[200q20v] Stalling,cont'd

[Tomsaudi200 at aol.com]

For any of you who are still interested, I am actively taking notes on my 
car's behavior as I prepare a visit to the dealer to hopefully put this 
problem to rest. And to reiterate my previous point, I am not on some 
witchhunt against my dealer; I just want this problem corrected, and to make 
sure that I did not dump several hundreds of dollars into  the car, out of my 
pocket, for nothing.

That said, the dealer indicated they wanted a mechanic to ride with me, to 
see if I can replicate the problem for them. I am fearful that this will be 
impossible to do. I have purposely tried to "simulate" situations in which I 
think the car would stall, but any attempt I make on purpose fails.

Some questions the dealer had was if the car makes any noise prior to the 
stall. It doesn't. In fact, the stalling is so subdued that I only notice it 
once the steering gets heavy, and I see the bank of idiot lights lit up. 
Another question was if it happens when the car is cold. It can happen then, 
and it can happen after I have been driving it for over an hour.

What I have picked on is that it likes to stall upon sudden deceleration, 
accompanied by a downshift. The one place I can almost count on my car 
stalling out is entering the driveway to my company. If the light is green, I 
am usually travelling at 35-45mph, turn left to cross the road, downshift 
into 2nd, and then the engine dies. This is the one instance in which the car 
consistently fails on me, and it is an especially dangerous place for it to 
happen given the fast-moving traffic. 

This convinces me that somewhere in that engine there is a vacuum leak that 
is reacting to a sudden loss of revs that shuts the engine down, or sucks out 
enough air to cut the engine. 

Naturally, when I come to the dealer next week, I'll tell them the same 
symptoms, but I thought I would share some more details on the circumstances 
of the stalling to see what you guys thought. Thanks for bearing with me!

Tom