2003 Santa Fe stalls out after stopping

Maintenance/Repairs
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1

Hello all,

I have a 2003 Santa Fe with 108k miles on it that seems to have an attitude problem. I was driving home from a Christmas get together on the highway, when my engine stalled, hiccuped, stopped and the check engine light came on. When I tried restarting the car, the engine wouldn’t fire. The battery was fine, and I had a half tank of gas. After about 15 minutes of sitting, I was able to get the car started and driving again. After about a day and a half and a refueling, the check engine light went out and the car behaved as normal until this evening.

I went to the gas station, put $15 in the tank (brought the tank up to about half), and as I was stopped waiting to pull onto the road, the engine died. No hiccuping, rough running or anything, it just plain stalled and shut off. Again, after ~15 min, it started. I turned back up the road to head home (Was going to head about 30 miles west to see a friend but decided against it), after I stopped at a stop light, it stalled out again same thing. Waited ~15 min, it started back up with the check engine light back on. (But wait there’s more!) Another stoplight, another stall. This time however, it would not start at all after 30 plus minutes. By this point, my battery was pretty run down, so I managed to get a friend to give me a tow.

Thankfully, I have to bring it it for servicing tomorrow anyway for a completely unrelated issue, and just towed it over to the dealer.

Any clue what gives or what I should make sure the dealer does?

The internet seems to want to point me towards a bad ignition coil or a bad crankshaft sensor, but my mechanically inclined friends are leaning towards an electrical issue or a problem with the fuel filter/pump/line.

Thanks for your help!

EDIT: The check engine code is P0335

2

I’m not sure why a bad ignition coil or crank sensor doesn’t count as an “electrical issue.”

There’s no way to just guess without checking things out on the car. At the moment the best thing you could provide for people to begin speculating would be whatever error codes were stored in the computer when the check engine light went on. Since its already at a dealer (probably not a wise choice) they will read those codes. Find out what they are and post them (they look like “P1234”).

3

I will certainly update with the codes as soon as I find them out! Thanks!

4

The check engine code came back as P0335.

5

That makes perfect sense. It is a code that indicates a circuit issue for the crankshaft position sensor and that would certainly account for your symptoms.

What you need to make sure of is that the response to this code is NOT to just replace the crank sensor. The code is about the whole circuit - wires running to & from the computer, the plug for the sensor, the sensor itself. The code does not say that the sensor is bad because the sensor is just one part of the circuit. So someone should troubleshoot it.

This may be some useful reading for you: http://www.obd-codes.com/p0335

6

Thank you very much for the advice and reading cigroller, it is greatly appreciated!