96Firebird
Diamond Member
My mother's car has started acting up last week. It is a 2002 Buick LeSabre, 3800 Series II with auto trans. Basically, it will just quit while driving. It will sputter for a couple seconds, and then the whole car dies. The time that it happened when I was in the car, nothing happened on the first key-turn to restart. Try again and it starts right up, runs fine. The car runs fine at all other times, including right after it quits. It can quit at any time, both while sitting at a light and while driving at constant speed.
My cousin-in-law, who has worked at a couple GM dealerships, seems to think it is the ECM. However, I am skeptical about this. It is not common for these to go bad on these cars, but he says the car will throw random codes when the car quits (he and my dad took it for a while today, I'm guessing with the scanner hooked up).
Are there any other obvious things to check at this point? I'm thinking it is a loose/exposed wire somewhere, but that could take forever to track down. I just don't want my mom to spend $600 (my parents insist on getting the GM original and not the $200 version) on something that is probably not the cause of the problem...
Any advice?
My cousin-in-law, who has worked at a couple GM dealerships, seems to think it is the ECM. However, I am skeptical about this. It is not common for these to go bad on these cars, but he says the car will throw random codes when the car quits (he and my dad took it for a while today, I'm guessing with the scanner hooked up).
Are there any other obvious things to check at this point? I'm thinking it is a loose/exposed wire somewhere, but that could take forever to track down. I just don't want my mom to spend $600 (my parents insist on getting the GM original and not the $200 version) on something that is probably not the cause of the problem...
Any advice?
