Died on the Highway *solved (bad ground)

[Jim]

Bravada broke down yesterday on my daughter on her way home from college 2 hrs into the 3.5 hr trip it sounds like the engine shut off while driving around 45 in a high way construction zone. air bag light came on + other dash lights came on. pulled to the side of the road. Restarted fine idles smooth but won't go over 5 mph bucks and kicks. The first class towing outfit I called will check it out Monday. I'm hopeing coil or something simple, not the trans.
http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/ ... re/gallery

[HenryJ]

Fuel pump? Fuel filter? Cap and rotor?

[Jim]

Fuel pump? Fuel filter? Cap and rotor?

All above are new, less than 1000 miles since Delphi pump, Accel cap and rotor, purolator fuel filter.
If they drive it Monday and it's fine, I'm figuring coil?
HenryJ weren't you running two coils awhile back, one a spare? What are bad coil symptoms?

[fallvitals]

When the coil in my 97 s10 went out, it wouldn't do a thing. Wou would crank till monday and nothing, becuase theres no spark..

Mine had a white mark where it looked like it had "burned through" the casing some, it was just hard diagnosing it.

[HenryJ]

Same here when the coil died. Dead. Just like the key is shut off. No fire at all.

[Jim]

I think we will be checking this Outlander out Monday.
We'll keep the Bravada around if it's an easy fix, detail it and sell it.
If it's a big problem I'll sell it as a project.
http://www.morganautosonline.com/newand ... aspx#Notes

[Jim]

UPDATE 1
Shop drove it Friday worked fine, Sat. fine, Monday AM fine, 4th trip and was going to give up and it did it, he said airbag light flashed and it fell on it's face then straighted out, seems to cut out then he hears a spark knock and it's back running. He drove it at least 50 miles total. No codes are present or stored in memory. I have a 2 hour bill from them, they plan to take it to a 15 year former GM service manager's shop that everybody takes the stuf they can't fix. He said if anybody can fix it this guy can.
To him it seems the fuel is being cut off, he said if it was ignition when it comes back it would pop through the muffler, I don't agree if the signal is broken for the spark wouldn't the signal for injection be too? I think he's talking carburetor or mechanical injection with the pop.

[Jim]

I've posted this a couple times but I've had 3 S-series with weird starting and dieing problems that were eventually tracked back to a bad ignition switch. All 3 of them got worse in the cold weather. The contacts in the switch would get stuck \ gummy \ weak and would not make good contact. All 3 of them it was the contact that runs all the "stay on while while in the start position" accessories(fuel pump, computer, etc). This is a very difficult one to trouble shoot when its in its early stages. Your symptoms sound more like tune up \ fuel but they are very close to what I was seeing on the bad switches. 2 of the 3 I noticed the air bag light flashing every once in a while sometimes accompanied by a misfire. This seemed to be a side affect of the computer loosing power for just a second and rebooting.

This post in another thread maybe the answer.

[Jim]

Bad body ground causing intermitant loss of power to the ECM, they want to continue driving it a while to confirm the repair.

[blaz]

I hope that is the problem. I hate chasing intermittent problems.

[Jim]

That was it, I have it back now and dosen't miss a beat.
Now it's for sale.

[Jim]

Sold, finally gone for $4000 making someone a reliable piece of transportation

I'm not done with S trucks I will buy another, I should have had this one

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... 3AIT#v4-36