Zafira "kangarooing"

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Mon 24 Apr 2006 23:12
Zafira "kangarooing" - johnny
My Zafira has a tendency to kangaroo when first pulling away on a cold engine, probably comes in about 1500 rpm, lasts a few seconds and then doesn't recur until next start up. Also had one incident on a cold day in January when I was really struggling to crawl in heavy traffic, again seemed OK once warmed up properly. Are there ant easy to access sensors that can be checked?
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Tue 25 Apr 2006 09:23
Zafira "kangarooing" - SpamCan61 {P}
SWMBO's Zafira does this to a degree, as you say worse from cold - I have a feelig there was an ECU software upgrade at some point to fix this - check out the car by car breakdown section for starters.
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Thu 27 Apr 2006 14:25
Zafira "kangarooing" - DozyG
Not sure if this is of any help but on Ford HCS engines, the idle control motor has a switch which determines when you've taken your foot off the accelerator (ie the ECU needs to take over control of idle speed itself).

These sometimes malfunction such that you accelerate away, the switch glitches, making the ECU think that you're idling and therefore cutting back of fuel in a major way. This causes the car to kangaroo in the way you describe.

I don't have any experience of vauxhall engines but this is what i'd be investigating if my fiesta behaved in the way you described.

G
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