My 92 Talon left my stranded, starts but stalls instantly.

[Dan2]

Mods in sig.

My '92 TSI AWD left my stranded for the first time in the 3+ years I've owned it today. It stalled at idle (1/2 tank of gas) and when I tried to start it back up, it idled for about a half a second then stalled again. It continuously did this. No throttle response, nothing. I would start it again and it'd slowly drop RPMs to stall, while making clicking sounds from the dash (near ECU). The ECU has new caps as of 11/03 and the car has run excellent until recently, when it started occasionally cutting out at WOT.

I let it sit for 8 hours, then tried to start it up again. It did start but ran a tiny bit rough. I towed it home and will look at it tomorrow. I'm thinking it's either the fuel pump or that relay that turns on when it primes. Any other suggestions? No CE light thrown, MAF-T seems solidly connected still, etc.

 

[steve]

The clicking is the MPI relay. It could be bad or the capacitor replacement job was less than complete. People often neglect to clean and neutralize any electrolyte the old caps leaked and that causes problems allowing the electrolyte to continue to eat away at the circuit traces. I've seen plenty of cold solder joints too on ECU's that people tried to replace the caps.

Check the MPI relay and the power to it starting with the battery terminals and working back.
Try grounding pin 7 on the mpi relay and see if that gets the car to stay running. If so then the ECU may still have problems.

Steve