car doesn't accelerate past 2k RPM... "safe mode" ?
 

after about 70 mi. of uphill mt driving, I pulled aside the road to figure out if i was lost or not. I left the car running... when I finally figured it out, I pulled back onto the highway only to find that the car would not go over 2k RPM in all 5 gears.

I pulled over again, and then hoped it would go away... I turned off the car and called a friend to get directions again.

After that was done, I started the car up and went on my way... no issues. I did experience something similar but it was only in 3rd gear and it happened once when goin up a bridge. I don't understand what the issue is here...

I did not get any CEL or felt any power loss before or after the incident.

I did smell some rotten eggs at the end of the trip.... but I am inclined to believe that it was the environment where I had parked it into... marine harbor/docks. I didn't get that smell when I got back home.

I also remember a post long ago about the ECU setting into safemode if something happens... what is that?

thank you.

simliar thing happened in my 97 auto. my back wheels were up on a curb and i floored it and spun around and flew out of the parking area. once i got onto the road the car wouldn't go above 2.5k rpms. it wouldn't shift into 1st or 2nd gears either, R and N were fine. turned it off and back on and problem solved. freaked me out for a good 30 minutes or so...how does this safe mode get activated? and what use does it have...maybe its unrelated and my tranny is screwed...

its your mafs...same thing happend to me...i actually had a bad power wire leading into my mafs, but i was getting mafs codes..good luck

yep mafs when my alternator died it screwed with my power and my car would not rev. Your could hear the intake gurgaling.

3rd on the maf, check the connection to make sure its not corroded or loose, to prevent it from happening again.

why does shutting the car off and restarting it fix the problem?

the car revs just not past 2.5k. it is still drivable in this situation...it just doesn't matter, in my case, if i had my foot 1/2 way down on the gas or had it floored it went at 2.5k rpms...odd...

I don't think that its the MAF. This has happened to me once before and I have have been getting very consitent values from my MAF. (.8-.9Ibs/min at idle all the way up to 30+Ibs/Min at near redline) Also, I have replaced my MAF once already. It happened to me after doing a burnout in the grass. It was right after a hot lapping session so I thought it was messed up from that. I guess not though. Some kind of safe mode definitely.

Torgus, your situation and Nadir's situation seem like two different problems. Nadir as he posted seems like he has a 5spd, so there isn't a safe mode on his transmission, since he cant revv past 2.5K rpm it looks like his MAF is at fault. Now you Torgus, your situation is because of excessive wheel spin. Once it senses that the wheels are slipping and spinning excessively, the tranny goes into safe mode for its own protection. It causes the car to start off in second gear instead of first gear. By turning the car off for about a minute or so, the computer resets and safe mode turns off and you have all of your gears again. But Nadir's situation is most likely a MAF sensor, same thing happened to my friends 2k 5spd , we bought a new MAF sensor and everything was ok again. hope that helps.

Now that MAX240 reminded us that Nadir is 5Spd I would agree that it is MAF related. This happened to me when I was doing my intake. Because I did a homemade intake, I had to chop the flange off the inward side of the MAF. Before doing this I put masking tape over the post to protect the resistor. I got it done and forgot to remove the tape. I started it up and it would rev past 2.5K. I then remembered about the tape and took it off. So it sounds like your MAF is being intermitantly faulty yet its weird you didn't get a CEL. The ECU assumes that the engine is idling because the MAF isn't telling it that a sh!t load more air is flowing in. So the mixture becomes extremely lean and doesn't even create enough power/tq to accelerate the engine. This is just me guessing.

hmmmmmmm never thought it could be the MAF.

Thanks guys, I will look into it.

Hmm...... could over heating cause this? For some reason, my oil temp gauge was all the way up to the H.

I have to check my coolant!

I'm guessing your coolant temp right. If I'm not mistaken the gauge in the cluster is for coolant temp. Unless you installed a seperate oil gauge. I have no idea of the overheating issue. If it is MAF a used one can be had for about $150. At the dealer they are $400+.