My wife's Tribute has begun to stall when the vehicle comes to a stop or is parked after driving it on the highway for some time (> 1 1/2 hours).

Here's the situation. My wife is driving back from Huntsville to Birmingham which is about 1 1/2 to 2 hours of driving. She did pull over once to fill her tank half way so it wasn't displaying any symptoms at that time. Once she got into Birmingham, she exited the interstate and got on one of the local highways. At the first red light, she slowed down and while she was slowing she noticed the car stuttering, and once she stopped, it died. She was able to start it, and keep the engine going if she kept it rev'ved and her foot on the brake until the light changed. She pulled over and called me to get her.

When I got there, I was able to reproduce the symptom and the best way to describe it is if you are familiar with a manual transmission, it's like starting the car and then letting out the clutch too quickly or if you are driving and you slow down, but forget to push in the clutch.

So I started down a road towards our local Mazda dealership and on the whole trip down, at every red light, I just rev'ed the engine and kept my foot on the brake. Keeping the engine at 3k RPM was sufficient to keep it from stalling.

Unfortunately, during the 15 minutes it took me to get down to the dealership, the symptom disappeared. The dealership couldn't find a fault or reproduce the issue and the guy tried to convince us to trade in the car... which leads me to this community.

What's wrong with my car? Could this be a sensor? Computer fault? Overheating within the transmission and the clutch is sticking?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions,
Goose.

 

Try a different dealership. I would suggest that he either cleared the error code, or doesn't want you to know the problem. Sounds like a coil problem very similar to my wife's tribute. We can't get a dealership to look at it either and I have tried 4 of them. Ford and Mazda both.

 

I am having the same with my 2001 Tribute. my machanic is gonna check for codes tomorrow to see if it pulls one up. As soon as i find out what is causing this issue with mine, i will repost to let you know.

 

Hey Goose, my machanic was able to look at my tribute tonight .....what is causing mine to do what your wifes tribute is doing is a vac hose... he said the hose is around $50 and there is an upper and lower part to this hose...it is usually the upper hose that needs to be replaced but it comes as a set.
to locate this hose ....when you pop open your hood.....look on the back wall of your motor (right in the center) you will see what looks like a control box with some hoses or wires hooked into them ...the hose is under that ....hope this helps you out