We have a 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 57K original miles we keep at our vacation home. The car is only driven about 1,500 miles from May-October. Last summer my wife was returning from grocery shopping and the car suddenly died. No electrics, no power. No nothing. With difficulty, she was able to guide the car to the side of the road where she tried restarting it without luck. About 30 minutes later she was able to start the car, and drove off when it died again. This happened 2 or 3 more times. The car was towed to a mechanic who couldn’t diagnose the problem, but we were able to drive the car back home. The car repeated this stop/start for the rest of the day. Has anyone experienced this same issue? Any ideas as to the cause/remedy? Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Crankshaft position sensor, camshaft position sensor, ignition module all are good candidates. The trouble with intermittent failures is the wide range of possible causes. Very hard for a mechanic to find short of guessing and swapping parts until it cures the problem.
The good news is it won’t keep doing this… it will eventually fail and then it can be fixed. Not the answer you wanted, sorry, but that’s mechanical life.
Thanks. At least it’s a place to start.
If you mean no dash lights, headlights, interior lights, no crank, literally nothing electric, then the problem has to be the battery or its connections.
I switched out the battery, but the car died again so I bit the bullet and had the car diagnosed by a mechanic. As you suspected, it was the crank sensor. Sensor replaced, problem solved.
Thanks for coming back to tell us how it turned out for you.