After church yesterday, started the car and as I began pulling out of my spot I got the "Engine Malfction - Reduced Power" message. I continued driving out of the lot and onto a main street. I didn't notice anything different (I never went past 30 mph though). I pulled in the first available parking lot. I turned it off. Then turned it back on and everything was cleared. No messages in the control panel or anything. Drove home and the car since then has been behaving like normal. Any ideas as to what happened? I tried to do a search and someone suggested dirty gas. I had put in a few gallons of sub 91 octane gas (which I never do!) and the night before I had filled up with the 91 octane fuel. I don't know if that would be it.

Any help is appreciated...

BTW - my CPO/Maint agreement just ran out last week!!!

 

Wow...so nothing??

 

Sorry man - personally haven't had the problem. Seems possible it could be the gas but seems odd that it would give you that error code because of it.

 

I had the problem when I passed a car the other week but I also noticed a power loss. Kinda like no turbo action... I the light went out twice and came back on twice during stops. The third time all was cleared and full power returned. I had an appointment with the dealer anyway so had them check it. Come to find out it was something to do with the turbo waste gate vacuum line. Car is still under warranty so it was repaired at no cost. If you are under warranty, I would suggest having it looked at and hopefully the fault is still stored and can be corrected. If you're not under warranty, then that would be a tough call since the problem is gone and most likely the dealer would charge for telling you what was wrong and or repairing it.

 

I've never personally seen that alert and it seems it was one-incident that cleared with a restart. However, the codes must be stored so your dealer SA can retrienve them. Depending on your dealer and your "relationship" with their service oeprations you probably will get some 'flexibility' for potentially serious issues like this.

I don't think the few gallons of lower octane gasoline was a factor - sounds like an electronic gremlin at work.

One thing I try to do, when I suspect an alert will come and go, is to take a picture with my cell phone. That provides a bit of evidence - esp with a time and date stamp on the photo!

Good luck working out the details.

 

that's strange, usually only happens on the tt n54 motors, but it could be the engine is running on 1 less cylinder.

 

Thanks Luigi -- thats a great tip!!

 

You're welcome!

 

I had this issue and it turned out to be one of the control modules in the ebox... Its not an MPM which is in the trunk but looks similar and is located in the electrical box under the cabin filter on the passenger side of the engine compartment. The engine was noticeably different and had no power at all... on the hwy trying to get to the dealer was miserable... I am driving a 545i with so much power and yet couldnt get it over 25mph! How embarrassing...

 

I had this same issue about a 6 weeks ago.

On a cold start in the morning it would come up with 'engine malfunction, reduced power'.

I drove it to work and when I left for lunch, the message was gone.

This happened 4 days in a row so I took it to the dealership.

The thermostat had to be replaced again (it was also replaced 7 months ago).

I haven't had any issues since.