Engine keeps cutting out -- help!

[melinwloo]

My mother's car is a 97 Honda CRV and the mileage is 130,000K and has
been well maintained.

Over the past three weeks, the engine has been cutting out while she's
driving. This is the sequence of events that leads to it happening:

She drives to a store, parks (shuts off engine) for twenty minutes.
Then starts up again and drives, and within five minutes, the motor
cuts out. No warning lights come on the dash.

Thinking it was a gas line moisture problem (because the car had
accidentally spent a night with the gas cap off about a week before
this problem started happening), to get the car starting again, she
took off the gas cap for a minute, then put it back on, and the motor
turned on and stayed on.

After this happened again last week, she put Anti freeze in the lines
and added more again yesterday. The car stalled within ten minutes.
This time she took off the gas cap and kept it off and the car
behaved. Her foot is always on the gas pedal when the stall occurs.
It's a scary problem (obviously) because she has no control over the
breaks when the engine cuts out.

The gas cap being on or off may have nothing to do with it. Any
suggestions? Your advice would be greatly appreciated. If I have not
provided enough information, please let me know.

Thank you.

[lorunner]

May be a bad ignition switch. If the car stalls and all the lites go out and all you have to do is turn the key off then on again i would start with that

[melinwloo]

Hi,
We took the car in to our mechanic and he learned that there is a recall on the CRV's that requires a replacement of the ignition switch--so good hunch on your part. We'll know for sure that that was the entire problem after we get it back from Honda.

Thanks for your reply,

Melissa

[lorunner]

No problem

[96Civ]

It IS the ignition switch. We have a CRV and as soon as it was replaced, the car ran perfect.