Hey guys, back again. To bring you up to speed quickly, I recently got my car back from the body shop after 2 months and aside from terrible body & paint work, it's picked up a litany of issues. Some of them I've been able to solve so far with help from other members. To reiterate: Vehicle in question is a '99 VandenPlas

Here's what I'm dealing with now:

The accelerator pedal feels like it's lost at least a good inch of travel between where it sits and the floor. When I put my foot down, the transmission doesn't downshift into 'Kickdown Mode' anymore. It just feels like there's not as much travel in the accelerator as there was previously. Are we just looking at a throttle cable adjustment here?

Side Note: While the car was in the shop, I had the gear selector pin on the shift cable break off so the car would not go into gear. It was taken to a friend's garage, who welded a suitable bolt onto the cable in place the selector pin and put it back into the transmission. This solved the selector problem immediately but I wonder if it's contributed to the throttle issue.

Thoughts?

David

 

Are you talking about a normally aspirated 1999 VDP, or a 2001 XJR?


Either way, first thing I would do is a hard reboot, if the car has been in a shop for months, 2nd check the battery is still 100%, 3rd, throttle cable adjustment, if that does not cure things.


4th, anything more than that, and I would be back to the shop and finding out who did what to the car, and why.


5th, what are they going to do to sort it.

 

Hi David,

I agree with Andrew that the body shop owes you an explanation as to why your car has developed so many issues while in their care.

Checking the throttle cable for slack is easy - lots of threads in the forum on that topic. If the throttle cable was misadjusted for some reason, the ECM and TCM may no longer be in proper sync (both reference the TPS for managing gear shifts). The kickdown switch is mounted under the accelerator pedal, and ideally it should engage simultaneously or just before the throttle butterfly valve reaches its WOT stop. But unless the body shop was working in the driver's footwell, why would they have messed with your kickdown switch adjustment?

One other thought is that when your friend welded the bolt onto your gear selector cable, is it possible that the resulting cable was shorter than it had been and is now out of adjustment?

Cheers,

Don

 

Thanks Andrew & Don for the valuable information. I will chase these leads and get back to you when I get it sorted out.

Just to confirm, it is a 99 VDP in question. 01 XJR was sold last year and I miss it terribly.

Best,

David