I was driving to work this morning, and after 1/2 a mile of leaving my house, my engine died and I lost all power, including power steering and brakes. I managed to turn onto a side street before the car stopped moving. After the car stopped, I put the car back into park and the engine re-started as if nothing had happened. Is this something serious that I should be really worried about or was it just a freak occurrence? BTW, I just installed a new set of wheels onto the car Saturday and got an oil change at the dealership on Friday. Would any of these things have caused this to happen? Thanks for the input.

Yikes! That is really odd. It just re-started and all was well?
This may sound really stupid, but maybe your battery is bad or a cable is loose.

My wife and I once picked up a brand new NISSAN pick-up and 5 miles from the show room the thing stopped dead on the interstate. It was the BATTERY!!! I would have not believed it if I was not there....

:-jon

it happened once to my ex car MB S320 long ago...

it was a cold nite and the car just died like that after two minutes...

i guess it's because of the cold engine...not pretty sure..

It could be a faulty ECU let the dealer check it out,...

This is a serious major problem u could have been hurt if it was on a HW...

Sure but in Orange County, CA? How cold could that be. If that was me I'd be sh*tt*ng bricks becasue what if that happened right before a turn on the freeway.

If you haven't already, call your dealer immediately. It's always best to be safe than sorry! Bring it into them and let them have it for a day and test EVERYTHING related.

Hope your car is okay.

I have had it happen a couple of times after coming to a stop.

this is most certainly an alignment problem caused by the addition of your new wheels. this will void your warranty and insurance will not pick up any cost.

My friends dad had this happen to him in a VW, he got a new car out of it!

best of luck at least you weren't hurt!

Can you explain how this caused the engine to die?

Check your battery cable connection. One of my ex car had a similar experiences. The engine just die in any time and took it to the shop. Well the cable connection to the battery was loose. After retightened the engine never stopped again. A simple fix. If it's not the battery, take it to the dealer and check it out.

An alignment problem? Not the biggest grease monkey around, but don't see the connection of a structural issue causing a mechanical malfunction

It happened once to me on my 95 Escort... I was driving semi - fast (it was an escort ) lol but seriously, and I turned into a parking lot to turn around, stopped to back up, car just stalled. WTF?, Put it in park, it started right back up and never did it again... i dunno

MikeyB should have started his comment out with:

"places tongue firmly in cheek"

Before my TL-S, I had a 98 VW Passat with a chip upgrade. Right after I decided to trade it in on something else, it would completely shutdown, but for such a short interval that I usually wouldn't have to restart the engine. After the car was running for a minute or two, I wouldn't have any problems, so luckily I was never in traffic when it happened.

I put the stock ECU/chip back in and drove it for a month with no problems. Since I traded it in, I never bothered to get to the root of the problem...bad ECU, bad chip install, bad chip etc.. I figured it was some temp-related problem since the problem would go away after a few minutes.

Thanks for all the advice. I'll probably take it to the dealership and have them check it out, but should I change my wheels back to stock? Will the the new wheels really void my warranty? I have yet to hear anyone ever mention about changing the wheels and losing the warranty.

I had a similar problem with a saab 900 Turbo I owned in the early 90's. The problem ended up being a faulty fuel pump, unfortunatly it took the dealer 3 attempts before it was rectified.

Y would changing the wheels void the warranty? That's the most asinine thing I've ever heard... don't worry it won't.

My grandmothers villager had fuel pump probs... that was different it didnt just stall as if you turned the key off (like we mean)

it would lose power and u push the gas and nothing happens then stutter and stall.

One step at a time -- there is no reason if the tires and wheels are OK, to void your warranty or cause your grief (if they were substandard and it caused the car to fail -- like having the wheels crack or tires blow, that would be something different).

Sometimes things happen and they happen by coincidence...

I did manage to get a replacement battery cable for a previous car and I didn't have any other work done (I put the cable in myself). It turned out that the car stalled going up hill after I warmed it up and I "jumped on it." The car just died. It turns out the people, who made the factory replacement cable, didn't pull enough of the insulation away from the battery clamp and there was only a small chunk of wire that would butt into the battery terminal (from the outside, it looked perfect). I pulled on the cable (I have a good "meter" and noticed that I was "open" depending on the flex), so the problem was easy to fix. Stuff can move around during acceleration, movement, heat, etc.

If you can stick near your home and try some quick braking and acceleration or just try to pull gently on the battery cable (if you are so inclined) you could possibly find out if there is a bad connection there. There are a lot of other fuses and connections that could go bad (hey, stuff happens; it's possible)

If you still feel uneasy about "this", explain what happened to the dealer and let them check it out. Left turns in traffic with engines cutting out is like bullfighting!

Hmm... that reminds me a friend of mine with his new Buick few years ago. It happened to him 3 times and I was in the car at once when it happened.

I think you better report to the dealer. My friend got full refund after third time happened and got a Lexus.