loss of power/dying

[93hybridaccord]

I have an 02 montana that seems to be losing power and wants to die on me in the middle of driving down the road. When it does die, no lights come on, no check engine at all. Had the alternator and battery checked, both are good. Dealership can't seem to find out what the problem is. Had my tranny serviced a couple weeks ago while the notorious intake gasket was being changed. Any info out there on this would be appreciated. Has approximately 39k miles on it. Have been having this problem for about a month or so now.

[93hybridaccord]

anyone? any suggestions?

[GTP Dad]

Does the car start right up or does it take a couple of tries? I would look at the crank position sensor on the car since this appears to be a common issue with V-6 engines. The other issue may be a fuel pump going bad. You can test this by checking fuel pressure at the shrader fitting on the fuel rail with a fuel pressure guage. If the pressure holds steady or increases then everything is OK if not the fuel pressure regulator or the fuel pump may be going bad. Fuel pumps can overheat and cause problems like this so if you have to wait for the car to cool back down until it restarts the fuel pump may be the culprit.

[93hybridaccord]

the car starts right away, no problems on that yet, and the fuel pump i just replaced it back in january when it started all this.Then a month later it did it again and it was the fuel filter, changed that too, so now the dealership has no clue on what is the cause of this...
i had this problem for a while now... it seemed to do it like once in a while, so i thought it could be just a glitch, but now it's dying on me while i drive almost every other day . I took the car to AAMVO trasmission, thinking that might be the problem...NOPE! everything works good, but they did realized that it does have a loss of power, but they cannot locate the problem either ....!

[GTP Dad]

Can you describe exactly what the car does when it loses power? This sounds like something simple but just takes time to remedy.

[93hybridaccord]

Just loses power, just seems to bog down. Happens when I'm going slow or fast. Usually will shut the car off when I'm going slow. Doesn't seem to hesitate any. Hard to explain, just seems to lose power.

[GTP Dad]

This is a tough one. I am really at a loss since you have done everything I would have suggested and with 39K I don't suspect the fuel injectors. One thing you may want to have checked is the throttle position sensor. If it is going bad it could be sending incorrect signals to the computer and causing the loss of power. Other than that I really can't think of anything that would cause such a problem especially at both slow and fast speeds.

[93hybridaccord]

With a throttle position sensor you would think the car would rev when it shouldn't or idle would jump around. I know someone else that has had problems with their tps and it does that. He'll be idling with his foot off the gas and sometimes the car will just start to rev, not much, it'll just go up another 500 rpms or sometimes drop a couple hundred. Just eratic I guess is what I mean. This doesn't happen on the Montana. It does only do it once the car is at running temp though. One reason why I was thinking maybe it was a fuel pump relay.

[GTP Dad]

That is a good possibility. The relay is a simple pull, remove and replace item. I really hope that fixes the problem once you replace it.

[93hybridaccord]

Seems the problem is solved at least for now. When I took it in to get the tranny checked a week ago the mechanic said the passenger side cv joint was failing. Today I had the whole axle changed. Well, picked the car up from the shop and the loss of power seems to be completely gone. Haven't driven it that much so I don't know if it will continue to die or not, but for now, the sluggishness and hesitation is gone. Don't know if the cv was binding so much that it was causing the problem or what, but at least it's gone. These cars seem very strange with the symptoms not always pointing to what would normally be the problem.

[GTP Dad]

That is one for the books. I have never heard of a CV joint binding enough to cause a loss of power but I guess anything is possible. These vehicles seem to get stranger every year in what will affect their performance. Thanks for the update!