After having some problems withpinging and a sluggish engine during full throttle at 3800 rpm & above, I got some good info from the forum that it might be VIAS related. After taking it to a dealer and mentioning VIAS, they thought it might just be a case of resetting the ECU.

So after they did, it ran worse! The service mgr. said that it had to "Self-Learn" for approx. 50 miles. I had heard this term a few times on this forum, and also did a search, but wasn't able to find much info about this term. I'm guessing it's a sort of averaging system that sees how the car is driven and then pinpoints correct settings for optimal performance.

As noted in a few posts I searched for, it seemes to be prevelant whenever a battery was changed (which mine was about 2 months ago at the dealer).

But I have a few questions from the forum gurus:

1. Why did it run so bad when I first tried the car? (Full throttle was stumbling all over the place, and it almost wouldn't shift into 2nd with the auto trans).

2. Should I drive it easy for the first 50 miles?

3. Was he indeed correct at saying 50 miles?

4. Does it affect only the engine?

5. Basically, what is actually going on during the Self-Learn period?

Thanks in advance,

Bill

2000 SE