Howdy…
I have a 2007 Grand Prix with 41000 miles. I am the original owner and have not had any accidents. OK…that was the good news. The BAD news is that 4 times now the car has just stopped. The engine light does not come on and there are no engine noises. I can restart the car by shifting into nutral. The last time I had to wait about 10 minutes before it restarted. Twice the car stopped running on the express way and twice just driving down the street. I took it to the dealer to be repaired. They said that the sensor did not register any problems. So now I have a problem: a car that takes a break when it wants to. It is kinda dangerous and more than a little irritating. Any ideas?
These kind of problems tend to be due to a fault in the electrical system somewhere. I would suspect things like the ignition switch or a bad connection in a connector plug/socket. Look for signs like what you stated about the engine light not coming on. This may mean the ECU isn’t power. By using a wiring diagram to refer to it will really help to pin down the fault. I highly recommend you get a factory service manual, for the wiring at least, if you want to work on this yourself. That and a test light probe to check for power. Your small investment in these items can pay you bid dividends over shop repair bills.
This kind of intermittent trouble can be real frustrating for the owner and the service person. You never know when the next problem will occur and the trouble never seems to occur in the shop. I would use the wiring diagram to look for some key points to check for power when the trouble happens again. Then when the trouble happens you will be able to quickly check those points to see where power is getting to and where it isn’t.