Help!

I have a 2004 Neon with 56,000 miles. It's bee a good little car. I've only had to replace the cam sensor and brakes once, battery once. Yesterday We were comming back from the in-laws and the radio died. I looked dowm at it and the display was dead. Within a minute, it came back on. When to the store for about an hour then drove home. About 3 miles after leaving the store, the whole car died. DEAD! While driving in gear! No flashing lights, radio nothing dead! I put it into neutral and turned the key on ....nothing. I pulled over, put it into park shut it off, then it started right up! Radio, lights no problems! 100 yards later same thing dead! Did the same ,pulled over ,put into park shut it off. it started right up and drove it home. When I got it home I looked at all the cables, to the power box, ground, battery, all tight. No loose relays or fuses. I did replace the battery about 2 months ago because it started to loose it's ability to hold a charge, it had a dead cell. The car started right up today, and my wife drove to work without any problems.Anyone have any thoughts????

 

I have a first gen Neon, so I am guessing here, but man does it sound like a grounding problem!

On a first gen Neon, there are two main grounding straps under the hood. One in the rear of the engine compartment on the passenger side that bolts to the firewall and the other under the battery box that runs from the tranny mount point to the tranny itself. The one on the tranny uses two clips on both ends and they can rust or work loose and start to disconnect causing all sorts of stuff to happen. Ditto for the other one too.

Don't know that 2nd gen Neons use the same thing or not, but it is a good starting place to look.

 

Thanks for the response. My wife wouldn't drive it until we had it looked at. I brought it to my mechanic. It died on him when he had it (thank God!). He found the positive cable from the battery to the power control box was shorting internally. He had new cables made up from the battery to the starter and to the control box that are thicker guage. he also put a new negative cable on. He said the OEM cables are too thin! Cost $120.00 and no problems now.

 

That explains why it worked one time and would croak the next. The longer it was used and hotter the wire got, the worse the connection. That and bouncing around, etc.....

Glad you found it and thanks for posting back what it was. You never know who else out there my have the same issue. It is a PITA to see that someone has the same problem, but never posts what they did to fix it (if they ever did).

In fact, there are some other strange postings from the past about mysterious dying then restarts OK and runs for awhile. Maybe this posting will help them too.

 

I've noticed that the metal where the clamp connects to the cable is very thin. Looked like it would be easy to break with minor bending.

 

My mechanic had a new wire with brass connectors made instead of replacing with an OEM cable. He said if we used OEM it would probably happen again.