Mercury in Limp-home mode

[MVP]

On Saturday afternoon, looking forward to plenty of boating over the BH weekend, we headed out of Chichester Harbour into some very rough seas. I went to accelerate, but at about 2,300 revs the engine started to shake violently.

We headed back into Sparkes, and checked out the prop, tell tail, engine for loose wires, I blew out the fuel filters, checked oil level etc. etc. - everything looking OK except the engine would not rev over 2,300, even in neutral

So, weekend's boating blown, I call the supplying dealer on Tuesday morning - apparently the engine has gone into limp-home mode, i.e the engine has detected a problem and will now only run at low revs until the fault is cleared.

The only thing I can think of is that the rough seas caused the oil level to dip, and this caused the problem.

I now wait for the local service agent to come out, but one of their engineers is on holiday, so who knows how long it will be ;(

Has anyone else experienced this type of problem?

MVP

 

[lovezoo]

And no alarm sounded when this happened? You would have thought if the engine detected a problem it would have sounded some sort of alarm rather than just dropping the revs.

Any clues as to what the engine is other than a Mercury?

 

[MVP]

It's a 115hp 4-stroke EFI 2007 model

No alarm sounded, but there was a lot of splashing and crashing going on for a couple of minutes, so I guess I could have missed it.

Anyway, I've just spoken to the marina, and someone is working on her at the moment - fingers crossed for the weekend

MVP

 

[MVP]

The problem has been identified as the sensor that stops the engine over-revving whilst in neutral. This "feature" has been disabled pending a new part being sourced.

No code stored in the ECU saying this was the problem apparently.

Not what I would have hoped for in an 18 month old / 100 hour engine owned from new....

MVP

 

[Rum_Pirate]

I don't refer to them as Mercraps for nothing.