Thread: Help car is dead on side of road

Hello,

I was on my way to work this morning doing 70 down the interstate when I noticed the "service engine soon" light was flashing like blinking on and off. I kept a close eye on it and after a while noticed my temerature gauge start to rise and then the "service engine light" went solid didn't blink anymore just stayed on so I pulled off a ramp and went into a gas station.

Checked out under the hood and bought coolant and filled it up. Waited a bit and started to drive again because I had to get to work and the temperature went back down to normal but my car was acting really shakey like it felt like it was rocking a bit back and forth when I wasn't driving idk how to explain it any better.

I started going through town doing 25 and it felt really weird then it goes from 25-55mph and I got upto about 35-40mph slow acceling and it didnt want to accel at all had no power then all my lights on the dash came on and the car was done i pulled off to the side of the road and shut it off. Tried to start the car back up and it wouldn't start. Tried multiple more times and it wont start. I am getting it towed a little bit later we are getting a trailer but I have no clue what could be wrong.

Any ideas on what we should look for. One person told me the serpentine belt but its fine I just had it replaced a while ago. It is a 1998 grand prix gt it has 137,000 miles on it. I've had the car since 100k miles and have never had any problems done regular maintanance on it. If anyone could point us things we should check out when we get it back to the shop i would really appreciate it thank you very much if anyone has any quick responces I can't afford to be missing work with no car .

that is weird.. i'm stumped.. i'd guess a pcm problem but i'll put money on it that i'm dead wrong. hopefully someone can help you

all the lights came on because the car turned off and the ignition was still on.. you gotta get those codes read. it will tell you whats wrong. the flickering of the ses light usually means a misfire. but it doesnt seem like it in this case.

hopefully someone else has some ideas. I did read in the manual that flickering of the service engine soon light means misfire. When i started driving again after it was solid it went back to flickering again before it died.

You need to see what the codes are and that will at least give you some idea of what is going on. The fact that it died and would not start up is not a good sign. After you put coolant in the car, did the temp go back up? Did you take a look in the oil fill cap to see if it was sludged up? You may have a blown head gasket.

Originally Posted by 98SilvermistGTP

You need to see what the codes are and that will at least give you some idea of what is going on. The fact that it died and would not start up is not a good sign. After you put coolant in the car, did the temp go back up? Did you take a look in the oil fill cap to see if it was sludged up? You may have a blown head gasket.

After I put coolant in the car the temp DID go down but when I started to drive the car really started acting weird before all the dash lights came on and i couldnt accelerate and me pulling over.