Stalling while in gear

[notransitory45]

my '94 626 for some reason stalled while i was driving in gear, and by that i mean im cruising along and my engine shuts off and the steering wheel locks. Anyway the car started up again and then did the same thing on consecutive days to the point where it no longer starts. It has a brand new alternator an battery, gas, oil, coolant. No check engine or any warning light goes on. There is a vacuum in my gas chamber which i guess could mean there is some kind of fuel injection problem? anyone else had this problem or any idea what's wrong? thanks

[The Fast Forester]

Check for spark out of the distributor, just replaced my son's on his '94 626. I don't think his was stalling while in gear though, just kept getting harder and harder to start till finally it wouldn't. I talked with the local Mazda dealer and they said this was notorious for going bad on this vintage of 626. And it wasn't cheap! Good luck, let us know what you find.

[notransitory45]

Well I changed the fuel filter and it seemed to run okay after that. But after about half an hour of driving and then turning the car off I tried to start the car 15 minutes later and it wouldn't turn over. Finally it did though so now i have no idea what to do, I guess i'll check the distributer next.

[The Fast Forester]

Have you had a chance to check the distributor yet?

[notransitory45]

no I haven't I'm doing it tomorrow i'll let you know how it goes.
Unfortunetly more and more problems are springing up each day. The engine loops, there's oil in my spark plugs... I don't know if it's even worth fixing.

[notransitory45]

i checked the distributor finally, it's definitly shot. The ideal ohm level is around 11-18, my reader said 25. So I'm gonna try and change it how much does a distributer cost though? How much did you pay for a mechanic to do it?

[The Fast Forester]

I paid $389 for the distributor, and about $84 for the cap/rotor, then $100 for the mechanic to install it. I priced the distributor through the dealer and they came up in the high 300's too if I'm remembering correctly.

I recently swapped out the plugs on this car too and one came out pretty oily. I asked my son if he'd noticed the car smoking at all, and he didn't but it sure did when we fired it back up. Seems to be running well now though, so not sure what was going on with that one plug, maybe it hadn't fired in a while?

Oh well, get ready for the rear brake calipers to fail as well, if they haven't already. The emergency brake spring eventually wears out and locks up the back brakes.

I really like driving this car though, it performs well and gets good gas mileage, I just hope I'm done spending money on it for a while! Let me know how things work out on yours. Thanks.

[notransitory45]

that is waaaay to expensive for me to fix. I doubt my car is even worth 600$. And yeah, i had to do my rear calipers, pads and rotors about two months ago. They are nice cars but I think mine's life is over

[notransitory45]

So i bought a distributor for 100$ and put it in myself on Sat. The metal bracket that holds it in place snapped off as soon as i tried to screw it in but the other one held tight and the cars running nicely. A new hood, new fender, new mirror are now in place and its going to get painted tomorrow and finally look nice again... phew

[The Fast Forester]

Good, glad you got it running again. Just wondering how you found a distributor for $100?!

[notransitory45]

haha yeah used ebay supposedly only has 15,000 miles on it but I'm selling my car at the end of the month anyway