My daughter is 4 hrs drive from me.
She has recently had a couple instances where the car shuts down without warning and she has to fight the steering and brakes to get it stopped safely. It restarts fine each time. Kinda scary though.
She recently changed her air filter and 5 of her 6 spark plugs (good girl) but it has happened (quit) again since then.
I'm going there this weekend. I plan to bring a new crank position sensor and MAF cleaner.
A new CPS is cheap. A new MAF is not, so I'm hoping a cleaning helps.
Which would you bet is the problem/culprit? Would you buy a new MAF before finding out if the CPS is the culprit?
Or do you suspect a totally different culprit?

50 other things that can be wrong there............dunno why you zoomed in to where you did with so little evidence.

Brian VT wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 26, 2018 6:18 am

Or do you suspect a totally different culprit?

So...where you be looking?

If the fuel filter has not been changed in a while I would start there. You can check the
resistance of the MAF and CPS as components (and the corresponding voltage of the feed wires)
to see if they are faulty. You can get a multimeter to checks these components. Try not to just
be a parts replacer unless you have logically traced the problems the best you can.

You need spark, fuel, and air to create power. This is one of those situations where it could be any
of these as amc.49 says

When I said that the engine shuts down, I should have stressed that everything shuts down.
It's as if someone turned the key off. It's not the engine stalling. And it starts and runs fine right after it quits. It can even be thrown in neutral while still rolling and restarted on the fly immediately after the "blackout".

I will only have Saturday to attempt a fix so I want to bring whatever I can to have the best shot at being able to fix it before throwing up my hands and tell her to bring it to a mechanic (and she has to miss work).
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

'It's as if someone turned the key off. It's not the engine stalling.'

The difference is whether the instrument lights and gauges go off at the die (turning key off), and if so a purely electrical issue with overall power supply, not engine. If the lights DO come on at the die then it's a stall. Stall does not necessarily happen at idle alone.

Lights out.

Then you likely have a loose or bad power or main ground connection somewhere.

The gauges if electrical ones will show it too by dropping like a rock.