My daughter has a 2002 Malibu with a 3.1L V6 and automatic trans which has a stallilng issue at 90,000 miles. As long as she drives down the highway, the car is ok. If she stops for a stop sign or toll booth, the car will restart butwill still stall at random and only when coming to a stop. My local mechanic checked for error codes and replaced the oil switch and thermostat. That doesn't seem to have fixed the problem. She used to have a 92 Corsica with the same power train that did the same thing that was traced to a faulty control solenoid in the transmission. Is it possible the same thing exists in the 2002 models. Any help would be appreciated. I am new to the forum and tried the search engine for this issue but haven't found anything.

 

The solenoid in the transmission that causes the stalling is the torque converter clutch solenoid. when these go bad, it will keep the trans in 4th gear when coming to a stop. So just like if you were driving a manual trans, and left it in gear coming to a stop it would stall. 9 times out of 10 that i have seen this problem, when you restart the car, and try to put it into gear, it would stall immediatly with a hard thump. If this is what you are experiencing then a quick and easy way of telling to to disconnect the switch on the tranny. It is blue in color and can be found on the front of the tranny about halfway down. leaving this unplugged permanantly(if your strapped for cash) will not hurt the motor\trans at all. you will just lose 4th gear. So you may burn a little extra fuel on the highway.

 

Well there is a new wrinkle. She called while on the road. She said she was driving on the interstatewith cruise on and tried to pass a semi and guess what? The car stopped. Looks like it might be a different problem.