Daniel J. Stern wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Jan 2005, groulex wrote:
>
>
>>After driving the car approximately 200 miles on the Interstate, the
>>engine will suddenly shutdown as if it were not getting any gas. The
>>engine will not start immediately, but after a 30 minute cool down it
>>will restart and be good for another 100 to 200 miles, until the problem
>>occurs again. This has occured several times.
>>
>>The problem has never occured during city driving and there is no
>>trouble code in the computer.
>>
>>Any help would be much appreciated.
>
>
> That's a fun one. The *proper* way to diagnose the problem is for the car
> to be driven until it stalls with a recording data scanner hooked up.
> Once the engine stalls, the recorded data can be analysed so that it can
> be seen which datastream(s) went silent, in what sequence and under what
> prevailing underhood conditions. It's likely *something* is quitting when
> it gets good and hot, but it could be any of many sensors located in
> several different systems on and in the engine, but it's difficult to
> guess what. Camshaft position sensor, crankshaft position sensor, MAF or
> MAP sensor, engine temperature sensor, throttle position sensor, ECM
> itself, etc., or even something not on this list.
>
> Guessing at it will likely wind up more expensive than diagnosis and
> repair.

Yes, that will that detect a flakey fuel pump? The dealer finally put a
fuel pressure gauge on my van and when it acted up saw the fuel pressure
was low and erratic. The problem didn't set any scan code that was
especially meaningful. It set "multiple cylinder misfire" a couple of
times and "lean mixture on the upstream O2 sensor" one time. Both
obviously related to a faulty fuel pump, but they also could have been
related to other problems.


Matt