Help: Car Stalls when I stop

[bth1]

When I went to take the car out today it started stalling out periodically when I would come to a stop. It was idling fine at first and I let it warm up for a couple minutes and then when I got to the second stop sign it just died. At first when I tried to start it back up it would just die and then it would start again if I gave it gas. It continued to do this after I had it out on the highway and had the car all warmed up. It is almost like when I stop the RPMs drop way down and sometimes it kind of kicks back to life before stalling and then other times it just dies.

Any insight would be appreciated. Here are my observations:

It was about 33 degrees out. The car had sat without being started for about three week (no trickle charge yet).
The throttle cables were reset right after thanksgiving when I got it back from Chuck T's.
At that time the battery was disconected (so wouldn't that have reset the PCM?)
It is a 96 RT/10 (all stock) and has about 34k miles.
The previous owner claimed the battery is less than 2 years old (not that that means anything).
The temp was reading about 190, the oil pres. 30ish and Bat. 14.
The tank would fluctate between 3/4 and 7/8 full.

My initial thought was that the battery was not fully charged and that could be why it was dying (especially when the heater was on). I was running the hearer, ligts and radio when it was last out without and problems. But I would have thought that if the battery was low it would have charged some as I drove or not have idled as well initially.

My second thought was that maybe I have some moisture/water in the gas tank from condensation but that doesn't seem to make sense.

I don't think it would be the throttle bodies because they were just reset.

Any idea would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Blake

 

[Joseph Dell]

battery is weak. If you haven't replaced it in 18 months, then definitely do so.

definitely a battery issue...

JD

 

[Big Medicine]

This battery crap is sickening. This hs happened to me before too. It is hard for me to understand why this hasn't been solved after all this time. It has to be a design flaw that is correctable.

What eaxctly does the alternator do in these cars? Is it just for show?

Years ago, I remember taking batteries out of running vehicles & placing them in dead vehicles in lieu of battery jumper cables (didn't have any). The car ran fine with no battery.

What design change has been made to cars these days? They won't run w/o a battery. Can this be changed?

 

[Knight Viper]

I took the battery out of my car (not too long) and it kept running

 

[Big Medicine]

http://www.bcae1.com/charging.htm

 

[JGK95]

Needs more CowBell?

Sorry,

Jay K.

 

[GimmeTheSpeed]

I just posted a thread about potentially the same issue, I had the same problem with the car needing RPM's or it would die. It was in result of the battery being disconnected and then reconnected and the PCM being reset... Solution was to continue to start and let idle... and repeating this process, basically letting the car cycle as much as possible... per my local viper tech the car's PCM had to relearn itself... sure enough, after a couple cycles... the car has been running just fine. Hope this helps

 

[GimmeTheSpeed]

it was an easy fix... the $1100 fuel pump job was the intial culprit! glad it wasn't.

 

[Danno]

I am having a similar problem that I haven't figured out yet. My problem is intermittent. I pulled battery and found it was only 7 months old (I just recently purchased this car) I had it checked at autozone and it checked out fine. Put it back in and drove it for about 30 minutes yesterday and it never acted up. (I imagine its waiting for me to cross the biggest intersection in town) My car has only 14500 miles but the wires are the original from 1997. I'm going to try plugs wires and I thought fuel pump but whats this deal about a $1100 fuel pump job? (above this post) Please let me know what you find out and I will do the same for you. Thanks

 

[bth1]

Thanks for the very informative link Big Medicine.

Once I hooked a battery tender up for a day or so the car ran fine. I figure I could probably use a new battery and will install and Optima once it gets a little closer to Spring when I will get the chance to use the car more.