I have a 01 SSEi that has recentley seamed to devolope a problem of suddnley dieing for no obvious reason. I cant drive the car ( lost my licence ) so it is a bit harder for me to trouble shoot anything as I'm not in it much other than the wife takeing me to work. But it has done it twice now with me with her, & it will just flat out die without any warning. She has said it has done it wile she was driving, as well as when she is just sitting at a light. She also had a hard time getting it to start a few days ago. The SES light never goes off, but every time it has been checked it comes back as loose gas cap. I do have a leak on the intake manifold gasket cause it is leaking antifrease onto the intake front side. I will be replaceing that hope fully in the next few days, but at the moment its nothing major yet.
I'm somewhat suspect of the MAF sensor as it looks like it may have been replaced before, & for previous cars I have had problems similar to this it has been just that.
Other than that the car runs great & I have never noticed any other problems.
Dose anyone have any suggestions or know if this is a common problem with this car? Please help me narrow this down before I end up with a stranded wife.

I had a very similar problem 2 months ago, and it was in fact the MAF sensor! Good call. My buddy is a ASE Certified mechanic for a Ford dealership and he diagnosed it within about 20 minutes, he replaced it the next day. It'* been running like a champ ever since. 113K miles on her now.

could be MAF, IAC, or an alternator. Battery isn't dying is it? Does it start right back up? My wifes car did this and it was alternator.

are you having ANY other drivability issues?
Do you have any other electrical phenomenon happening?

It dose start right back up, so far. As far as the battery/ charging system nothing is wrong there. Belts are both new so nothing should be slipping or anything like that.
As for other electrical problems, I may need to replace the oil pressure sender. Once in a great wile it will bounce around for a couple secounds & than quit. It done this a couple times when we first got the car but stopped for some time, my wife has said it will now do it once in a great wile. Also she has said that there has been a couple times that the tach will just drop to 0 with the car still running & she will than get a very hard shift if the car changes gears. The tach will not start to work again untill she shuts the car off & re starts it.

thats EXACTLY what i was looking for...

i had very similar problems with my car, but it only actually stalled once, but i had consistant tachometer issues as you described, another member here had similar troubles aswell. He cured his problem by replacing the crank sensor. My cure was to clean the crank sensor to make a temporary fix. There is a small opening on the cover for teh cranksensor behind the crank pulley where you can insert the tube from a can of brake cleaner, I sprayed mine down really good and have had only one occurance of the problem in 6 months, whereas before it was more than once a week.

I never would had thought about the crank sensor, but now that you menchion it, it sounds like being worth a look.
Thanks for the help guys. Hopefully in the next few days I'll get the chance to try to remedy the problem. I just hope it is an easy fix & not something I'll have to chase around for weeks trying to find.

the reason the tach dies while driving is due to a fault that the computer detects with the crank sensor, if the computer has an indication of a false reading, it will diable the instrument until the next start up

I stopped into Autozone yesterday & had them scan the car. The crank sensor is coming up, but the guy was telling me that it may not be the sensor itself but just a short in the wireing because it didnt indicate it was bad but it was not working properley??? I bought the sensor anyway just incase. It also said both O2 sensors were bad. I hope that will fix the problem I noticed yesterday as well. My wife was parked for a few with the car running. When I got back in the car I could smell gas pretty bad. She told me she thought that she had smelled it before so this is not a first either. Looking around at everything I cannot find a leak anywhere at all. But it dosent smell like a rich condition it just smelled like raw gas so I'm not sure what to think there.
One other thing I have never seen was I checked the plugs the other day & they were in good condition but they were almost a red color. It was like a soft rusty red look mainley on the porcelin around the center electrode, but the ground electrode had it as well right around the bend of it. By the looks of how clean they were I thought that it was from a lean condition, but I was told it is from the additives that are being used in the gas now.
Anyway I'm going to replace the three sensors today & see what comes of it, I just hope nothing else comes up.

Well I got both O2 sensors in & it made some improvement it seams. It now has a bit more bottom end & dosent hesatate any at all where before it did from time to time.

But for the crank trigger, I cant get the damn balancer bolt out for nothing. I tryed everything I can possabily think of but the motor wont quit turning with it. I ran my impact on it I dont know how many times, tryed wedging something into the crank pully, tryed it with the belts on & off & so on. I've worked on cars since I was a kid & never seen a balancer bolt that was so stubborn before.