My Ford Escape was bought brand new in March 2005. It has 41000 miles on it (my commute to work is far). Over the last few weeks it has started to die when I am bringing the car to a stop. At first the car would start right back up... but now it won't even turn over until I've left it sitting off for 10-15 minutes.

I've taken it in to the dealership and they said they couldn't reproduce the issue after driving the car around and the computer didn’t show anything. The issue is happening once a day, no particular time of the day. At first I thought it was only after long drives, but it's doing it on short drives now. It 'feels' like it's choking (stalling) and then dies. It doesn't die while being driven, only when coming to a stop. If I give it gas right when I feel like it's choking, it'll go and be just fine... but when coming to a stop from exiting the highway, I am not always able to gas it to keep the car running.

Based on advice from my friends I asked the dealership to replace the Fuel Filter and check the oxygen sensor. They flat out told me they didn't change the fuel filter (which I think needs to be done anyway as maintenance) and who knows if they checked the sensor. Frankly I don’t know much of anything about cars…

Does anyone have any suggestions for me to tell the dealership this next time I bring my car in?

Is there anyway that I can be assured they aren’t just blowing me off and are actually attempting to fix the issue?

 

Hey,
I joined to tell you that my tribute did the same thing. Reading your post was like deja vue!! We finally got the Mazda dealer to replicate the issue and they ended up replacing my transmission. The problem was in the torque converter (dunno if that is spelled right)!! When they pulled the pan on the transmission they found metal shavings in the pan and had to replace the transmission (because I raised hell that is!)
Hope this helps and you havent already gotten an answer.....good luck......if you have the trouble I did you are going to need it. I was in a rental for almost a month!!

 

Thank you for responding!

They ended up hooking up a data recorder to my car and everytime it died I hit a button to record data.

They said it wasmost likelythe transmission, but they weren't completely positive. Then a couple of days later I was sitting at a stoplight and couldn't get my car to move. The engine would run, but it was like being stuck in neutral. I sat there for 10 minutes and it finally would drive, but I could feelthe gearsslippingon my drive home.

They finallyreplaced the transmisson. I hadarental for a month, too.