I have an '89 300TE with 225,000 miles on it. For the past year, the car will occasionally stall. This usually happens while simply cruising at speed down the road. The remedy has been to pull over, what 1 or 2 minutes, and restart. This has happened as rarely as once a month and as frequently as 2 times a day. A few weeks back, the same thing happened but this time the car wouldn't start. We eventually towed it to a parking space. For fun, I turned the ignition at which time it started. We drove a little further down the road and it stalled again and again wouldn't start. This time we simply towed it home.

The car sat for a few weeks. A few days ago I went to try starting the car. The car would start instantly and run beautifully if I sprayed starter fluid in the inner chamber of the air cleaner. As soon as the fluid burned off, the car would die. This afternoon, we puched it over to the barn a few hundred yards away so I could start to try to figure out what is going on. After we puched it most of the way, I had my wife try to start it. It seemed to want to fire, and, by the third try, it started but ran very unevenly. She backed it into the barn and turned it off. A few minutes later I started it up. It started easily and ran just fine at higher rpm's but stuttered at idle. Any ideas on how to diagnose what is going wrong?

Hans

Replace the fuel pump relay, $118 here on FastLane, takes about three minutes (behind the splash sheild behind the battery).

Peter

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1972 220D ?? miles
1988 300E 200,012
1987 300D Turbo killed 9/25/07, 275,000 miles
1985 Volvo 740 GLE Turobodiesel 218,000
1972 280 SE 4.5 165, 000 - It runs!