So today I was driving my sc300 and as I came down a hill the engine died out of nowhere. All the lights were on in the car, there was no sounds I didn't have the radio on and I heard nothing. Tried restarting the car but it just sounded like it didnt want to start.


The starter was working fine and the battery is brand new along with new plugs, wires, cap and rotor. I had to have the car towed to my local shop but once it got there it started up first try but died after about five minutes. After my mechanic tried to see if the computer was throwing any codes he found nothing. The second time the car restarted and idled fine for over 30 minutes and he had me drive it home.

He wants me to keep driving it but I don;t want to get stranded again, even though this time it was only 2 miles from home.


From what I have searched it could be anything from the coil to the fuel computer. I was thinking I will buy a new coil (~$70) but im not sure thats the issue.


Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this, any input or questions on something I may have left out appreciated.

 

What was the weather like when this happened?

 

Sounds like an ecu issue.

 

Weather was fine. I did see someone say it could be the ecu, also another said they had similar symptoms with a bad maf

 

Tested the coil today with a multimeter. It tested low for both the primary and secondary winding. It was about .5 where it was supposed to be .75-.8 and 8200 where it was supposed to be between 10,000-11,000.

 

Also crank and cam position sensors. Look into those as well.

 

Is that a common thing to break aswell?

 

the car would usually throw codes for those sensors and the coil does not fail very often on an sc3.

It sounds like your ecu or your fuel ecu.
for the ecu do the procedure for pulling the codes and see what happens, I think its jumper te1 and e1.
the check engine light should come on still, but not blink out the codes if there aren't any tripped.
let us know how it reacts.

as for fuel pump ecu, you can rule that by jumpering it on in the same diagnostic connector.
its like Fp and the pin that has voltage.

 

Thanks I'll look them up and try both when I'm home next.

 

I just got home for the holiday weekend and was going to check this out but unfortunate some water got into the sc through the side of the windshield? So I haven't been driving it. When you talk about the fp jumper what am i doing just placing a wire from the fp to +b and try driving around with it? or will it kill it when I jump it? Just a little fuzzy on what I'm actually doing with the connectors, not to mention they are covered in a ton of electric grease for some reason.


*edit: Did the code check and it just blinked every .5 seconds so that is good from what I read. For the fuel i jumped the fp and +b it ran fine and then removed it while running and it continued to run fine nothing noticeable happened. Any other things to try or do I need to crack open my main computer?

 

My car did the same thing. Im here looking for solutions myself. I jumped the te1 and e1 this morning to see if my timing was off. It wasnt. But what I noticed was the the car was flashing no codes. Also I noticed that my over drive light was flashing. I dont know what the hell is wrong with it.

 

Did you try the fuel pump computer as well? My car is a manual so not sure about that overdrive light.

 

I put it in the shop. When its done I'll let you guys know what they did.