Car shutting off

My girlfriend’s car (92 Plymouth Sundance) has been all whacked out lately. First, while she was following me on a long trip, one of her headlights turned on and off for awhile (sporadically, not flickering) every time we left a gas station. The bulb itself is pretty new so I’m pretty sure it’s not just burning out. I figure its some kind of wiring issue or along those lines, but I’m a jackass and I don’t really know what I’m talking about car-wise.

The more serious part is that the engine shuts off completely while she’s driving, but only in a very particular situation-

  1. It only happens at the end of our street at the stop sign.
  2. Every time it has happened (at least ten times) it has happened after she has gone to class, come home, left the car for a couple hours, and then gone to her evening class.
  3. She’s never had it shut off in the morning, or any other time except for once on the way home from the evening class.

The fact that it happens so often in that exact circumstance leads me to believe that something about the stopping, and then restarting, is part of the problem. I mean, ten times in the exact same spot can’t just be happenstance, am I right?

I had a similar problem with my Chevy pickup, and no one was ever able to diagnose it. It’s probably a corroded wire somewhere. . . . Somewhere.

I ended up trading in my truck “as is” and getting a more reliable car.

YMMV. (I love saying that in automotive threads. :slight_smile: )

Light sounds like the new one did not have the plug on the back pushed in all the way. Pretty easy to do.

I dont know about the other one, that could be a lot of things, like the fuel filter, which is supposed to be changed about every 20k miles.

I had an '81 Toyota Cressida that did the “shut off” thing at particular times. Turns out it was one of the relays. I swapped the offending relay (which was in a box adjacent to my battery) with a compatible adjacent one (which performed a different function) and the problem vanished. So I replaced all the relays just to be safe, as they were probably about 17 years old at the time.

-AmbushBug

Also try edmunds.com find the car & see if they have a discussion forum where you can talk to car guys who have your car. I don’t know if they still have forums there but they did when I looked.

I had a 93 Dodge, Fuel pump and relays were the problem.