In Jan 2008, my wife was driving our 2001 Mercedes E430 sedan when suddenly the accelerator pedal would not respond such that the car would not accelerate. Luckily, she was on a quiet city street so that she could coast off to the side and stop without any incidence. Later the Mercedes dealer, Sangera Automotive Group, found that the accelerator pedal cable was broken.
The car has only 40,000 miles on it and it was always parked in a garage. We follow all the scheduled services. It is scary to think what if this happened on a congested highway in LA, or when going up a steep hill in SF.
Who has similar experience with any car?
duplicate post, see
http://community.cartalk.com/posts/list/825810.page
I was driving over the Grapevine in a 1998 Plymouth Voyager, with four of my children in the car, trying to get to a wedding in Simi Valley. I was in the fast lane when all of a sudden my car lost power…there was no response when I put my foot on the accelerator. In what I considered a total miracle, I was able to turn my wheel and coast across three lanes of oncoming traffic (this was on a Friday around 5 0’clock) without getting hit, and pulled onto the shoulder. I called for a tow, and, long story short, a repairman at the place I was towed to who was just about to go home saw my tearful face and squirmy children and agreed to look at the car. It was a broken accelerator cable, which he fixed in about 20 minutes using a ziptie. I was able to continue on my way, and, I’m embarrassed to admit, I never had the ziptie replaced…it just did the job until a drunk driver totalled my van about two years after that.
Forty thousand miles is a bit young for a cable failure but there may be a few things that could contribute to it.
The most obvious thing I could see would be if the cable might have been very slightly kinked a bit (either during the manufacture of the car, during a service or repair, etc) and finished off by a lot of stop and go driving.
Usually if a cable is going to fail it gives a bit of advance notice because the pedal may have a very slight roughness to it.
That’s just a wild guess but I would think a careful examination of the old cable would provide a clue as to what caused it to break.