Out of commission due to cold

[omnitonic]

I went to run some errands Friday evening, to hit everywhere before stores started closing for the holiday. It was 0°F at the time, and the Jeep had been sitting for about eight hours. I didn't give the cold much thought with a 2021 JLU with the Pentastar. Modern, fuel-injected engines have been reliable at all temperatures for years.

I put the Jeep in gear, pulled out, and started noticing trouble when I hit second gear. I had a serious wheel imbalance. I must have gotten water inside one or more of the tires with my portable air compressor. Remember the thread when I asked what people do to avoid that problem, and everybody said don't worry about it?

I'm thinking the imbalance made the computer unhappy. I'm hoping that's all I'm dealing with. I turned onto the highway, and the Jeep went into limp mode. The dash lit up with all sorts of warnings about traction control and something else, and the check engine light came on. No throttle response. Top speed 15 mph. At idle, the engine races, then slows down, then races, and it sounds like it's misfiring horribly.

I ended up coming home by off-roading through a series of businesses that aren't supposed to be connected. At least it could still negotiate a drainage ditch and similar obstacles in this condition. I fired up the 1977 Ford F350 with the 390 FE (retrofit, not original to the truck), and while the starter sounded weak as a new born kitten, the damn thing actually fired up, and I managed to get it warmed up and run all my errands without stalling it out or shutting it off. Score one for the 45 year old Ford.

I am rather less impressed with my $60,000 Nopar.

The first order of business today is I'm going to go jack the damn thing up and take the wheels off and bring them inside to thaw. Then I will try to suck the water out. I'm going to run the codes with J-Scan now that it's a balmy 15°F out there, and maybe I can figure out something to do about the rest of these problems. Maybe.

It was raining like hell when I parked the Jeep in the wee hours of Friday morning. I figure the combination of salty rain getting driven into every nook and cranny, followed by an impressive plunge in temperature must have caused something bad to happen somewhere. It would be anything. I hope like crazy this thaws out and goes away without a tow truck to the dealership, because I'm pretttttyy sure I'm going to be fucked on that score. Their shop will be closed for the entire weekend, and it's always seriously overbooked, with long wait times for appointments.

Here goes nothing. I always wanted to take four wheels off a Jeep in deep freezing temperatures. Yay!

Oh, and Jeep Dog died Thursday. This Christmas sucks. Bah humbug!

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[Kleiss1]

I’ve never heard of that before.

 

[GtX]

Sorry about the pup.

 

[Heimkehr]

Mike,
Your Jeep isn't that old, but the Christmas light-like display of dashboard warning lights has on occasion been demonstrably walked back to failing batteries. Possibly the steep drop in temperature (we presume your Jeep was/is parked outside?), paired with the demand of cranking the engine in such temps, created a condition that served to mimic the seemingly unrelated electrical gremlins that a battery near the end of its practical service life can suggest.

Give some thought to load-testing your battery, and/or observing the resting voltage, to determine if it should be part of your troubleshooting process. Even if it's determined to be in good health, give some thought to adding a tender pigtail (and using it! ) as a prophylactic measure.

 

[omnitonic]

I left my tablet in the Jeep and didn't upload the codes where I could share them. Seems fairly obvious. Something about throttle actuator blocked by ice. It actually said "blocked by ice." Something about RPM limit being imposed. Something about ABS sensors and engine rotation sensors. Something about windshield parking motor being grounded out (wipers were frozen in place, and accidentally left on.)

Throttle seems to have resolved. It works in the driveway. Revs up to 5,000 and anything in between.

I know there's ice in the tire, because it was going whump whump whump up the street like I was driving on square wheels. I'm focusing on the one tire that had markedly lower pressure readings, which is also usually the first tire I air up after wheeling. Normally, all the tires are about even, and it hasn't been losing air, so I figure the lower temperature is due to being colder than the others.

It's in the house with the space heater cranked, but I have no clue how the hell I'm going to get the water out. Too bad I never realized my dream of buying a tire machine.

I think the engine speed stuff was caused by the engine stumbling and running like shit, and I think the ABS stuff was caused by the whumpa whumpa whumpa.

Proceeding with that plan.

Sorry about the pup.

It was very sudden. She was old and creaky, and we thought maybe three years, maybe one, maybe only six months We had no idea the tally was already down to 0.

By the time she showed symptoms of a problem (other than normal old dog issues), her cancer was so advanced that it was already time to put her down. That vet would NEVER recommend euthanasia unless things were BAD. It would not have been treatable if it had been detected earlier, so I guess it was better not to worry about something that was totally inevitable.

It's very bizarre not having a dog. I was just in the frozen ass Jeep, messing around with J-Scan when the thought occurred to me, "I've been out here too long. She's in the house begging to get to me. I should go let her out so she can sit in here with me."

Then I remembered. Damn! This is heartbreaking. I'm handling it okay though. I'm trying to find another dog, not studying up on how to tie a noose for myself. I'll get through it.

Mike,
Your Jeep isn't that old, but the Christmas light-like display of dashboard warning lights has on occasion been demonstrably walked back to failing batteries.

It's POSSIBLE, but my gut says probably not. I've seen cheap three-year batteries go for eight years if the driver keeps them charged up, and I only make short hops once a week. I had just been through a cycle of start, 40 miles, stop, repeat. Even if the stupid aux battery is rearing its head, it didn't feel like a battery issue at all. Plus the laundry list of codes all tell a believable story.

It's a good thought though. If this thing ever spent any time sitting at those temperatures, putting a battery minder on it would be a good plan.

 

[Fudster]

...put my dog down at Thansgiving Michael @omnitonic. Doing so was as necessary for the animal as it was heartbreaking for my family. I'm sorry for your loss.

 

[jaymz]

There’s no sensor in your Jeep that knows that anything is being blocked by ice.

And unless you mistakenly hooked a water hose to your valve stems instead of an air hose, there’s no way in hell that there’s enough water in those tires to freeze and create that much of an imbalance.

You’ll likely find that you’ve got a marginal battery that got its ass kicked by the cold.

 

[Old Dogger]

Very sorry to hear that about your Dog. I know, they become like Family.

 

[azwjowner]

There’s no sensor in your Jeep that knows that anything is being blocked by ice.

And unless you mistakenly hooked a water hose to your valve stems instead of an air hose, there’s no way in hell that there’s enough water in those tires to freeze and create that much of an imbalance.

You’ll likely find that you’ve got a marginal battery that got its ass kicked by the cold.

To elaborate further, even if you pumped your tire with air at 100% humidity that was warm at 20° C (68° F), so it holds a lot of water, that is only 17.3 grams per cubic meter. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Kinetic/watvap.html#c1

Even if you had 35"x12.5" tires, that's only roughly 5.3 cubic feet or 0.15 cubic meters of air. So the most water that can be in a tire is 2.6 grams. A 1/4 ounce wheel weight is 7 grams. There's no way frozen water affected your tire balance.

 

[Spank]

I'm thinking the imbalance made the computer unhappy. I'm hoping that's all I'm dealing with. I turned onto the highway, and the Jeep went into limp mode. The dash lit up with all sorts of warnings about traction control and something else, and the check engine light came on. No throttle response. Top speed 15 mph. At idle, the engine races, then slows down, then races, and it sounds like it's misfiring horribly.

Battery, battery, battery.

It's POSSIBLE, but my gut says probably not. I've seen cheap three-year batteries go for eight years if the driver keeps them charged up, and I only make short hops once a week. I had just been through a cycle of start, 40 miles, stop, repeat. Even if the stupid aux battery is rearing its head, it didn't feel like a battery issue at all. Plus the laundry list of codes all tell a believable story.

Almost 99% of the time, the computer going apeshit is a battery issue. It will freak the fuck out and toss out all sorts of random problems if the voltage isn't damn near perfect. The JK does this exact same thing, too, including the traction control warning.

Sure, it's entirely possible it may not be the battery, but always start with the simplest explanation and work your way up.

My 2018 with almost 90k on the odometer sat in -10 weather for two days straight. Fired right up this morning without hesitation.

 

[nU7OuxIx]

There’s no sensor in your Jeep that knows that anything is being blocked by ice.

And unless you mistakenly hooked a water hose to your valve stems instead of an air hose, there’s no way in hell that there’s enough water in those tires to freeze and create that much of an imbalance.

You’ll likely find that you’ve got a marginal battery that got its ass kicked by the cold.

I thought it was a weird code so I googled it and found this. Maybe there is something about it...


OBD-II Code P2072 is defined as a Throttle Actuator Control System - Ice Blockage

Don't know if P2072 applies to a jeep or not though.

 

[jaymz]

I thought it was a weird code so I googled it and found this. Maybe there is something about it...


OBD-II Code P2072 is defined as a Throttle Actuator Control System - Ice Blockage

Don't know if P2072 applies to a jeep or not though.

That’s an interesting find. I wish I was at work so I could access my diagnostic/repair info for Jeep specific codes. I would have to assume at this point the the ecm detected slow or no throttle plate movement relative to pedal position and assumed ice due to ambient air temp readings. There’s definitely nothing that specifically detects ice in the throttle body.

 

[#4Jeep 1st Wrangler]

I HAVE NOT looked at the throttle body on the 3.6 litre.... older throttle bodies used to have a small coolant line attached (to warm the throttle body in cold temperatures)....coolant passage. (Don't think they use this any longer)
That code could be from older vehicles?

 

[omnitonic]

OBD-II Code P2072 is defined as a Throttle Actuator Control System - Ice Blockage

That's the one. It doesn't detect ice, it assumes ice after trying strategies to move a throttle plate that isn't responding as expected. If the throttle plate isn't doing what the throttle positioning sensor is telling it to do.

Water could have gotten into the connector and frozen and pulled it apart a little, causing an electronic issue. Water could have been present inside the air intake itself, causing a mechanical issue. Throttle was gimped by the computer to avoid engine damage.

If there was water in the intake, it was from humidity. I've put the intake through hell romping through waist deep mud puddles, so I know the rain didn't get in. Could there be enough humidity for the resulting frost to impede the butterfly, mechanically? Seems unlikely to me.

To elaborate further, even if you pumped your tire with air at 100% humidity that was warm at 20° C (68° F), so it holds a lot of water, that is only 17.3 grams per cubic meter. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Kinetic/watvap.html#c1

Even if you had 35"x12.5" tires, that's only roughly 5.3 cubic feet or 0.15 cubic meters of air. So the most water that can be in a tire is 2.6 grams. A 1/4 ounce wheel weight is 7 grams. There's no way frozen water affected your tire balance.

It's interesting to look at the math. I never did that before. I know it's possible to get enough water into a tire to cause problems, because I've seen it with my own eyes as a tire tech. How it got there in those cases, I cannot say for sure.

I think you're being optimistic in your figuring though. It's not just humid air, it's actual water too. I have, at times, blown enough raw water out of the air hose that I could "spray paint" with it. I've taken steps to try to minimize this problem, but I have no doubt I've blown a little water into those tires, in addition to whatever condensed out of humid air to add to the volume. It wasn't just one filling either, but a blast of water every time I aired the tires back up. I think it could have added up to enough water to cause the imbalance.

Maybe not though. You are totally correct to point out that it would take a LOT of water to notice. These things had like 7 oz. of weight on them, and most of it fell off, and I never noticed that.

It would probably take something like a pound of water to cause a really serious imbalance, and that would be something like two cups or 0.5 L.

I admit, it doesn't seem likely, no matter how many times I aired up.

If there had been slush on the road, that could have explained it. Slush frozen into nooks and crannies can cause horrific imbalance problems. That wasn't the case here though.

I dunno. It warmed up to 15°F today, and the Jeep drove fine. I'm hoping this whole scenario was a freak thing from getting massively wet and then dropping 32°F over a short time. But I should go get the batteries checked, or just go ahead and buy new ones. Factory batteries are usually junk.

Good time to give serious thought to replacing the stupid aux battery with a real battery. I do NOT have a budget right now though. Medical bills, taxes, I finally paid to divorce my ex, and I am really tapped out just now.

 

[omnitonic]

I am really tapped out just now.

Hah, and I bought the first new gun in many years, so there is that. At least one of the things that tapped me out was fun, at least.

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