Thread: Engine Stalling?

I should probably let you know that my car had a major issue that might have been causing this - when the engine was rebuilt, a bunch of alignment pins were sheared off instead of being used to actually align the engine. This caused a major oil leak, but that's all been fixed now, and it certainly seems a lot better when running.
It's only been a day since I got it back, but I'll let you know if this happens again.

Originally Posted by BillBoost37

LOL at all that say "I had this same thing"... The car stalled once...no real symptoms or issues. Keep on driving, try to find consistency and then we can help fix up each of you.

A common cause of a stall w/o warning at any speed or stop without any codes or seeming symptoms is the crank sensor. That's the first thing. However on one stall out,.... it could have been a touch of water in the fuel. Any time the weather/temp is changing this can happen. It's not common like in the days of our parents, but it can happen.

Play.. you will find that all those lights and symptoms are normal when the engine isn't running. Go out and put the key into the igniton, turn it to on not run and you'll see the same thing. No power steering (drive by an engine belt), no power brakes (vacuum from engine), light for everything (normal test of the bulbs) and no engine response (not running). Sorry to hear about the stall, but there's probably nothing you can do at this point about it w/o throwing money around w/o a clue of what's up. Keep driving and look for any consistent behavior like a chug or cough, if it only happens at lights/stops and then bring that info back. That's teh stuff that returns good diagnosis.

Really, the problem was that I had no clue what happened. That was my first car, and I hadn't had it for very long (maybe 3-4 months), and I had no idea what to do considering I was a new driver. Now I know what to expect, and it doesn't scare the crap out of me anymore (it's stalled maybe two times since then).
Any stall since then seems to be random, usually happening upon gear changes. There have been telltale signs at startup with the RPMs dropping noticeably lower than usual and the car shaking a bit, but that only seemed start with the weather getting warmer now that you mentioned that aspect.

So basically, blame it on the ignorance of being a new driver and having no clue what the signs of a stall were.