I was driving down the road and the engine just shut off as I was coasting along getting ready to make a turn. I made the turn and coasted into a parking lot and shut the ignition off. I tried to restart it. Whenever the starter was turning the engine over, the tach was bouncing back and forth between 0 and 3000 rpm's. On the third attemp to restart it, it spit and sputtered. On the fourth try it restarted and I tried to make my way home. It quit again once more when I let off the gas to coast down to a stop sign. It restarted on the fouth try, and this time a SES light came on.

Once I made it home, I shut the car off and it restarts just fine and runs normal. The SES light went out too and did not come back on when just idling int he garage. I'm kinda nervous about taking it back out on the road without knowing what could be wrong.

The car got a new Opti (complete ACDelco unit) back in Oct 2005 along with a new electric water pump and new plugs and plug wires. Since then, i have only put about 3000 miles on the car.

Any ideas on what to look at? Could it be the Opti again? The harness going to the opti? It just seems like it could be one of those two since my tach was jumping all over the place when I was turning the engine over with the starter.

 

Check for codes, it may have one stored. That sounds like the same symptoms my car had when the opti was dying.

 

Will it still be stored even though the SES light didn't come back on after restarting the car?

 

Yes, codes can be stored as (H)istory, even if the SES light isn't lit.