Was driving down 95 South to 76ers game the other night with my 7-yr son in the backseat. Went to accelerate and the pedal apparently got stuck. Harrowing experience to say the least. I saw the engine was revving thus thought it had dropped to a lower gear, but the speed kept increasing (rapidly). Tried using the brakes for 3-5 seconds, but it was useless....I realized what was happening, slipped my tow under the pedal and popped it up. No injuries, other than jangled nerves.

What's interesting is that the pedal wasn't caught on any part of the carpet or being obstructed by it, which is what I theorized while bringing the car to a stop. Seems mechanical in some way. I wanted to report it here, since it may be a potentially serious safety issue.

Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon with their XF or XFR?
I'm taking it into the dealer for them to check out, but they didn't seem overly concerned when I reported it (they said they'd never had this complaint before). Is this something worth reporting to Jaguar-Land Rover or the NHTSA?

 

Yikes, that is scary stuff. Could something up in the dash have been pushing on the rod that anchors the pedal to the car?

 

Glad you're safe. Very scary.

I'm very surprised the brakes were ineffectual. Many manufacturers had already switched to braking electronically overriding the throttle even before Toyota's fiasco several years ago, would've thought the the rest followed suit afterwards. Even without an override, Car & Driver did a study and showed even with WOT on some very powerful vehicles, the brakes would bring the car to a halt in short order.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/how-to-deal-with-unintended-acceleration?redirect=no

Cheers,

Will

 

Put your foot on the brake and gas in your Jaguar at the same time with force and the motor will cut out. You have a lot of issues with your car!

 

The brakes may have kept the car from accelerating further....Even may have slowed it down a bit, but with the engine revving as it was, it really didn't seem like it was helping. Everything was moving fairly quickly....Thanks for the link - very helpful information.

I also just read in the owners manual that if I pushed the Start/Start button for 2 secs (or twice within 2 secs), the engine would have been killed.

 

Appreciate the suggestion. I assume that works from a stand-still (in your example), does this kill engine fail safe also work while the car is moving?

I will experiment (carefully) with both. Thanks again.

 

The brakes will ALWAYS stop the car in a two wheel drive situation. That's just physics. Two tires at the rear cannot push two locked tires at the front. This has been shown every time we get one of these situations.

The correct response is to select neutral. The engine cannot over rev as it is electronically limited. Then apply the brakes to a standstill and switch off. Avoid switching off until stopped as no engine means no power assist to the brakes or steering. Newer cars with electric power assist do not have this issue with the steering assist.

Your reaction was natural enough but incorrect and dangerous.

Unintended acceleration just cannot happen in a two wheel drive street car. If you select neutral as you ought to have done a stuck throttle isn't even dangerous. In a manual shift you have two options: select neutral by knocking the gear lever to neutral or pushing in the clutch, the latter is preferred.

In the old days a stuck throttle was much more common than nowadays with drive by wire electronic throttle control. These electronic throttles are redundantly controlled and extremely reliable. I doubt you actually experienced what you thought you experienced. The mind plays tricks on us from time to time which is why skills like driving correctly must be practiced so that correct decisions are made almost automatically.

If this ever happens to you again, in any car, select neutral immediately and brake the car to a safe and controlled stop, then switch off the engine if it is still in one piece.

 

Good advice. Have to remember, it took a little time to even diagnose what the issue was...Had never experienced it before. Now I know what to look for as well as a resolution.

All I can do is get it checked out by the dealer and see what they say.

 

Great advise hard to remember a car that does 0-100 in 8.6 seconds can really get away from you in a stuck throttle situation how fast did you get up to?

 

There is one exception to the scenarios described above: Diesels running on its own lube oil (level too high due to many short journeys and DPF regeneration attempts). If the service light is ignored you can get high enough oil level for this to happen, and using the aftermarket boxes to increase performance by increasing diesel line pressure can fool the system to the extent that the oil level gets too high before the on board diagnostics warn you. If this happens to you stomp on the brakes and hope that the engine stalls before it self destructs. Worst case put into neutral and wait for the self destruction bang. At least it will be engine only, not whole car with driver and passengers careening off.

 

No idea how fast I was going.

I now believe that the couple of times I hit the brakes must have slowed acceleration considerably (although it really did not seem like that, given the high revs and exhaust note).

 

Hi, need some perspective plz. My '11 xfr. When I push the accelerator pedal down all is good until the last 5-10% near the floor. Then there is a big click for the last bit. What the hell? This seems very strange, scary. I got on the floor to see if anything was interfering but nothing is. Significant click at the bottom.
So...what is this?

 

That is the kickdown switch. Depressing the gas pedal fully and hitting this switch will make the car drop to the lowest gear safely possible for maximum acceleration. Almost every automatic transmission car from the major European luxury manufacturers have this switch at the end of the pedal travel. No reason to be concerned.

 

Thanks for the quick response. That makes sense, I'll calm down. Still it is quite an abrupt click.

 

In the early 1980's, my mother had a Cadillac Cimarron, and among the huge list of problems that car had was the sticking accelerator pedal. It happened to me a couple of times on the highway (and I rarely drove the car), but since the car was so slow (0-60MPH in something like 12 seconds), you had plenty of time to unstick the pedal without even getting excited. My parents kept the car about 2 years and the repair folder at the dealership was like an inch think from all the warranty repairs. This was the first and last Cadillac that my parents ever owned.

 

Wow, thread drift

 

lol

 

Jaguar diesels have a throttle, which should stop an engine in case of a over-rev.
Put in neutral, DO NOT switch an ignition off and the throttle will be closed (w/o an air supply the diesel will stop). If you turn the ignition off the engine will be destroyed.

 

I think this is where things initially went wrong, honestly.

 

yes happens to me all the time if I tap the gas’s twice quickly or come to a complete stop when rpm’s are high almost killed me a hand full of times because the car won’t shut off you can’t take it out of gear the break line feels like it’s going to break 2011 xf 5.0 last time speed reach 135 mph with my foot on the breaks it finally stalled the the starting locked up and I drove in the grass until she stops nobody can fix it