My father's car

What is making the car stall? I can drive it to run some errands but after awhile ,when I am slowing down or at a complete stop,the speedometer goes up to 40mph and I hear a whining noise under the hood and everything will shut off and try to turn on again by itself. When I am parked and I start it up it will stop and then there is a clicking noise and it won’t turn over again unless I honk the horn or turn the lights on and off a couple of times.

It has a new idle sensor and I had it tuned up last year 2009

Assuming it is an automatic transmission, I would towed to your local INDEPENDENT transmission shop and have them take a look at it. There are other possibilities of course.

Wow, those are admittedly strange symptoms. I worked in a high tech factory for over 30 years, and two of the worst problems we had finding failures were, first, intermittents.

And, second, when two things were bad in the same piece of equipment at the same time.

This, if properly reported, sounds like something out of the ordinary, to be sure. I can’t even imagine how blowing the horn or cycling the lights can be linked to starting problems. Wouldn’t you love to get your hands on this car?

Start with your battery cables. Check and clean both ends of the ground cable and check for ground straps between the engine and the body.

I don’t have a clue about the speedometer or whirring noise but the no start unless you put a small load on the electrical system first sounds like corroded battery cables or connections or a bad engine ground.