My wife drives a 1994 MX6 5spd, 4cyl... OCCASSIONALLY, it will just cut off going down the road. THE TACH will fall to ZERO andthe engine cuts off. Most of the time, if you just keep coasting, the engine will restart and its all over for maybe a day or so... some times it will do it again in a few minutes... Some times it will sputter and half run for a few moments then start running.

Car has about 150k. I installed a new distributor about 3 years ago... probably 40k miles. do not remember the symptoms it had when the distributor was installed. but it fixed it.

Its not a safe situation for the wife or anyone else for that matter.

any ideas???

cobraearl

 

Air, Fuel or spark. It's always these three components making our engines run. Probably not an air problem since it will idle o.k.. Could be a fuel problem, especially if the filter has never been changed. You might have dirt hitting the filter cutting off fuel flow or a tired fuel pump that cuts out when hot. Also could be the ignition. Coil or cap?? Could be getting hot there too and windings opening up or wires ect. getting a "break" when hot. I would make sure the basic tune up items are done and good then start trouble shooting the items mentioned above. Specifically I could not say but theres' a few ideas to check out. Hope it helps.

 

I dont think its Fuel... It RUNS GREAT. PULLS great. It has all the power its ever had.

I dont think its tune up items for the same reason. bad wires or plugs tend to break down under load or hard exceleration. some times bad tune up items will cause missing at idle.

This is a bianary situation, for the most part. the car is running Great then SUDDENLY its not running at all. then it just as mysteriously starts running again.

A couple of times it would run very poorly... but mostly, its RUN/NOT RUN..

I was hoping that this is a Standard Problem you mazda guys have incountered before.... and several folks would have chimed in by now with the Standard answer for this standard problem...

could be a coil... coils tend to heat up and break down... Normally they dont heal them selves due to cooling back down over a period of 10 - 15 seconds. and normally coils dont continue to break down for 3 weeks.

Could be a computer problem.. and could be a distributer problem..... could be something else.

I just dont want to start throwing 400$ items at a $2500 car.

cobraearl

 

Just dealt with a similar problem in a 95mx6 - V6. Car was stalling out but would usually start right back up. Finally got to the point of shutting off just long enough to diagnose. Fault was with the black ground wire that goes to the distributor. My multi-point ground connection is located on top of the trans mount. Was just able to see a terminal with some frayed wires. You can repair the terminal or make your own end and screw it down to a good ground point.

[IMG]local://upfiles/18185/C264ACF2B09B43729C99CD20442AAA58.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]local://upfiles/18185/BAF99392B86C4A96AF72A1490E97C1D5.jpg[/IMG]

 

Hi


Do you still have the pictures?