96 Maxima stalls in traffic/steering wheel & gas pedal lock up

[rhcpgirlaji]

My friend recently bought my 1996 Maxima. It was always a great car for me and had no major problems, but recently it has been doing some odd things. My friend has taken it to 2 shops (one of which was Nissan), and after having run a bunch of tests and kept the car for 5 days, no one could replicate the problem or find anything wrong with the car. I can't witness it for myself because my friend and I are in different cities.

The first time it happened, she said she felt two strange jerks, then slowed down at a stoplight and noticed all the interior lights were on (steadily, not flashing). She tried to go once the light turned green, but could not. The wheel and the gas pedal had both locked up. She restarted the car and got home.

Since that first incident, this has happened probably a dozen more times. Usually when it happens it's several times in a day, but then most other days are problem-free. Usually restarting the car works for a while, but one time she had to wait a couple of hours to get it to go anywhere. While it doesn't always run, she can always at least start it up.

Key Facts:-Always happens at slow speeds/RPMs (when the car is in reverse and after coming to a stop and trying to accelerate again)-Car's interior lights come on-Steering wheel locks up and won't move more than an inch or two in either direction-The gas pedal also locks up. It simply cannot be pushed down (rather than acting like it's out of gas where it could be depressed but nothing would happen).-No one else (mechanics, my mom, friends) can seem to make this happen, which makes it hard to diagnose & fix.

The car:-1996 Nissan Maxima GLE-Approximately 150,000 miles-Automatic transmission

Aside from this, the car is in good shape. Because it's an automatic, my friend hasn't really been paying attention to the RPMs it's at when this occurs, but I told her to look next time.

It's bad enough that it's stalling out in traffic, but the fact that she can't steer when this happens makes me even more worried. I offered to take it back and just let her find another car but she really wants this one, so we'd like to figure out what the problem is.

If anyone can offer any advice or a direction to go, it would be sincerely appreciated.

Thank you!

[180fan]

the pedal locks up? that's a strange one, doesn't this have a throttle cable that's directly linked to the pedal? so unless there is something snagging it, it should still be able to throttle up the engine.

the engine still running at this point when it has the problem?

[rhcpgirlaji]

the engine still running at this point when it has the problem?

Yeah. My friend said that while she cannot go anywhere without restarting the car when this happens, the ignition stays on and she can turn the engine on and off without a problem. Only one time did immediately restarting the car not fix the problem. She had to wait a couple of hours and then it worked.

It's definitely got us all puzzled...

Thanks for the help.

[180fan]

yeah that's definitely a noodle scratcher. if the gas pedal doesn't move, either the throttle plate has frozen shut (could be the case with winter now) or there's a kink somewhere in the throttle cable and it's grabbing the cable.

start snooping around the ignition switch, that's the part that should turn on the steering lock, so that wouldn't be a bad place to start checking out.

Yeah this is a real noodle scratcher, but it could also be a stupid electrical gremlin doing all this too or a multitude of problems all showing up at the same time.