My wife’s car, a 2003 Buick Century, has died a couple times on her while driving. Each time has been while she was in the midst of a left turn, so I think that is relevant. Today it is a humid, raining off/on kind of day, but she says that she thinks the last time it did it was a dry day. When it dies, she pulls over, puts it in park, and restarts the car, it runs normal, no problems. She said she has turned the ignition switch off, and then starts the car, and has not tried just turning forward to start, however her daughter said that when it died on her, she could not turn it to start - she had to turn it off then back on and it started fine.
Her daughter said that she had it die once while sitting at a traffic light, so I may be off base thinking that it is related to a left turn.
The car has about 155K miles on it, and the only engine work that has been done on it other than maintenance is that the catalytic converter was replaced a few years back, when it was plugged up.
On this same car, I have to spray brake cleaner on the ABS sensors (front) about every 3-4 weeks, when the ABS light and the TRAC Off lights come on. Is there some way to keep them from becoming fouled?
With what you have described, the first thing I would do is remove the vacuum line from the fuel pressure regulator and smell it for gas. If you smell gas then that means the diaphram in the regulator has blown and is allowing too much fuel at an idle, causing it to flood.
Quite a few cars these days don’t allow you to just turn the key to start a second time. This is done to protect the starter and flywheel ring gear from accidental attempted starts when the engine is running…you must turn the key off first. Pulling over and coming to a stop - in most circumstances - is preferable to turning it off and then trying to start when you’re still rolling, since and uncontrolled collision would generally be a bad thing.
To figure out why you have to clean the ABS sensors so often, you first need to figure out why they’re fouling so often. Have you tried having the factory brake pads put back on it? Of course, I’m assuming you had brake work done somewhere, since 155K on original pads would be quite unusual. A lot of places will use softer pads in order to get you in more often. They’ll even give you a lifetime warranty on the pads, and when you come back, everything else will be broken and need replacement. Oh, No! Your calipers are gone…need to replace them. We don’t do that without replacing the rotors…etc.
