Anyone had this problem? Know the cause?

[NZBloke]

my Commodore lost power. Starts great. Idles smoothly. Touch the accelerator and the whole left bank shuts down. The Holden service centre has tried a few things, but haven't been able to work out what the problem is. Just thought someone else might have had this happen and have a solution. I was thinking maybe running on 3 cylinders might mean better economy on the long trips....

 

[monstar]

my Commodore lost power. Starts great. Idles smoothly. Touch the accelerator and the whole left bank shuts down. The Holden service centre has tried a few things, but haven't been able to work out what the problem is. Just thought someone else might have had this happen and have a solution. I was thinking maybe running on 3 cylinders might mean better economy on the long trips....

Looking at engine left is driver side bank?

 

[NZBloke]

Good question. I didn't think about asking him. The first symptom by the way was it lost power when accelerator was at a certain spot. Very slight acceleration okay, then it would loose power slightly more... Foot further down and it would change right down and power up.

 

[NZBloke]

Glad they aren't a pit crew for Supercars. V8s. They have had my car for almost a month now. Official Holden Dealer and Service. Sheesh!

 

[RiCeY]

Blocked catalytic converter?

 

[NZBloke]

Yeah, I think they looked at that first.

 

[Anhevius]

If you have an electronic throttle (instead of a cable going from the pedal to the butterfly), you could have a bad wire causing a short at the ECU, which is killing signal to the coils.

First thing to test is if spark is dying when that happens, and then if fuel is cutting out. Heck, you could have a buggered fuel pump that isn't putting out enough pressure. If the fuel lines lead to one bank before the other, you could be having the dying bank starved for fuel.

 

[lout]

first thought faulty throttle sensor should be easy to test your self using engineering mode
second choice faulty ecu, unfortunately becoming common on ve

 

[Anhevius]

first thought faulty throttle sensor should be easy to test your self using engineering mode
second choice faulty ecu, unfortunately becoming common on ve

Wouldn't be the TPS, OP has an entire bank of the engine going dead while the other is fine.

 

[harrop.senator]

Looking at engine left is driver side bank?

Mechanically it should be the passenger side. Tafe/logic teaches you theirs one left side of a car and one right to stop confusion and its always from when your in a driving position of the car. Pass is left drivers right in a rhd. But in saying that some dealers are prettyyyyy thick.