Car almost left me stranded!

[linusb]

Intermittently my 1997 E39 had been losing power on the highway...cruising it would feel like the engine had stopped. Only for a fraction of a second. This happened two or three times in the last month. Yesterday...it happened for one or two seconds with there being no power to the engine...step on the accelerator nothing, then it would all of a sudden just come back to life.

Today...it got worse. Dying on the highway for about 4 or 5 seconds...coming back to life. Completely stalled one time when moving slowly on a standard road.

Car has 218,000 miles. I just bought it in the spring...have lots of service records. Fuel pump was replaced about 4 or 5 years ago..maybe 50-70,000 miles without me going back to actually look through them all (There are a pile of them).

Does this sound like classic fuel pump problem?

With these symptoms, how likely is it the MAF? Clogged injectors? Clogged fuel filter? Something else? No spark?

THink I'm going to try a DIY fuel pump replacement since that isn't very expensive and go from there.

[crdiscoverer]

At first it sounded like the crank or cam position sensors, but if it stalled then it looks like something else.

[linusb]

Also...no problems starting. After it stalled, I coasted to a safe spot to stop. It started right back up.

[moyendevivre]

Yes, this sounds like bad camshaft position sensors. Possibly bad crankshaft position sensors but these tend to fail more outright and not as intermittent. They're both similar in design and materials.

Both of these sensors are capable of causing a vehicle to stall, especially upon a warm start or at idle stops. They also trigger OBDII codes when they begin to fail. In an instance like this I would expect code P0344, which is the intermittent camshaft sensor on the intake side.

How long ago was the fuel filter replaced? Typically the pump will just burn up instead and work very poorly instead of working intermittently. It is unusual that a CEL or SES has not popped up on the dash yet.