I have recently purchased a Yeti Elegance 2.0 diesel 108 bhp and am not happy with some of its supposed "characteristics". I have never driven a car before that would roll in low gears with absolutely NO throttle whatsoever, but I can accept that this happens with "new" diesel engines. My problem is that INTERMITENTLY when rolling in traffic, or changing down to go round corners or go into car parks etc, particularly in second gear, the engine surges and the car accelerates leaving me feeling out of control and often having to brake to slow the car. In the supermarket car park yesterday I pulled away in first, and the car rolled away with zero throttle, the revs seemed high and I changed up to second only for the car to surge away requiring me to brake. I later tried to replicate this in my own road and stalled the car as I changed up to second.

 

The car is a 15 plate, was bought from a main dealer and has only done 16,000 miles. I took the car back to the garage and drove around with the service manager. Needless to say the problem I have described above didn't manifest itself, but the manager said that any excess revving might be caused by the cleaning process of the "particulate filter" (apparently extra heat needs to be generated to clean the filter). I know little about engines so I don't know if this makes sense but I am an experienced driver and I don't think a car should behave as I have described.

 

What I would like to know is if any fellow Yeti owners have heard of this, experienced similar or know what the problem might be. I realised this has been long-winded but this is causing me to lose sleep and I currently wish I'd never laid eyes on the motor.

 

Thanks for reading and many, many thanks in advance.

 

 

Is this a manual?.

Was this version subject to the “fix”?

If so, perhaps it’s less drivable as a result ie; the anti pollution controls are attempting to meet suitable emission levels by higher revs for quicker warmups.

Duing a regen, the idle speed of the engine is higher, mine was about 1200 rpm which would mean that just releasing the clutch in gear it would seem to run away. Also if a regen is not finished when the engine is turned off it will try and complete it when next up to temp. I suspect that this is what you are experiencing. You may get a regen every few hundred miles depending on how you drive.

In any gear the car will try to stop the engine from stalling. If you go into second when travelling a little slow for the gear the car surges to prevent a stall and probably is going too fast fro you. If you are creeping along in second and it is too fast, braking may cause a stall and you are fighting the engine management keeping the revs up.

 

I have spent many unhappy hours creeping along with no throttle in first and sometimes second gear in traffic. This is a very useful feature I have had for at least the last 12 years in various diesel 2.0 skodas. Prior to that cars used to surge, and the only way to creep was a bit of throttle and slip the clutch.

 

As above, if doing a regen the engine tickover is higher so the car will go faster.

As far as I can see the car is behaving perfectly normally and the OP needs to adapt his driving style to the car.
Like Ken I spent a "happy" half hour stuck in traffic on the A14 in Cambridge today and the ability to crawl along without having to press the throttle was very useful.

2 minutes ago, Llanigraham said:

Like Ken I spent a "happy" half hour stuck in traffic on the A14 in Cambridge today and the ability to crawl along without having to press the throttle was very useful.

 

A14 traffic today  - moi aussi

My Yeti is petrol, however with both my previous diesel Fords I could pull away  in 1st and change up to to 2nd gear and speed up to 20 mph or more - without ever touching the throttle. This was a 'feature' well documented on the Ford forum,  and as stated earlier is apparently due to the 'anti stall' function of the diesel engine management system.

As far as I can tell there are two things here.

 

1. Every car I have owned or driven, from a 1978 Mini upwards, has been able to move along in 1st and usually 2nd using only idle speed.  In fact my bikes will do it too.  This is simply the fact that at idle the engine produce enough torque to move the car slowly against the low gearing.  In newer, fuel-injected cars there is usually a feature that attempts to maintain a good idle speed if any load is placed on the engine (like a heater, or lights or something) through the idle control valve or engine management.  Perfectly normal, not a special “anti-stall” feature, just an engine trying to do its job.

 

2. The reported surging sounds like something is awry.  There’s a difference between chugging along at idle and actually accelerating.  It could be down to clumsy regen mapping, maybe down to “the fix”, but clearly if the car is behaving unexpectedly this should be addressed, rather than suggesting a person can’t drive.

Thank you all for your responses, greatly appreciated. I should point out that it wasn't "rolling without throttle" that I had an issue with, it was the surging which I felt was wrong. Most of you seem to think this is a characteristic of the car whilst one poster thinks there may be something slightly wrong. Not having been able to demonstrate the surging to a technician I think all I can do is adapt to the car as suggested; I'm sure if there is a problem it will probably get worse allowing me to demonstrate it to the dealer. Thanks again for the help.

On 12 October 2018 at 12:11, Smokeyjoe said:

Duing a regen, the idle speed of the engine is higher, mine was about 1200 rpm which would mean that just releasing the clutch in gear it would seem to run away. Also if a regen is not finished when the engine is turned off it will try and complete it when next up to temp. I suspect that this is what you are experiencing. You may get a regen every few hundred miles depending on how you drive.

I am experiencing the surging at some point during every journey, could this still be a "regen" issue as it's definitely more frequent than "every few hundred miles"?

 

The engine will always try to maintain 1000 RPM whilst the car is moving so if you happen to pick a gear where the road speed does not match at least 1000 RPM the car will accelerate. Do you think this is the surging you are feeling?