hey R people,

The last few weeks my 97 has been losing power for a split second at a time. it happens so fast that I can't tell if the engine is losing power.

this is basically what happens:
the gauges go dead, the tack drops to zero, my doors unlock (alarm does that), my antenna start to go down.

then about a split second later everything comes back to life, and the lights on the dash look like I just started the car (ie abs light stays on for a few seconds)
like I said before it happens so fast that I can't tell if the engine is losing power.

I have checked every connection under the hood multiple times. I even clean up some of the original owners alarm wires, and checked all the wires in the ignition.

Any ideas?
can a bad distributor do this?

 

possibly a loose ignition switch wire so the car thinks the key is turned to off? just a guess, i've never heard of an issue like this.

 

Lsd96teg; Ignition switch is a good guess. I would get a multimeter and probe all of your main ignition wires to make sure they are getting correct voltage. Wiggle them around well your checking too.

Check the voltage going to the battery to the fuse box, and then from the fuse box to the rest of the car.

Most of the time when we are trouble shooting odd problems like this it comes down to it being a problem with the remote start or alarm.

Good luck sir.

 

yeah this is my plan, but it happens so quickly and so randomly that I think I will be lucky to catch it.
I don't think it is the alarm but it may well be.
The cut outs seem to follow no particular pattern.

 

Is the whole car losing power to where you have to reset your clock and radio settings?

 

No it is like the I just turned the key off

 

Maybe a shot in the dark but I had a similar problem a few years back. The map sensor for some reason was losing voltage and the car kept dying. The culprit was my fields vtec controller, I removed it and the car ran fine from that point on.

 

I would also say it is the ignition swich.Maybe a loose contact?