Hey guys,

I have a 2011 V12 Vantage and received the following error message last night:
ENGINE WARNING
CHECK FUEL SYSTEM
ENGINE SYSTEM SERVICE URGENT

I was going for a late night drive in the country around 2AM when I got the warning. I had just turned around in a driveway to head back the other direction and floored it in first and then the warning came up. The engine seemed to either enter some safety mode in which it was limiting the amount of fuel to the engine (I think I would have lost a drag race to a golf cart). I was on a one lane road when it happened and knowing I might not be able to get the car to move once it stopped I drove a few miles to an area I could pull off out of the way. I was cruising around 25-30 in an effort to not aggravate any potential issues further.

I stopped, left the engine on and looked under the hood, under the car etc. and everything looked fine. No leaks or any visible issues. I waited 10-15 minutes and then fired her back up and all was well. Since it was 3AM at this point and I was in the middle of nowhere I decided to try and make a run for it. Everything was back to normal and working 100%. The first 20 minutes I was a bit timid in my driving and then decided to get on it a bit and see if I could replicate the problem once I was close to home. Luckily she purred along as normal.

I am thinking at this point that it might have been a temporary fault with a sensor and the car put the engine in a safety mode or something to prevent any damage if there was a fault. Has this happened to anyone else? Also, do you think it is safe to drive or should I take it in and have it looked at even though it is running great at the moment?

Thank you very much in advance. This has been an amazing community and knowledge base for me as I continue to learn more and more about AM.

 

Thought you would've learned your lesson from doing donuts...guess not.

 

Just to clarify as I can imagine after the doughnut story you might be picturing this differently than what happened ;-) I just turned around in a drive way to head back the other direction and from a rolling start accelerated quickly in a straight line. Please tell me if I am wrong but I cannot imagine that being something this car could not handle.

I definitely like to drive the car hard as I don't see the point in buying a 510hp Aston just to drive it like a prius. I did 1 doughnut one time but rather than that the hardest thing the car has encountered would be some vigorous acceleration which is what I would imagine car was built for. Again, this community knows a lot more about AM that I do so if I am wrong in that assumption certainly chime in. I see people on this forum that track their AM though and drive them much harder than I could ever safely do on public roads so I cannot imagine I am doing anything the car cannot handle.

 

Don't worry about the donut naysayers.


My guess is you had a momentary fuel starvation issue that caused a bad lean condition and threw the code. You might want to change the fuel filter and fill the tank with fresh gas. I've had similar problems with a bad tank of gas from a station that didn't get much use -- old gas, or water in it.

 

There's no fuel filter to change.

 

I had the same issue last night.

This happened on the way home.
I accelerated my 4.7l V8 Vantage after a 30mph zone.

At around 4-4500 rpm I got the same message and the engine "ran" without getting gas.
I rolled ~200 feet on the straight, no cars around, to see if she gets back in order but engines stalled when I pressed the clutch.

I removed the key and plugged it right back in and she started with no problems.

I was cruising low speed to see if all works fine what it did.
On the next traffic light around a mile later she stalled when I stopped and pressed the clutch.

I tried to replicate the issue on the last long straight before my neighborhood but she did just fine.

Any ideas?

 

You need to plug it in to see what code it stored.