Within the last day or so my 2005 MCSa has been acting very funky. The car would stall for a split second out of nowhere and the ABS, Traction, and Airbag light would come on. I have no idea why this is happening.

My car use to turn off in the middle of the freeway once in a while long time ago which BMW didn't have a fix for. They stated it could be because the car is running either rich or lean. I have no idea if this is whats making the car go crazy these days.

Has this happened to anyone? The car would run fine until it either stalls or jerks forward, almost as if the car lost power for a split second. Than, once again, the ABS, Airbag and Traction lights would come on. I hope someone has an idea why it would do this. Thanks!

 

starts to reach the end of it's life, it can make our cars do crazy things.

 

I would suspect either a poor connection at the battery or possibly an ignition switch going bad.If not one of those there are a hundred other possible causes.When it occurs pay attention to the conditions it happens in[speed,temp,lights on,ac on, etc. to help narrow the possibilities].

 

Get a scan tool and see what that says. I experience the lost power part because of the absolute manifold pressure sensor was failing. it would feel like a mis r sudden lose of power then it would kick back in an be fine. the thing that didn't happen was the airbag and abs light going on. try the scan tool.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I'll list a few things that, to my knowledge, were the conditions when this happened.

-A/C was on
-outside temp was mid to high 60's
-car temp read normal
-lights were not on
-have traveled less than 20 miles in both instances
-when I had my foot off the gas, once it happened at around 5mph and the other time it happened at around 25-30mph

Also, I'm not sure if this will help but for the past few weeks the car has been idling fairly harsh. If the normal idle is around 700rpm the car would start idling around 600-1000rpm. It would just go up and down constantly only during idle. I've been meaning to get this checked too but I have been scared to go to the dealer, for obvious reasons.

 

Get the car scanned--it will tell you a lot. The running rich/lean story is bunk. If it turns out that you have a number of random codes, you may have a ground fault in your engine harness. I'm wrestling with one of those as we speak.

 

Things to check.

Ground Strap on the pass side of engine bay below upper engine mount.
Charging system for your battery
Age of battery. Usually by 5 years they are pretty tired.

And as Helix said, the MINI engine harness is prone to damaged from vibrating up against shields causing intermitent grounding resulting in strange idle, accelleration, and the dash idiot lights going off like a one arm bandit in Vegas.....