2002 Mercury Sable stalling

You must love questions like this… Doc I coughed whats wrong?.. but here goes it, cause frankly I think this is crazy and the dealer ship will not fix correctly.



It appears electrical. With it running and this first symptom usually guarantees that it will stall. You go from park to reverse or drive the speedometer needle will begin pulsating. I have notice if this is not happening it won’t happen.

Next standing still but in drive or reverse if you turn the heater, radio, lights or the AC pump kicks on. Boom the car stall and almost act like the key switch was turned off then back on. It also has happened while moving but it does not stall but all of the dash light pop on as if you just turn the car on.

Curious to hear you thoughts.

Chris

The problem might be with the Digital Transaxle Range sensor. Or as it’s normally called the PRNDL (prindle) switch. This is what indicates what gear the transaxle is in on the steering column and it also sends this information to the computer.

I had a Taurus come in a year ago with the same type of problem. Dash lights would turn on and off at any time, radio would shut off, speedometer would act erratic, engine would almost stall out, etc… Replacing the PRNDL switch fixed the problem.

Tester

That’s a very weird effect that I would never expect from that sensor. How did you figure that one out?

It does sound weird, but through the years a lot of Ford radio, other electrical problems have been fixed by replacing TR sensors. I don’t know why these things are affected, probably has something to do with the GEM module. They have specs on what you should see on a scanner for the TR, and if they’re off weird things happen.