Hey guys, I really hope you can help and I will try to make this as short as possible. My car is 1996 Buick Regal with the 3.8 and it has approx. 180,000 miles on it. The problem that I am having, and it is happening more and more every day, is that I will be driving and then the car just dies. It sounds really similar to this post
http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=886420
except for the fact that my car won't restart if I put it in neutral. 99% of the time that it happens is when I am slowing down and turning.You can usually tell it is going to stall about 3 or 4 seconds before it actually does because the steering wheel gets tight and feels dead. I looked at the tach when it just did it. I was going about 20 mph and then the tach needle just shot down. The only way that I can get it started again is by disconnecting the battery and then it fires right up, even if it was only unhooked for a second. But that is getting really dangerous because it happened on the expressway the other day so I pulled over on the right hand shoulder, but the battery is on the drivers side of the car and its pretty scary because to get to it you are literally inches from the traffic and the roads are usually pretty slippery here in Michigan. I am out of work right now, so taking it to a shop is not an option. I did stop at Autozone today and had them pull the codes and there was 5 of them. P0171,P0300,P0336,P0441 and P0466. One other thing that I noticed is that some smoke comes out of the exhaust even after the engine has been turned off for 5 minutes, but the temp gauge on the dash seems to be about normal. I am hoping that it is possible for these codes to be related to eachother if that is even possible. I am pretty good at working on cars and I am not afraid of getting dirty. My 2 biggest problems are 1) I have no idea of where to even start because I have to do this the cheapest way possible and I can't start replacing things only to find out that they didn't even need to be replaced. And 2) I live in Michigan and it is still pretty cold here, and I don't have a garage to work in. And from what I hear, replacing the crankshaft sensor is not a 5 mnute job and I have never replaced one before and know nothing about harmonic balancers or any of that kind of stuff. To me, it sounds like it would almost have to be an electrical problem if the car starts right up after I disconnect the battery. Is there any easier and faster way to reset the computer other then unhooking the battery? Like pulling a fuse or something? Well, sorry for making it so long, and thanks for listening.

Welcome to AF

I live in Michigan too (Flint) so I feel your pain about this cold snowy winter we're having.

Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, lets review your codes

P0171 System too Lean
P0300 Random/Multiple Cylinder Misfire Detected
P0336 Crankshaft Position Sensor A Circuit Range/Performance
P0441 Evaporative Emission Control System Incorrect Purge Flow

The first three could all be caused by the bad Crank Position Sensor. Your symptoms are classic for a bad CKPS (random stalling, no re-start, tach dropping to zero just before stall, etc...) , so that is definitely one of your problems.

The evap code could be caused by multiple things, so change the crank sensor, clear the codes, then see if any of the others come back. We can help you re-evaluate at that point if they do.