So I tried to climb a steep hill today in low range. I got close to the crest and one of the front wheels came off the ground, so I backed out before it rolled over. Even with applying some brake, I rolled back down the hill pretty fast since it was so steep. It was still in low gear in drive. When I got to the bottom it had shut off. It took a couple abnormally long cranks to get it going again. No CELs or anything else though. Ran fine the rest the day. So what happened? My guess is either the engine got revved to high by being in low that the cpu couldn't keep up with fuel, or the transmission did a safety shutoff since it was in drive and moving so quickly backwards. Any thoughts?

 

Stalled because you were in drive going backwards quickly? I've stalled autos before.

 

Exactly. I've never stalled an auto for this reason, so this is normal?

 

Your tranny did not cause the engine shut down, do you have a service engine light on, if so what are the fault code numbers. My initial idea is a possible enerita switch that may not have totally set it self.

 

I'm not sure with the Disco, but I've stalled an auto subaru RS doing an ebrake slide.

 

How low was the level of gas in the tank? I'm thinking that a low fuel level combined with a steep climb angle uncovered the pickup in the tank and it shut of due to lack of fuel. When you got to the bottom, the angle flattened out and the fuel pickup was covered again. Just a thought.

 

No fault codes and runs fine now. It had over 3/4 of a tank. It did act like a fuel starvage after though. It took two long cranks to get it going, then it was stumbly for a second on idle. I revved it a few times like an old carb engine (which i know doesn't matter with efi) and it was fine. So I kept calm and rovered on .

 

Way of life!

 

You stalled it by going backwards while still in drive.
The engine was still trying to move you forward but it was overruled by the weight of the truck and the wheels turning the transmission backwards.
If you were going fast enough you would have even spun the engine backwards and thats why it was hard to start and sputtered for a min or two.

If you take a auto trans car, drive it over 50mph, shift to neutral, shut the engine off, turn the key back on, drop it back into drive, the engine will start without using the key.
I've done it before on several cars when I was a kid.

 

Ok, that's kinda what I was thinking. I guess worse case would be the timing chain jumping off track by the engine going backwards? Like I said though, it runs fine, so I suppose all is good.