GstangT

So I'm headed home on a 70 mile trip, and I'm about 15 minutes til my destination, just cruisin in the left lane, and all of a sudden, no power! I step on the gas, nothing.. my speakers and deck turns off, power steering goes, so I had to crawl onto the right side of the road. Anyone have any ideas of what it might be? The car wouldn't stay on after that. After it starts (sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't), it'll shut off 5 seconds later. I have a CAI, tune, HID's, subs, deck. This is the 3rd time it happened, and I thought it was just a couple of wires loose from the intake.

Maybe it's the alternator? Fuel pump? Fuel filter? It only has 15k miles though.. any help would be much appreciated!

staggolee

Did you pop the hood see if something was obviously wrong? I once had the exact same thing happen whenever I would go into neutral while moving, I popped the hood to see my CAI filter had fallen off. Got it back on, screwed it extra tight, and havent had an issue sense. Who tuned your car? You should contact them too

GstangT

Popped the hood, checked all the connections, everything seemed alright. My tune is Doug's (BAMAchips) race tune.

05 Mustang

trying to rule things out...do you have any electical power? if the battery and alternator go out, the car will just die...

GstangT

Yeah power windows/seats still work, dome lights still turn on. anyone else got ideas??

doode

you mess with your battery terminals lately?

mine negative wasn't on tight and i went a few blocks before it cut out because it was loose

radio. lights etc would work and it would start up right away, but hit a bump just right and it would kill the power

Red Beast

how long ago did you get your subs? if you had an underdrive pulley i would point to that but hmmmm??? um... have you looked at your filter? needs cleaning or anything? or your throttle plate? could be sticking closed which may be suffocating the engine???

if your getting power then i dont think its the battery/alternator/ or anything. i think its an air prob. i might check your throttle plate, see if its moving propperly

Nuke

You state that in addition to the engine dying (stall or still running with no power?), you lose the radio and power steering (losing power steering sounds like the engine died).

When you tried to start it, what happened? How'd you get to your destination? Did it finally start? You also state that this happened before. Was each occurence identical? What did you do to get it running again?

There could be a # of things happening here but we need to know more. What year is your Stang? V6 or V8? Have you heard of the water leak issue and have you checked for signs that you have it? Do you get a Check Engine Light when this happens? When it DOES start back up, does it rev ok and appear normal or does it sputter and feel weak?

Whatever is occuring sounds to be intermittent and could be very tough to locate but with some troubleshooting and process of elimination, we should be able to narrow it down.

JDWalton

the radio dieing as well as the engine to me would point to electrical. You state you have subs, heres a few questions:

Do you have a capacitor?
Have you done the big 3?
What battery do you have?
When this happened before, how long ago and what fixed it?
What amp do you have?
Do you know what its RMS output is?

My first assumption from reading your description is that you are killing batteries and if you have done it three times now, you have probably taken your alternator with it. Even if you havent killed your alternator yet, I would say its time for at least the big 3 and probbably a larger alternator.

SKAR

Id say check your fuel pressure, sounds like the engine died, which is why you would lose everything you did. Also fuel pump would be why you can get it to start for a few seconds before it dies. Try cycling the key on and off a few times and see if it will start then die.

See if you can hear your fuel pump.