Chrysler Repair: 97 Chrysler Town and Country stalling at stops, chrysler town and country, lean mixture

Question
Hi, I have a 97 Chrysler Town and Country with a 3.8 liter V6 engine. The problem I am having just started the other day. When you are driving the vehicle and come to a stop it just stalls without warning and starts right back up. It doesnt do it all of the time, just every now and then and their is no check engine light or anything on. Any suggestions on this matter would be well appreciated. Thank You, Josh

Answer
Hi Josh,
My immediate suspicion is that your egr valve is sticking slightly ajar which will cause the engine to falter/stop at idle speed after slowing down. The valve is located near the throttle body air intake at the end of the engine, mounted in pipe that recirculates exhaust gas from the rear cylider bank exhaust pipe back around to the intake manifold. The exhaust gases have some fumes that can plate out a crud on the valve stem and thus keep it from closing tight when you are at idle. That makes for a too lean mixture so the engine stalls. The valve proper is mounted horizontally with the stem visible in a space between the body of the valve mounted on the pipe and the round top of the valve which is flanged and so if you look carefully you will see a metal rod (stem of the valve) with a slot around its circumference. You can take the tip of flat blade screwdriver and insert it in the slot and then lever the valve back and forth to check if it is moving freely (against spring action in one direction) or not. If it doesn't seem to close easily with the help of the built-in spring, then I would spray the base of the stem with solvent from a pressure can (such as WD-40 or carb cleaner) while moving the stem back and forth.  Then see if that solves the issue.
If not, then I would try to see if the engine controller has stored any fault codes in its memory: on-off-on-off-on and leave on with the ignition key (quickly, less than 5 seconds elapses) and then observe the check engine light to begin flashing, pause, etc. Count the number flashes before each pause. Group the numbers in pairs in the order they they readout to form the fault codes (If the check engine light doesn't flash, then watch the odometer window after doing the key routine to see if 4 digit fault codes appear instead of the mileage reading. I have the trouble shooting manual for your engine, so let me know what faults you get other than a 55 which means end of readout.
You can also get code translations at:
www.allpar.com/fix/codes.html
Please let me know of any results.
Roland