Adventures With My Car

An odd thing happened coming home from work yesterday.  Out of nowhere about 5 minutes from work my car suddenly died.  Just turned off.  I coasted to the side of the side street I was on and thought “that was odd”, then started back up and kept on going.  About 5 minutes down the road (this time on the highway) it happened again!  I was lucky to be able to move from the fast lane to the side of the highway easily enough, as the power steering dies when the power is off and the thing went from sports car to brick as far as navigation. 

Again I thought “that was odd”.  This time when I started it up it would rev and die.  Tach just hit 0.  Did this two or three times and then I gave it a footfull of gas and it started up as normal again.  I turned it off and on a few more times and then wondered what the hell to do.  I had BCAA‘s number in my cell phone but didn’t know what to tell them. “I’m in a perfectly working car beside the side of the road”?

I drove home on eggshells, not touching the windows or radio or anything just in case that had something to do with it.  Last thing I wanted was for the car to die while I’m in the middle of the bridge. 

So now I’m not sure what to do.  I probably should have it looked at, but without any symptoms for a mechanic to see, it’ll probably be hard to diagnose.  On the other hand, the thought of my car randomly stopping out of nowhere is a non-too attractive prospect.

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Category: Car, Personal

6 Comments on “Adventures With My Car”

  1. Hm, fuel pump maybe? I’d take it in and describe what happens.. I bet any good mechanic would have a few things to check based on the symptoms.

  2. I’ve had that happen before ( in my old car ) and it was right after I had it repaird, I would drive and then it would just die for no reason. Apparently during the repair they hadn’t tightened a few things that was causing it to misfire ( or something like that ). But definitely get it checked out, a mechanic will know whats wrong.
    And though it’s a little far from Mission, JS Performance in Abbotsford is the best for import cars, he’ll go out to your car with you and try and figure out what’s wrong. And he’s really good at explaining everything he did.

  4. Actually, what you described is the symptom — it could be the on-board computer, a faulty fuel pump (as mentioned above), a dying alternator, or just time to replace the spark plugs. Like James said, a good mechanic will know where to start looking when you describe what happened. You could also try to reproduce it on your local street.

  6. We had something weird like that happen on our old Tempo, what it turned out to be was the movator on the fuel pump was worn down. When the car heated up things must have expanded enough that it stopped touching, and stopped pumping gas. My dad installed an electric fuel pump (Oooo… such technology!) and voila! No more problems.
    The thing would just completely die for no reason though… and on a full tank of gas etc.