I have a 2000 SE. Every once in a while (once every week or two), I drive down the road at any speed and the RPM gauge drops to zero, then the engine starts pinging hard. When I notice the engine pinging and see the RPM gauge at zero, I drop the tranny into Neutral and turn the key off - then - on again. At this point the car starts and the RPM resumes. In the past if I run the car with the RPM at zero, the engine will just quit and go off. Once I reset the ignition everything runs normal again.

What is ALSO happening intermittently is sometimes when the car has been driven, I shut the engine off to go into a store, come back out and the car acts like its flooded and will not start. I shut off the key, hold the gas to the floor for a 10 seconds, let off the gas and the car will re-start on the next attempt. Does anyone have any ideas? Do you think its related? I've had the car scanned, they do not read any error codes, they try to shake wires around the crank sensor and that doesn't replicate the problem. Have taken out the crank sensor and there'* no visable flaws or cracks.

maybe the PCM is bad?

I will look more in depth on that. I appreciate your help!

im betting on a bad pcm or cam sensor. your best bet is have a scantool hooked when it happens up to se if any bad information is being sent back to the computer

sam sent me an email, he seems to be having trouble with the forum.. so this is what he said


Thanks for you're help on my intermittant RPM gauge failure. I tried
to post a reply, but I'm not having much luck posting so I thought I
would e-mail you.

I had a anaylizer hooked up once while the RPM gauge had failed, and
the anaylizer was reading an output of RPM. So I'm not sure which
part to change, I hate replacing parts not knowing for sure if it'*
defective or not. But, I'm starting to think the PCM possibly.

Thanks for your help and if you have any ideas, please let me know!



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Im thinking a bad cluster or piched wire myself... but his engine dying as a result kinda baffles me