truck followed the ruts all the way down.
1736345169838.webp
 
Climbing a very steep driveway with a foot of snow. Mode was "deep snow", rear locker engaged, I have a front limited slip. I was making slow but positive progress at 4-5k rpms all the way to the top. As soon as I was about to level out- the truck shuts down, throws itself into park, and I go sliding at high speed all the way down the hill with no brakes or steering. Even the dash cam quit when the engine stalled.

Why in the hell would the truck shut down like that and go into park? Could have totaled the truck or even killed me.

Here's the dash cam feed.
Gravity is a bitch. 😂
 
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These different modes weird me out.
 
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Having never driven in snow myself it's a real eye opener to watch the total fail of the system like that. At least you know the truck has serious limitations now.
 
Oh sweet there is sound! I thought it was muted. I think I may have overworked the engine- all but the last few seconds are sped up, the full climb was 1 min 50 seconds.
I think you nailed it . 2 mins of 4 wheels spinning at near wot with 0 load on the engine due to snow/tire spin. Perhaps it was trying to save your crank bearings and heads/valves.
 
There's a video out there about a product designed to keep the stock air intake from essentially closing itself off under heavy load. I really doubt that's what happened, but just another theory to add.
 
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