Mystery Stall Outs

When my 1998 Mustang has been stopped and started numerous times in a short period–say, like when you’re running errands–the idle will sometimes (not always!) get really low (below 1000 RPM), and will stall out no matter how much gas you give it. It will then refuse to start for about 30 minutes. Then it’ll start back up and run fine for another week until the whole thing happens again.

Does anyone else have a similar situation? The car runs fine in all other respects, and again, it’s seemingly random, and only after the engine has been stopped and started several times. It won’t for example, stall out first thing in the morning.

Just for fun, the next time it happens, take the fuel cap off and try to start it. Sometimes problems like this stem from a problem with the fuel tank venting. When you leave it alone for awhile, the tank’s pressure can properly equalize, allowing fuel to flow again.

Okey doke…I’ll try that next time to see what happens. Thanks!

I forgot to mention in my original post that this is a very recent phenomenon. I’ve had the car for 7 years and this only started last month.