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Car dies randomly when running

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MikeL18

10+ Year Contributor
43
0
Sep 27, 2008
St. Louis, Missouri
I was sitting in the line at McDonalds and then my car just shuts off, kind of hard. I tried turning it back on but it just sat there and cranked. So I had someone push it over into a parking space and let it sit while my dad came up. When my dad got there, I tried starting it and it started right up. So I pulled out of the parking space and drove about 20 feet, then the car died again. Let it sit for about 5 more minutes then was able to drive it home.

We thought it might be the fuel filter, so we went through the hassle of replacing it. It definitely needed to be replaced, but we took the car back out after that and it still did the same thing. Except now it's getting worse. We couldn't even get it to stay running long enough to bring home, so it's sitting in a parking lot over night.

The only mod it has is a AEM CAI. When the car shuts off you can hear it like it's straining to suck in air but I don't think it's related to the CAI. We think it may be the coil pack, but the engine was rebuilt two years ago by someone, and the coil pack still looks pretty new.

Tomorrow I'm going to drive it over to the Firestone near there and have them look at it. We think it may be the fuel pump now, so we'll have them pressure test it but other than that I have no clue what it could be. Any ideas?
 
Mine did exactly the same a few weeks earlier after I rebuilt the engine. The car would stall randomly and if you drove into a bump or rough gravel it stalled (triggered by shock). Turns out it was a wiring harness of ECU+ piggyback (near the stock ecu) wiring harness that wasn't securely connected.

So I'm thinking electrical problem. I'd first check the electrical connections in the engine bay for looseness. Checking ECU's connection harness wouldn't hurt. This might not be the correct answer but checking these things doesn't take too much time.
 
It doesn't seem like anything triggers it to shut off. It runs fine after it's been sitting for awhile though. We brought it back home after I made that post and let it sit running for a bit. I'd say it ran idling for about 5-10 minutes and then just shut off without us touching it.
 
We didn't check, it's had the CEL on for awhile now due to other problems that have already been solved.

But it turns out that it was just the coil pack or crankshaft position sensor wiring that was loose. Car runs fine now, hasn't died since. I'm probably going to replace the coil pack anyway since we've replaced just about everything else that you would during a tune-up.
 
We didn't check, it's had the CEL on for awhile now due to other problems that have already been solved.

But it turns out that it was just the coil pack or crankshaft position sensor wiring that was loose. Car runs fine now, hasn't died since. I'm probably going to replace the coil pack anyway since we've replaced just about everything else that you would during a tune-up.

Yeah, my girlfriend has a 98 Tracer that was doing something similar to what you were describing. She's getting it in soon. Pretty sure it's a coil packs, her dad thinks fuel pump.

Question for anyone who knows. Her dad thinks that it's the fuel pump because shes always broke and generally only puts a quarter to half a tank into her car at a time. I always tell her to fill all the way up, but can regularly running on empty really destroy the fuel pump?
 
Ok guys, it wasn't fixed after all. :(

It was running just fine last night, but I took it on the highway this morning and it died while cruising at about 60mph, luckily there was an exit right there.

I'm starting to think that it may be the fuel pump too. Today when it died a couple times when taking it home, I would let it sit there with the key in the 'on' position, and after awhile I would hear the fuel pump. So I turn the key, and what do you know, it starts. Think this may just be a bad connection or is the fuel pump itself bad?

If it helps, when I turn the key to the 'on' position, the CEL flashes 3 times, then stops, then flashes 3 more times then goes away. Does this mean anything?
 
It was the Crankshaft Position Sensor. It's fixed for good now hopefully.

It was covered in oil due to oil leaking from the top of the valve cover and onto the back of the engine. That shorted the connection for some reason after the engine got to running temperature. So we bought a new sensor and replaced it (which took a lot more time than it was supposed to) and now it's good.
 
Ugh.

The new sensor failed after two days. That's what you get for going to Advance Auto Parts. I got a used one from a parts guy off ebay and put it in, the car ran great for about a week. I even went to a Mitsu meet which was about an hour and 20 minutes from my house and I got there and back no problems.

But I started it up today and it died after idling for about 15 seconds. It started again right away so I drove it for a bit and it kept wanting to die while driving. Got home and it died as soon as I pulled inot the driveway. I tried starting it up and the RPM's went really weird and the car sounded like it was struggling to get past 500 rpm, then died. I tried starting it again, it cranked for a few seconds then started right up and idled just fine for a bit before I turned it off.

So now I'm really stuck. I have no idea what it could be, but something tells me it might be the ECU.
 
when it shuts off does the check engine light come on and then turn off like when you 1st turn the key to the run position? if this happens its likely that your ecu has a couple of bad capacitors. mine would randomly reset the ecu but wasn't as bad as yours where it actually shuts off. it would reset ecu and then keep running. the engine wouldn't shut off on mine. it just lost power for a fraction of a second but all the lights in the instrument cluster would come on like as if i just turned the car on. i would also hear the relay click over in the center console area where the radio is. i opened the ecu and sure enough caps were leaking. i replaced the 2 that leak the most and no more problems. i cought it, or rather it warned me, before it got really bad or blew out the ecu all together. usually there is very little or no warning of the caps leaking but its worth a look.
 
Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out next time. But for now my car is running alright again. My brother actually just bought a 95 Eclipse, and his car wasn't running great either, so we swapped ECU's and they both ran great. LOL

I did just put my ECU back in and it ran alright, but I didn't take it on the main road yet, which I will tonight when there's less traffic. I'll let you know how it goes.

I also did regap my spark plugs. I have NGKs and we originally couldn't find a gap setting so we guessed and set it to 30. I just checked their site and it said that they were supposed to be gapped to 50 so we did that. Changing the gap didn't really affect performance at all though.
 
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