Cars stalled, restarted, stalled again. I need diagnosis help.

[Adrian Thompson]

OK, here's the story.

Background. IT's a 99 base 2.5 with auto, not manual. The chassis has approx 96K on it. The car received a new engine under warranty at 55K so approx. 40K miles on the engine.

The car has been running fine, then last Thursday I notices a slight hesitation under constant speed, it went away under any load, just a hesitation at constant speed. The next day my wife was driving the car, she noticed the slight hesitation, then the check engine light came on, the car stalled and she rolled to a stop. She restarted it, it moved a few feet then the same thing happened. I told her not to try again and went to retrieve her. When I got there I noticed some drops of oil under the center line of the car. When I saw that I suspected the worse, IMS bearing. I then towed it home.

The first thing I did was check for error codes, nothing, all clear. Then I drained the oil into an open pan and troll with a magnet. I found one spec of metallic material that I feared was a bit of bearing. I removed the oil filter and cut it open, but it was perfect. I also pulled the oil pan, again, perfect, zero contamination in there, or anything visible in the engine. Everything looks perfect.



The one spec of metalic material


UP inside the engine, perfect.

[Adrian Thompson]

Some people over on GRM suggested the AOS, but I've had no smoke screen on startup or any time. But to check I pulled the coils and plugs to see if oil was getting into the cylinders. All clean, all the coils are perfect, no cracks, which I attribute to them having been new with the engine, so I don't think it was a misfire caused by them. All the plugs look perfect with a nice biscuit brown color and zero oiling. I don't think it's the AOS. Here's one plug to show it.

[Adrian Thompson]

One final clue /pic. there is evidence of oil seeping out between the engine and trans here. If that's the RMS seal, why would it have caused the engine to stall though?



At this point I'm considering putting it all back together and trying to start it. Good idea or bad?

Anything obvious I've missed?

TIA

[particlewave]

You'll get more visibility in the general discussion forum (this forum is for posting up you DIY project guides).

Your pictures aren't showing up, but an oil leak is not indicative of IMSB failure. If the IMSB flange is leaking, it has absolutely nothing to do with the bearing condition. Most likely, your leak is RMS and is not related to the stalling.

You said the CEL came on, but no codes? That's odd.
You need to get a Durametric on it.

[blue62]

"IF you decide to try to start it and it will start and run then as Particlewave suggested put a durametric or other scanner on it that can read live data and see if you can find anything amiss.

Other things to look at:
You "may" have a bad ground or relay that is affecting the DME signal

"IF" you decide to try to start it and it cranks but does not start or even fire.
You could spray a little starting fluid into the intake just to see if it will fire or not.
If it fires on the starting fluid I would look in the direction of fuel related issues.
If it does not fire on the starting fluid I would look in the direction of spark related issues.

[Adrian Thompson]

Opps, I posted in the wrong place. If any mods can move this it would be great. Thanks

So, I put everything back together, put in a new filter and (cheap) oil then started it up. It fires right up, no problem and runs with no check engine light coming on. Here are a couple of vids, the first startup and the second after it's been idling for 5 mins.

Start up

After five mins running

Note the clean area, I've just gone back after another 10 mins and oil has seeped out between the engine and trans and down to that point again.

So now I assume it's either the RMS or IMS bearing. Either way, it's a trans out job to see which and fix it.

[blue62]

Interesting about the hesitation and then the stall but no codes.
Did you look for pending codes???

[blue62]

Is there any chance your hesitation, stall, and oil drips are transmission related????