mx5cartalk.com

Well, you wouldn't believe it, a similar thing happened to me in the family Mazda6 as happened several weeks ago in the MX5.
I picked up a Mate from the hospital and we were heading home to have coffee. We were chatting and, well, old habits die hard and without thinking I dropped it into neutral at the top of a hill - and bugger-me-dead - the engine cut out.
I felt it in the power steering before I noticed all the lights. I guided it carefully into a car park and we sat for a moment and ran through any possible causes. Couldn't think of anything, so I started it (got a new battery yesterday so it started instantly) but it struggled to rev and wouldn't idle at all.
Gave it a bit of accelerator but it really didn't want to rev. I drove off carefully and kept the revs up and negotiated several roundabouts and a couple of sets of traffic lights, keeping the revs up. Managed the 6 klms home and on the way up the long road to my place I gave it a bit of wellie in the lower gears. By the time we got home it was running just fine and idleing as it should. Ran normally dropping my mate home later on.
My Missus mentioned that she had had a brief similar experience earlier that morning.
No stuttering and stammering like it does if not firing properly or fuel not getting through. Weird.
We will see if this problem pops up tomorrow. (It got a full tank of fuel late last week at my usual station - so tank was full)

Rocky, sounds like you might have a problem with one or more of the switches mentioned below:

93_Clubman wrote:Re below (cutting out when depressing the clutch & engaging or changing gear), check the switch activated by the clutch pedal as they have been known to disintegrate due to age.

BlackLeaf wrote:Have noticed also that sometimes the car starts perfectly, but when I put the car into gear it then shuts down.
Disconcertingly, on a couple of occasions (several months back) when I have been driving, the engine has completely cut out. I believe a gear change was in progress when this occurred.

manga's following comment was in response to an NA6:

manga_blue wrote:standard OEM ECU uses the throttle stop switch, the ECT sensor, the clutch [pedal] switch and the gearbox neutral switch to determine idle speed.

manga's following comment was in response to an NB8A:

manga_blue wrote:As far as I can tell the ECU uses neutral switch, clutch switch, TPS closed switch and ECT output to work out whether it needs to idle and how fast it should idle.

This is a hail mary - perhaps try disconnecting the battery for a few minutes?

The guy at the Battery shop connected his battery pack via the cigarette lighter before he changed the battery.
I notice that now the drivers window doesn't respond to the "fully down in a single press of the button" any more.
Kinda makes you wonder if it is all related to the change of the battery.

Thanks Clubman, I am having a think about that info.

The plug in to the lighter socket is unusual, would have required ignition position to carry the current unless it's permanently live which they rarely are. This could have caused a problem with the very sensitive electrics in cars these days. Probably works, but not as good as connecting a power source directly to the +/- cables at the battery prior to disconnecting them for removal of the old battery. I'd try Bruce's idea, disconnect the battery for a while and do a reset. Cars are like computers these days and a periodic restart can do wonders. Just have to reset some settings and preferences after reconnection.

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How do I do a "Reset" Kev? She is a 2006 model.
Certainly significant that I have only had these problems immediately after the fitment of the new battery.
The bozo that fitted the battery did not strike me as having much knowledge about what he was doing.

Just pull the battery leads and leave off, usually for about half hour is enough. Re-attach battery then reset the clock, radio settings etc. Make sure you have the radio code if it has one! I made that mistake once on our '99 Tarago. Luckily I was going to fit a new head unit anyway. I actually do this ecu and sensor reset from time to time on our Rodeo and it usually runs better afterwards, feels like a retune sometimes.

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Disconnected the battery for an hour or so then spent a few minutes putting various settings back. Driver's window still doesn't auto-retract - strange that it's failure coincided with the battery change... but then the auto-safety-door-locking has never worked at all.
Took it for a 10k drive and everything went normally. No problem with idle, plenty of power, so maybe it was just a one-off glitch - like the MX5.
I have a bottle of injector cleaner so I will put that in the tank at the next fill.

Well, you could keep guessing and speculating what's wrong with it, or you could get data out of it with an OBD2 tool. Then you could likely narrow it down somewhat. The computer that runs the car is likely to know anything worth knowing.