Was on an outing yesterday into deepest Devon, about a 4 hour drive from 'chez moi'. About 2 hours into the jouney, an articulated lorry carrying straw bales managed to pull-out of a farm into my path on a two-lane road. Double lines and oncoming traffic kept me behind the truck for 5 or so miles whilst a blizzard of straw bits blew off the untarped load. When I say blizazrd, the stuff filled the air enough to lower visibility. Grrrrr........... But a brief bit of dual carriagway eventually saw me blast past the truck and into clear air at last. That said, I had been keeping an eye on the water temp - probably an irrational thought but I had images of a blocked rad- but all seemed OK. Until the next bit of open road that is.
When I tried to accelerate, the car only responded weakly with what felt like drastically reduced power and an unwilliness to rev. Although no warning lights appeared, it felt like a typical 'limp-home' safety mode had kicked in. All that I could imagine was that some straw bits had found their way into the air-filter and were restricting flow. I pulled into the first laybye and opened the bonnet but there was nothing else to be seen apart from a few random straw bits wedged into nooks and crannies.
So I abandoned the trip and drove (slowly) back to the supplying dealer near my house. To their credit, they took the car out for a test drive immediately but when the techie returned he said that the car was 'going like a train, guv". I tried it myself and all was back to normal. A restart of the engine seemed to have re-booted the system. A quick VAGCOM later and a number of old faults popped up - nothing seemingly relevant though. So they cleared them off and suggested driving normally for a few days then returning to see if any new faults had occured. So dust across the MAF sensor perhaps?
