Last night, I was slowing down for a bend, and went to change down a gear (one foot on brakes, one foot on the clutch, so no acceleration) and as I pushed in the clutch, the car sort of stalled. A heap of lights came on the dash and the car shuddered, so I think it must have almost stalled and just picked up again. Luckily there was pub car park right there that I turned into.

The engine was still running, so I had servo and power steering, but the amber engine management light was on.
I switched off, and after checking belts looked ok, started up and all was well.

Is this a problem starting to emerge?
Or just possibly a one off thing - I did have my lights on and the fan set on 1 or 2. It was a little chilly last night.

The car doesn't have lumpy idle or anything, it's rock solid.

It sounds like a one off problem, how much of a journey home did you have after the event?

I'd just take it steady, make sure you have your RAC card or similar with you just in case, and if it happens again, investigate.

Do you have a copy of MES? Maybe you could plug in and see if she brought up any fault codes when it happened?

The journey back was only another 5-10 minutes. I did wonder about the battery, but it started up again with no hesitation at all.
Yep, got my AA card with me at all times - already had to use it once with this stilo. It was just a coil pack that time, and luckily they had one in stock in the van
Unfortunately I haven't got any diagnostics cables or software. I have thought about it though - are the £20 eBay ones any good? Or are they a waste of time?

Thanks for the reply

By the eBay ones, I mean for eg, the OBD/OBD2 scanners with a little LCD that supposedly reads off the codes

personally, id investigate. Im not meaning to scaremonger, but that sort of occurrence is usually an indication of an emerging issue.


I did think battery at first, though why I do not know, but the EML came on and a code will be stored, so I would check that - perhaps a brake light blew or something?


Get the codes read if you can, and start from there

You can download a free copy of MES and buy the relevant cables from eBay. Have a quick look on the MES site for the cables you need, but if its just the faults reading, I don't think you need to worry about all the "soldering this and that"
I cant comment on the cheap fault readers unfortunately! Maybe someone is local with a copy?

Is the clutch ok? Can you confirm it was fully depressed? You might have just slowed down too much in a high gear without depressing the clutch?

Thanks for the replies.
I've been driving it all weekend and it's been perfect. Driving like a dream.
However, if anything does come back I will definitely invest in some diagnostics cables.
In reply to the clutch question, my revs weren't that low when I changed down, perhaps 1500 ish. It happened when my clutch was down. The clutch is only about 300 miles old

It was a chilly night, the car had been laid up for most of the week due to having had some suspension work, and I had my lights and fan on 1 or 2, so I'm hoping the problem won't come back.
The car is almost always used daily, with the occasional Sunday off.