On my way home from work, car starts like normal. I start driving and make it about mile away from work (i live about 2 miles away) and the engine quits. FANTASTIC.

For whatever reason (thanks, jesus) I had the timing light in the back of the car. I hooked it up, using the flashlight on my keychain to see, to an ignition wire and the battery terminals. Held the trigger on the light, cranked it and it didn't flash so I knew it wasn't getting spark.

First thought was ignition coil, i checked all the connections on the distributor cap/coil and they were all tight. I tried cranking it again, no spark. Called dad up and interrupted his TV show and told him what was goin on and told him to bring the extra ignition coil from the garage (another miracle).

While on the side of the road with the hood open, two squad cars came and asked if i needed help they were nice cops, not like the one who gave me my speeding ticket back in May.

Anyways, dad comes and has the ignition coil, i swap it out in about 3 minutes and it started.
When it started, the mph was at like 40 and the tach was at like 1500. This is about the speed that the car died at, is that why it showed up?

Funny thing about the way back though..the instant mpg was all over the place. While driving 45 mph, the inst mpg was going from 1-99 and they were all completely random numbers. it changed like every half second. is this a bad ecm? I've also been having trouble with the EST and codes for the MAF which is not even half a year old.

 

the general consensus is usually to disconnect the battery for a few minutes and re- connect. This might reset the ECM.

 

Sounds like the something in the ECM got scrambled..WW

 

Yup. The dreaded Coil/Ignition Control Module (ICM) failure. Mine went ****-up a couple of years ago, stranding me in similar fashion.