Accelerator Pedal Sensor Problems of Subaru Forester

This happened while driving through colorado, from crested butte to telluride. I was driving with the cruise control active. As the car went up hills it would automatically shift down, causing the engine to rev into the 4,000 rpm range, which is not safe to drive sustained. In order to combat this I used the manu-matic system to hold the transmission in the higher gear. After a while my check engine light came on. Concurrently, the traction control indicator light came on, and the cruise control light began blinking. Thinking it was an overheating issue, I stopped the car and waited a while. After a few cycles of drive/stop/drive/stop, the lights turned off. Thinking the issue was resolved, we continued on to telluride. Leaving telluride, however, with the same driving behavior, the issue returned, only worse now. When the lights came on the accelerator stopped responding. We were headed uphill at 65mph on a narrow two lane road, with a steep drop off the side, and multiple cars behind us. I pressed the accelerator all the way down and the car did not respond at all. This caused us to begin rapidly decelerating, which was extremely unsafe given the conditions. We pulled over and turned off the car. After a short while of sitting on the side of the road, I turned the car back on and the issue had ceased. The intermittent nature of this issue is scary - at any moment the accelerator may cease to respond, potentially causing a life threatening scenario. Upon reaching our destination, a friend had a code scanner and pulled code "p2138 - throttle pedal position sensor switch d e voltage correlation. " there's no official documentation from Subaru, that I could find, on the issue, and browsing various Subaru forums turns up a lot more questions than answers.

See all problems of the 2011 Subaru Forester 🔎.

I drove into garage at about 1 m. P. H. And put the car in park. After idling for about 3 seconds the engine accelerated to 2,800 r. P. M. And stayed there,I couldn't get it to slow down. I pressed on the accelerator many times,it wouldn't slow down or speed up. It just stayed at the same speed. Pressing the brake pedal didn't do anything. I got it stopped by turning off the ignition. When this happened the check engine light came on. I got code p2138. I am replacing the accelerator pedal position sensor as I am afraid to drive it. The car is exactly 5 years old,I bought it new. It has 16,552 miles on it now. I was very lucky it was in park when it did this. I hope the new part fixes it. After 4 restarts the check engine light went out. I took it for a short drive,and the engine kept wanting to run fast. Two days later it seems ok,it slows down now.

See all problems of the 2015 Subaru Forester 🔎.

While driving, the car experienced: -loss in power (stuttered a couple times), then completely stalled -we had to coast it to the side of the road -a few hours later we tried starting it again and it ran fine -immediately before the problem, the car had been driven for ~15 minutes with no issues, there was no rain, it was a dry day, no other potential causes to be noticed -this exact issue occurred about a year ago and the problem could not be identified, it has been driving fine ever since, except in the winter the idle will sometimes fluctuate (unsure if this is related) this stall condition could be very dangerous if it occurs on the highway, at an intersection, etc. It produced a check engine light and code p2138 when read with a obdii scanner. Unfortunately the problem was intermittent and was not able to be repeated. The factory troubleshooting procedure was followed to determine if it was a problem with the pedal sensor, the harness, or the engine control module. All passed the tests. So we are left with a potentially dangerous electrical issue that can't be verified to be fixed because it can't be recreated.

See all problems of the 2005 Subaru Forester 🔎.