While speaking with a couple of co-workers about engine problems, the topic of intermittent failures came up. With at least two people that I know of on this board that have suddenly had their car mysteriously die, I noticed a similarity between their stories and the ones here in the office.

To those people, I offer the following possibility...is your coolant temp sensor operating 100%? If it's getting flakey, the ECU will think the engine is way colder than reality, and if I understand things correctly, most modern ECUs will kill the engine to avoid damage. Two guys here had that exact problem...it was hard to diagnose since it was flakey, but that was the eventual cause.

Didn't get all of the details for the first case, but in the second case, the cylinders were becoming flooded. I'm not sure if this was an associated issue or not, so I only offer it as info to let YOU decide. After running the car for a few minutes, it would refuse to start once shut down due to the high-level of gas in the cylinders. The solution to THAT problem was to remove the fuse to the fuel pump, crank the car for a few seconds to dump the fuel, replace fuse, crank it up. If it WAS associated with the coolant temp sensor, it means the ECU was dumping more fuel than reality dictated thinking the engine was cold....maybe like an automatic choke?

Thoughts anyone?

 

I test drove a 2001 s2000 not too long ago and it died when I came to a stop which obviously did not encourage me to buy the car.

Bryan

 

wow...that might be the issue with my car...as stated in a couple of other threads...my car won't vtec...kinda like how when you only have 1 bar on temp, and then the car pulls back on you....then my check engine light comes on.....

 

bullit,

I'm very interested to know if this is the cause, so keep us posted.

 

If the coolant temp sensor was indicating a very low temp, the ECU would run a lean mixture to heat the car up. If the sensor indicates that the temp is too high, then it would provide more fuel to cool it down.

 

My coolant sensor goes bad on my skid steer about every two years and the computer shuts it down. You can easily check it by removing the wires from the sensor and either shorting them or leaving them open and cranking the engine. I don't know if the sensor is an open or closed type, but one of these modes should do the trick. If it doesn't it's not the sensor. We have a bypass circuit in our skid steer to switch around this now if it happens. The first time it did this it was 30 below zero and I had to walk six miles for help. The kind of lesson one doesn't forget! And no, I did not walk backwards barefoot; that was my father!