Forum Discussion

jerrysharonSLA's avatar
Jun 07, 2014

loss of power "check engine light on

2004 Workhorse 8100 engine. 37 ft Winnebago Class A. This happened at high RPM while climbing a steep grade. Motorhome is in the shop now and they can't find a problem. This has happened before on level ground. At that time they changed the Accelerator sensor assembly, the throttle body assembly and the wiring harness. Fault codes P0120, P2135.
  • Try changing or checking the fuel filter, fuel pump.Brick
  • In the old days to much power going up a hill (floor board and don't let up) you could "float the valves" causing a sudden loss of power from over revving the engine hopefully without doing major damage.

    In today's engines with all the computer controls I doubt you could over rev an engine but what code would show up would be dependent on what shut the engine down if any code.

    In the future you might try backing off slightly on the throttle before over revving if that's what happened.
  • Mine did it once on fancy gap , va raining and climbing the mountain. Shut it off, restarted it and light was on but power was restored and got home OK about 60 miles. I put an obd ll scanner on it and it said mas sensor detected lean fuel mixture, replace it. I cleared the codes and never had the problem again.
  • Sometimes it's just a matter of disconnecting the battery, waiting a few minutes (to clear any system capacitors)and then hooking the battery back up. What happens is you basically "reboot" the engines computer. Same type of problem and repair that occasionally happens to your home computer and many other modern electrical devices. I used to have to "reboot" my late wife's Mercedes about every six months when the power windows and mirrors would stop working. I should've replaced the computer chip but I was too cheap and it was a non-critical easily-solved problem.

    Steve
  • The last time this happened to my SIL it was a mas air sensor problem. The motor was like in a limp mode and the check engine light on. We were in high mountains at the time.
  • This probably is not related but we had a problem with our 2011 Suburban where the engine computer and the transmission computer stopped communicating and we had to limp to the dealer at 35 mph. They diagnosed the problem and the solution was to shut off the engine and let the computers reset themselves. When that happened everything worked find again and have had no problem since last February.
    Just goes to show there is some `stuff' going on with these complex machines that we have do idea about.
  • Sounds like the techs are taking the usual throw parts at a problem since the customer is footing the bill. The 8.1 engine does have a rev/speed limiter that will shut things down if your speed exceeds a certain speed or your engine rpm's exceed a certain rpm. The exact limit is programmed in to your electronic control module when the engine is set up for your coach. When this happens, you will get a check engine light but after you shut the engine off and restart it, the check engine light will be off. On my coach the speed is limited to 78 MPH and I think the RPM is limited to around 4500. I've hit the speed limit shut down but never gotten to the RPM limit.