Engine dies when cold

[AZMike]

This has happened to me 3 times in the last week. I start the car, put in in drive (a4 auto), move about 5 feet anf the engine dies. I start it back up and no problems. It only does it when cold, and there are no codes showing up except for the LDCM and RDCM one that always comes up (U1064H). However, it's not consitent - it did not die on my this morning.

Any ideas what it could be? I'm thinking that I may have to wait until something really goes south before I actually get a code.

 

[Patrick]

Not giving you any codes, eh?

Hmm.... :confused

Let's investigate this a little further and see what other factors there may be to this situation.

How many miles are on your 2000, Mike? Is the car giving any other symptoms, like a knock or some other engine noise? When you fill up with gas, do you use a top-tier brand of gas, and buy the highest octane available?

How long do you normally give it to warm up before shifting out of park?

C4C5Specialist may have some other ideas on this... hang tight, we'll get to the bottom of this.


-Patrick

 

[AZMike]

No other symptoms. I've got just over 50k miles on the clock. I've been using the same gas in it for a while now - but it does come from Safeway, so it's probably spot market gas, but we haven't had a problem with gas from that station in any of our vehicles since we've moved here. I always fill up with 91 octane - which is the highest you can get here in AZ.

I ran a tank of 87 in it a couple of years ago when we were still down in Phoenix and we had that supply issue and man did it lose power. I was really glad to see 91 flowing again.

I usually start the car, buckle up, and drive off - so I guess I let the engine run about 10 - 15 seconds before going into Drive.

BTW: I've had one other issue that may or may not be related since the car was new: With the A/C on, the car idles really low sometime (around 450 rpm), and rough. I've had it looked at twice under warantee, but I would suspect they just looked for codes. You think this could be a throttle position sensor, or a high idle solenoid type of problem?