Hey guys,

So I was driving my 2012 V8V Sport Shift II home the other day. I was in 2nd gear and for some reason, without thinking, I accidentally downshifted into first gear. This took my RPMs to about 7,000 maybe? Afterwards, my car went into some type of limp mode. The dash showed 1st gear but when I accelerated, it was like being in N. I pulled both paddles to go to N and shut the car off on the side of the road. I got some type of error message on the dash but I forgot what it said. It took me about 3 tries to get the engine to start again (about 1 minute all together - seems like an eternity when traffic is starting to build behind you). No issues since. Anyone here have any ideas as to what happened?

 

System protection against abuse.

 

Count yourself lucky you don't drive a manual. Then you would be in a world of hurt.

 

I was hoping it would be something like that...so nothing to worry about moving forward?

 

The ECM caught up with you and temporarily shut you down. In general engine overspeed is bad(tm) as it usually involves a valve floating off the spring (spring can't keep up) and then the valve makes contact with the piston (bad(tm)). Once can also break a piston (bad(tm)) or connecting rod (yes, also bad(tm)).

I had someone offer me a 3 year old BMW 335i that the guy down shifted from 5th to 2nd after owning it for less than a week. Smoked the motor, the car was valueless. Eventually he put a motor out of a wrecked 335 (took a while that wasn't totaled in the front) and got it back on the road. A $14K shift!

 

i'm surprised it would let you do that. after all, the engine software knows the rpm, the gear you're in and what gear is requested and the ratios of each gear. it should be able to predict with some assurance if the rpm's will be harmful and prevent the shift from occurring. of course, if the check can be disabled somehow, all bets are off.

 

Agreed. I’d understand if the needle was bouncing at redline but it only to about 7000 RPMs. So why would it panic like this?

 

You can’t overrev the engine by downshifting. SSM won’t engage the selected gear if it results in exceeding the redline. The message was probably a clutch overheat or a limp mode or similar. You should be fine.

 

That’s good news!

 

And for reference, the redline seems to be at 7,200, 7,400, 7,600 or 7,800 depending on the tune and any change to internals. Mine seems to be 7,600 now after a tune but no changes to internals.