Weird idle, then engine suddenly stalled

vanion2

vanion2

New member
I was picking up my kid from daycare and just before I got there the engine sort of hesitated when shifting from 2nd to 3rd. When I looked at the tachometer it was sort of bouncing around.

On our way home I turned the a/c up and the tach started bouncing again and hesitating between 2nd and 3rd. At a intersection the engine actually stalled.

It starts fine and if I turn the a/c off it runs fine. I think it might be the battery or alternator. I am going to the local AutoZone and have both tested.

Any experienced opionions out there for anything else it might be?
 
Register to hide this ad
The battery and alternator wouldn't affect the RPMs and power. If you say it runs fine without your AC on, that might be due to your AC clutch going out and locking up...which bogs down the motor causing the tach issues and hesitation when the AC is running. At idle, it would certainly kill the motor...
 
RunnerPDX said:
The battery and alternator wouldn't affect the RPMs and power. If you say it runs fine without your AC on, that might be due to your AC clutch going out and locking up...which bogs down the motor causing the tach issues and hesitation when the AC is running. At idle, it would certainly kill the motor...
Click to expand...

This would be my guess also.
 
RunnerPDX said:
The battery and alternator wouldn't affect the RPMs and power. If you say it runs fine without your AC on, that might be due to your AC clutch going out and locking up...which bogs down the motor causing the tach issues and hesitation when the AC is running. At idle, it would certainly kill the motor...
Click to expand...

I will look into that. Thanks for pointing me in that direction. How would rate the difficulty for doing this for an experienced novice mechanic?

FYI: The battery checked out 100% and the alternator is just barely passing according to their meter. I turned on my Torque app though and the alternator was reading 13.5 - 13.7 V the whole time which is too low IMO for a normal load situation. Time for that upgrade I have been looking at.
 
Someone else can maybe confirm this, but I think you can just remove the drive belt from the AC compressor and see if the problem persists.
 
SpidermanGeek said:
Someone else can maybe confirm this, but I think you can just remove the drive belt from the AC compressor and see if the problem persists.
Click to expand...
It only causes a problem when I have the A/C on. I drove it to work this morning (no A/C on) and didn't have a single problem. When I drive it home for lunch I plan on turning the A/C on high to see if I can get it to act up again since it is very intermittent at this point. If it does it again I will just replace the clutch as it looks pretty straight forward.
 
Well it behaved perfectly on the way home with the A/C on in stop-n-go traffic today and I haven't done anything new at this point. I will see how it does the afternoon...
 
Update: it hasn't acted up since. Not sure what to make of that but I will closely monitor it so if it does it again I can try to trouble shoot it.
 
It did it again. This time I hadn't even turned the a/c on at all. I was cruising at 55 mph when it suddenly felt like it was trying to down shift and then immediately went back into 4th. I turned on the ECT after it did this a couple of times just to see if there was a change in behavior. Nope.

When I turned at an intersection I saw the tach roaming again. I turned into my couldesac and it stalled out. Again, restarted just fine so I drove it around the neighborhood to see if I could get it to do it again but after the restart it was fine.

Would the a/c clutch still be the primary suspect here?
 
It did it again just now and I had the torque app up and running. The TPS was steady and there were no ECU faults showing up. Completely baffled at this point. Off to the mechanic tomorrow.
 
Well, you are an '01 so that means throttle-by-wire which opens up a whole host of possible issues the rest of us would not think of. There is the pedal position sensor, the TPS, the throttle servo, and I'm sure others (I've never worked on one.)

The weird thing is no CEL. Most parts of that system will set one (theoretically).
 
It sounded like an issue another member was having up until it stalled on you. Sounds like TPS or IACV, TPS dont always shoot a cel.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Members online

No members online now.
Total: 190 (members: 0, guests: 190)

Forum statistics

Threads
278,309
Messages
3,554,071
Members
248,016
Latest member
Advally Service

Share this page

Trending content

Back
Top