Questions and Answers
Six Monthly Stalling
Q. I have a 91 Mitsubishi Eclipse with a four cylinder fuel injected engine with 98,000 miles, that dies intermittently ever few months or so. Here are the sequence of events over the last three years.
1) Sep 98 - On a 90 deg day, I Drive many miles, park, go into a store for an hour or so. I come out start the car go ¼ mile to a stop light, wait for green, accelerate, the car dies. I turn it over but do not get a single pop. The starter is working fine. After 40 minutes, it start right up a runs for many months as though nothing happened.
2) Jun 99 - On a 70 deg day, I drive several miles to a store, pull into the parking lot, and while maneuvering in reverse, the car dies. I push into the parking space and turn it over and get no firing although the starter is cranking away. Just like before, I wait 40 minutes and it starts and runs for several months as though nothing happened.
3) Nov 99 - On a 50 deg night, I go visit a friend and park the car outside for 4 hours. I come out and the car starts normally. I back out of the parking spot and start acceleration forward, the car dies. I turn it over and get no firings. I leave it over night, and come back next morning and it starts normally and drives normally.
4) Dec 99 - On a 70 day I start the car after work, so its been sitting all day in the parking lot. I drive a ½ mile to a stop sign. On accelerating, the car dies. I turn it over but do not get a single pop. The starter is working fine. After 40 minutes, it start right up a runs for many months as though nothing has happened.
5) Jan 00 - take the car into the Mitsubishi dealer and they do 90,000 mile service. They replace all the wiring to make sure there is no electrical problems.
6) Apr 00 - On a 65 deg day, I'm driving up a steep hill. The car dies near the top. I wait 2 minutes and it starts up normally.
7) Jul 00-On a 70 deg day, I start from a stop light and the car stalls. I can't restart it until I push it off the road and wait a few minutes. It runs normally for a couple of days. On the freeway on a 60 deg morning, I'm merging in completely stopped traffic. I'm going about 20 mph, when the car stalls again. This time I coast to the emergency lane. I can't start until a few minutes. In both cases after the stall, I turn it over but do not get a single firing. I must wait a few minutes.
What's going on here? Several mechanics have looked at this, but can't figure what to do, because the failure is not repeatable and intermittent. The only suggestion is to wait until a complete failure occurs, but I don't want to drive an unreliable car. After it dies, it almost behaves like a car that's flooded, where I have to wait for the gas to clear out of the system to get any firing of the engine. Otherwise, I crank and crank and get nothing. Do you thinks it's the fuel pump about to fail? Is there some electronic sensor messed up?
Marc
A. I thought about this problem for a while Marc, and I hate to say this, but I don't know. Intermittent problems are hell to find and one that happens once every few months would be almost impossible. There are a hundred things that could cause a car to stall as you describe. But there is no discernable pattern to the events prior to the stalling.
I did have a problem similar to this many years ago. There was no rhyme or reason to the stalling and the problem turned out to be newspaper in the gas tank. It would get sucked into the fuel pickup strainer and cut off the fuel. After it sat for a while, the newspaper would fall back to the bottom of the tank and the car would start and run for a while. This is the only thing that comes to mind. On a Mitsubishi, this shouldn't be too hard to check. There is an access hatch to get the fuel pump/sending unit assembly out without dropping the tank. It's a long shot, but a shot anyway.
I would sure appreciate you letting me know what it is when you find out.
