2000 LeSabre died at 65mph

saingram

Hello, I'm Steve. I have a 2000 Buick LeSabre. Since I bought the car, I replaced the fuel pump and cat converter. Last summer, nite time, the motor died on freeway. Coasted to a stop. An hour later it restarted. 5 min. later died again. This is it's pattern ever since. It will start and run fine until the thermostat gauge starts to rise. When it's almost to normal temp, the car dies and won't start again until it cools off. No codes. I've read here about icm, and crank and cam sensors. Any info you could give me would be appreciated.

Mr_Shiftright

What needs to happen here, with this very annoying intermittent problem, is that the car has to be scanned and a freeze frame taken WHILE the event is happening. This can tell the tech what's going on at the time of the failure. Otherwise, you'll just be guessing and throwing parts at it, which is considerably more expensive than one hour of expert diagnostic time.

Also, if "no codes" means no codes with a hand held scanner, many of those less expensive devices will miss codes or have very limited diagnostic capabilities.

imidazol97

@saingram said:
Hello, I'm Steve. I have a 2000 Buick LeSabre. Since I bought the car, I replaced the fuel pump and cat converter. Last summer, nite time, the motor died on freeway. Coasted to a stop. An hour later it restarted. 5 min. later died again.

How many miles on this car? I'll make it easier: you need spark, fuel, and air. We're pretty sure you have the air. I'd zero in on spark. You make it sound like it just dies, no sputtering and trying to run but not making it--just dies. Take a spare spark plug, maybe ask a garage for an old one they took out of a car. When car is cold, twist on one of the front spark plug boots to loosen and then pull it off. Be sure it's long enough you can lay it down on engine metal after you put the spark plug in.

Then the next time it dies and won't start, put that spark plug in and lay it on engine metal to ground. Then have someone crank the engine while you watch for spark. You might even try this when the engine it working okay so you can see what a good spark looks like. Just don't run engine for over a few seconds.

You also can buy spark testers at box stores that you use instead of a plug.

I'll bet a free post on Edmunds, that you won't have spark when your engine dies in one of these events.

If you haven't gotten a yellow check engine light flickering as this happens which might indicate a misfire that could be ignition spark module or plugs or wires, I'll bet your problem will be no spark and a crankshaft position sensor.

Old urban myths are you can throw cold water on the crankshaft sensor when it won't start which cools it down quicker and it will start reading the magnetism and start up again. The sensor is at the edge of the harmonic balancer with a couple of wires to it. That's behind the large pulley at the bottom of the serpentine belt's path.

Good luck.