My wife was driving home on the NJ Turnpike in our 94 Maxima GXE, when it stalled at highway speed. She says there was no bucking or hesitating, the car just stopped responding to the accelerator. The headlights and radio stayed on, but the brake pedal got heavy (indicating the engine was off) as she coasted to a stop. After a good samaritan pushed her out of traffic and on to the shoulder, she tried restarting the engine, which started and ran fine for the rest of the night. A local shop did a diagnostic workup (fuel pump output, charge at the spark plugs, alternator output, etc) and found nothing they think would have caused this problem. They noted the ignition coil's oscilloscope trace "didn't look right", but they weren't willing to attribute the problem to what they saw.

I've had the car for 5 years and it just turned 120K miles. The fuel filter, plugs, and distributor cap have around 15K miles on them. I'm thinking of changing the ignition coil as a precaution. Has anyone seen similar problems, or have any advice on diagnosing this problem? Thanks in advance !

John Festa
kalinut@yahoo.com