Why would a 1999 dodge stratus start up fine but then sputter and die while driving or sitting at idle for a while?

Answer 1

There are any number of answers to this question and I know because I have a 1998 Stratus and it is currently happening to me. It could be the fuel pump is not working properly. It could be the crank sensor. It could be insufficient pressure in the fuel delivery to the engine (like if theres a kink in the fuel line. It could be faulty ignition wires. It could be the catalytic converter. The manual says thet. With me it always happened when the car was low on gas and it feels like as your driving, the engine isnt't gettineg enough gas. When this happens to me, I note that if I put in a couple gallons of gas, it will start up after awhile. This led my mechanic to believe one or two other things: One, the gas guage is inaccurate and is telling me that there is enough gas in the tank when in fact there isn't. Two, He also suggested that the tube which runs from the tank to the engine is too high up in the tank. It's like the drain in a sink. The drain is flush with the bottom, so the sink drains completely. Think if the drain was one inch higher than the bottom of the sink. At that level, there would be water in the sink but not flowing through the drain. If that is the situation in the gas tank, the guage would say there is gas in the tank but the outflow tube is too high for it to drain out to the engine. Good luck. I wish there was a definitive answer, but there isn't.

[EDIT]: I had a very similar problem with my 2000 Dodge stratus. It would get so bad that the entire car would rumble while idling. In my case, it was a combination of misfiring spark plugs and corroded wiring to said spark plugs. My mechanic said it was "a hell of a job" after repairing it. If your mechanic uses a code reader, it should tell you whether or not this is your problem fairly quickly. He should see a bunch of "misfire" codes.