[Patrick Hayes]

The car is heading back to the dealer tomorrow. This is the second trip, purchased June 24th currently at 2300 miles. It's stalled twice on Sunday driving in heavy stop and go interstate traffic. The stalls occurred while letting the car creep along at idle.This is after having the update installed due to stalling after refueling. Also displayed service electronic throttle errors today on the way home. I'm pushing for the infotainment update to due to Bluetooth issues with the car not dialing area codes from contacts. I'll update after I get it back.

Patrick

 

[AlfaAndy]

Which model Giulia?
Everyone! Please state which model Giulia that you are posting about!

 

[Patrick Hayes]

2017 q2 ti

 

[Alfaholico]

Build dates are important as well....has the same dealer tried to resolve this in the past ? If so, may want to seek out another dealer....just a thought....D

 

[MakeitRain]

I'm guessing he has an early (before April) build date since he still doesn't have the current Infotainment update.

 

[Patrick Hayes]

It's a March build date, the dealer is Hendrick in Concord, they have worked on it once. I'll give them another shot as the next closest dealer is a hour away.

 

[MakeitRain]

I feel for you Patrick and I hope they get it fixed right this time.

 

[Gfrfan]

The car is heading back to the dealer tomorrow. This is the second trip, purchased June 24th currently at 2300 miles. It's stalled twice on Sunday driving in heavy stop and go interstate traffic. The stalls occurred while letting the car creep along at idle.This is after having the update installed due to stalling after refueling. Also displayed service electronic throttle errors today on the way home. I'm pushing for the infotainment update to due to Bluetooth issues with the car not dialing area codes from contacts. I'll update after I get it back.

Patrick

Hey Patrick, sorry to hear this.. I had a "close to this" incident this Sunday.. was in heavy stop-n-go for an hour - about 5 miles in that time at a crawl..3 different times the car "lurched" forward or the throttle wouldn't respond.. I was concerned I be running out of gas, though the tank showed 1/4 but distance to empty had just hit 50 miles.. I never full on stalled, but I felt it could have happened at any moment. At the 1/8 full mark the fuel indicator went to red and "low fuel" came up on the dash.. So I filled up about 1 mile later (10 minutes!!! of crawling). Tough to tell if it was a fuel issue because right at this moment traffic thinned just a bit, and was moving at about 11-12 mph.. and then shortly thereafter just cleared up altogether. Maybe the two issues tied together - 1/4 tank or so of fuel with sustained stop n go and very slow going messes up the car..

Was a real bummer as I was finishing up a marathon Sunday drive trying to get 500 miles of country backroads on one tank.. was at 476 miles when the traffic jam came out of nowhere and completely screwed things.. went from 476 miles traveled with 1/4 tank left to 480 miles at 1/8 and lurching all the way.

Hope your issue gets diagnosed quickly and let us know the outcome. Bruce

 

[AlfaRomeoCares]

The car is heading back to the dealer tomorrow. This is the second trip, purchased June 24th currently at 2300 miles. It's stalled twice on Sunday driving in heavy stop and go interstate traffic. The stalls occurred while letting the car creep along at idle.This is after having the update installed due to stalling after refueling. Also displayed service electronic throttle errors today on the way home. I'm pushing for the infotainment update to due to Bluetooth issues with the car not dialing area codes from contacts. I'll update after I get it back.

Patrick

Good morning Patrick,

Please let us know if you'd like us to become further involved with your next service visit. I'm sorry to hear about this experience!

Kori
Alfa Romeo Social Care Specialist

 

[AlfaRomeoCares]

Hey Patrick, sorry to hear this.. I had a "close to this" incident this Sunday.. was in heavy stop-n-go for an hour - about 5 miles in that time at a crawl..3 different times the car "lurched" forward or the throttle wouldn't respond.. I was concerned I be running out of gas, though the tank showed 1/4 but distance to empty had just hit 50 miles.. I never full on stalled, but I felt it could have happened at any moment. At the 1/8 full mark the fuel indicator went to red and "low fuel" came up on the dash.. So I filled up about 1 mile later (10 minutes!!! of crawling). Tough to tell if it was a fuel issue because right at this moment traffic thinned just a bit, and was moving at about 11-12 mph.. and then shortly thereafter just cleared up altogether. Maybe the two issues tied together - 1/4 tank or so of fuel with sustained stop n go and very slow going messes up the car..

Was a real bummer as I was finishing up a marathon Sunday drive trying to get 500 miles of country backroads on one tank.. was at 476 miles when the traffic jam came out of nowhere and completely screwed things.. went from 476 miles traveled with 1/4 tank left to 480 miles at 1/8 and lurching all the way.

Hope your issue gets diagnosed quickly and let us know the outcome. Bruce

Hi Bruce,

Please feel free to send us a private message if this reoccurs.

Kori
Alfa Romeo Social Care Specialist

 

[sptcoupe]

My wife had this same issue in our QV in stop and go traffic, but I had not had this issue at all, so I let her drive it home with me aboard through the same daily congestion we suffer through on our daily commute home, at rush hour.


It was simple. She had not disengaged the "auto on/off" feature, which I do with every start up. As soon as she did that, all the "almost stalled/lurching" stopped completely.


It is a horrible feature, it is found on almost all new cars, but the Alfa design is the worst I have seen. It shuts the engine down way too soon after a stop, which means it is constantly shutting down/starting the engine, it shakes the whole car on shut down and re-start (which feels a lot like a "nearly stalled" moment), and it is very slow responding to the throttle input on re-start. All of that creates the "nearly stalls/lurches" in stop and go traffic. I hope Alfa updates their design (or at least fires the engineer), but in our experience simply disabling the feature when you start the car eliminates these issues completely.


Hope this helps. And I hope someone out there is working on a patch to permanently disable this feature.

 

[neiltyme]

you aren't alone

The car is heading back to the dealer tomorrow. This is the second trip, purchased June 24th currently at 2300 miles. It's stalled twice on Sunday driving in heavy stop and go interstate traffic. The stalls occurred while letting the car creep along at idle.This is after having the update installed due to stalling after refueling. Also displayed service electronic throttle errors today on the way home. I'm pushing for the infotainment update to due to Bluetooth issues with the car not dialing area codes from contacts. I'll update after I get it back.

Patrick

i'm having issues like this too---near idle (stop and go) and on my drive way the car will act like its about to stall at times or just sputter around like an old impala. I also have the low RPM sputtering as well upon acceleration (well documented here but without any clear resolutions). My dealer is trying to find me a loaner so they can start to investigate. looks like the lot of us are experiencing similar issues and alfa is scrambling yet again to get some software updates issued. I am Jan build date TIQ4 with software updates to fix refuel issue completed.

 

[John_K_348]

Sheesh,
I'm afraid this is a similar "issue" to the limp mode problem where the pedals get tweaked while the car is rolling. It is a simple question of timing. The software needs to be updated so the time window is a lot larger for both instances. Both pedals while rolling should not trigger a light or limp mode for maybe 2 to 3 more seconds so you have time to move your feet and the sensors have time to clear from road noise and so forth. Same for start stop. It should not shut down unless you are in a long set of lights in clear urban traffic and NOT stop and go rush hour on the freeway. I would hate to think that my wonderful ZF automatic would be so close to relieving my poor clutch leg on my horrid commutes into Boston for meetings, only to be foiled by a silly start stop feature with no traffic lights in sight! Even at stop signs this could be a problem!

 

[Gfrfan]

My lurching experience came with stop/start off. The first thing I do when entering the vehicle is disengage this. To be more exact, imagine being stopped in stop-n-go traffic - complete stop. Traffic starts to crawl so you take the foot off the brake. Car naturally starts moving at 4-5 mph.. Then you have a 50-100 meter stretch where traffic opens just a bit so you need to give the car some gas. Speed picks up to maybe 8-10 mph and all of a sudden there's a pretty violent "jerk", or "lurch" forward, where the car shakes and lunges forward. I experienced this 3 diff times during my hour in the "crawl zone". And the one time that we had an open stretch where I got up to maybe 15 mph the car didn't respond to the throttle for ~10 seconds.. just slow as bananas.. Not a lag like we experience from a dead stop; this was like a "i'm tired and don't wanna go any faster" or "jeez, get me out of this constant crawl or I'm gonna shut down"... Thought it might have been out of fuel, but tank was still on 1/4, and then about 10 minutes later went to 1/8 and fuel indicator changed to red. When I did refuel the tank took 13.7 gallons, so there was definitely fuel in the tank. Now, it could be that the Giulia just doesn't like being below ~3 gallons or so in the tank.. Not sure if the scenario would repeat itself on 1/2 tank or more...but undoubtedly I'll be able to test that with how bad road construction on traffic is in greater Seattle.. January build of TiQ4 with previous updates for stalling after refueling..

 

[John_K_348]

Hmm, I wonder about fuel pump on earlier build?

 

[Gfrfan]

Hmm, I wonder about fuel pump on earlier build?

Yes, I worry about fuel pump/injectors...

 

[John_K_348]

There was a thread about that in early cars. We better search...

 

[AlfaGuy]

It's a March build date, the dealer is Hendrick in Concord, they have worked on it once. I'll give them another shot as the next closest dealer is a hour away.

Hi Patrick, I also purchased a Giulia from Hendrick. I have a quad March build date delivered in May. Still on the original software (it starts with a 1). I find Hendrick's service dept is less than responsive and that is bad for the Alfa's reputation. I know is a bit further but give StateLine Alfa a try, in SC but right after the state line off of 77.

 

[hk333]

My lurching experience came with stop/start off. The first thing I do when entering the vehicle is disengage this. To be more exact, imagine being stopped in stop-n-go traffic - complete stop. Traffic starts to crawl so you take the foot off the brake. Car naturally starts moving at 4-5 mph.. Then you have a 50-100 meter stretch where traffic opens just a bit so you need to give the car some gas. Speed picks up to maybe 8-10 mph and all of a sudden there's a pretty violent "jerk", or "lurch" forward, where the car shakes and lunges forward. I experienced this 3 diff times during my hour in the "crawl zone". And the one time that we had an open stretch where I got up to maybe 15 mph the car didn't respond to the throttle for ~10 seconds.. just slow as bananas.. Not a lag like we experience from a dead stop; this was like a "i'm tired and don't wanna go any faster" or "jeez, get me out of this constant crawl or I'm gonna shut down"... Thought it might have been out of fuel, but tank was still on 1/4, and then about 10 minutes later went to 1/8 and fuel indicator changed to red. When I did refuel the tank took 13.7 gallons, so there was definitely fuel in the tank. Now, it could be that the Giulia just doesn't like being below ~3 gallons or so in the tank.. Not sure if the scenario would repeat itself on 1/2 tank or more...but undoubtedly I'll be able to test that with how bad road construction on traffic is in greater Seattle.. January build of TiQ4 with previous updates for stalling after refueling..

Did you have ECM/TCM module update applied to the car? I have base 2.0 that used to give a jolt on stop/start. The update fixed it.

 

[Gfrfan]

Did you have ECM/TCM module update applied to the car? I have base 2.0 that used to give a jolt on stop/start. The update fixed it.

Mine was updated in April after stalling after fueling. Then in early June it went in for a specific patch due to engine cutting out in middle of road - with "service engine" warning appearing. Dealer applied specific patch for cars that have experienced this.. said the car shut down as it thought it was out of fuel (3/4 full at the time).. and cuts off in order to protect itself.

I'll monitor next time in stop-n-go and if it repeats then open a case..