1991 240 with a mysterious stalling problem.

[john doe]

I have a 240 wagon that stalls. It's as if the gas is cut off to the
engine, the motor is still running but the pedal stops pumping the gas to
the engine. Sometimes it starts up again before the engine quits. Most
times the motor stalls and if I let it sit for 2 or 3 minutes, it will start
up again, but the check engine light will be on. My mechanic hooked it up
to the diagnostic computer and it doesn't diagnose the problem.


Has anyone else had a similar problem, and if so, what was the solution?

 

[Mike Lenker]

This sounds identical to what my '91 245 was doing. I'd be driving along
and suddenly the engine would stumble and die, like the fuel supply was cut
off. I replaced the fuel pump relay and have gone 40,000 trouble free miles
since. Apparenly the little bugger heats up and cuts off. After sitting
idle for a few minutes it cools off and was good to go again. These cars
seem to be somewhat prone to this, I've seen it posted/asked a few times
before, and learned from the earlier posts to help diagnose my problem.
Worked for me, it's worth a try. You can replace this part easily yourself,
it lives under the glove box on the firewall. Locate it, unplug the old,
plug in the new, go for a drive. Part runs ~$40 IIRC. Good luck.

MKL
'91 245 5-spd
144,000mi

 

[James Sweet]

This sounds identical to what my '91 245 was doing. I'd be driving along
and suddenly the engine would stumble and die, like the fuel supply was cut
off. I replaced the fuel pump relay and have gone 40,000 trouble free miles
since. Apparenly the little bugger heats up and cuts off. After sitting
idle for a few minutes it cools off and was good to go again. These cars
seem to be somewhat prone to this, I've seen it posted/asked a few times
before, and learned from the earlier posts to help diagnose my problem.
Worked for me, it's worth a try. You can replace this part easily yourself,
it lives under the glove box on the firewall. Locate it, unplug the old,
plug in the new, go for a drive. Part runs ~$40 IIRC. Good luck.

MKL
'91 245 5-spd
144,000mi

All the Bosche relays that have circuit boards in them are prone to this,
they have a mixture of small leads on components and heavy contacts all on
the same board, the wave soldering gets the small stuff fine but doesn't
usually flow well on the large stuff. Permanent solution is to heat up the
large joints and flow a bit of fresh rosin core solder into them.