Chrysler Repair: 97 Sebring JXI convertible 2.5L P0340 stalling, pulley bolt, crank pulley

Question
Hello Roland, I was just looking at your advice for this problem on a 98
Sebring here:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Chrysler-Repair-807/98-Sebring-LXI-Stalling-1.htm .

I need essentially the same troubleshooting info that you provided, but for my 97 JXI convertible 2.5L V6 auto. Originally purchased in Colorado.

Symptoms are: sudden stalls while driving(it just dies like it was turned off with the ign key), throws a P0340 each time, cranks but won't restart immediately. Within a
couple of mins will restart normally.

Distributor was replaced very recently, but problem persists. Ditributor has a 6 pin plug (although only 5 connect to the harness) and a 2 pin plug (only 1 pin connects to the harness). The ecm on my '97 has 40 pins on a single plug in 2 rows of 20.

Any advice or info you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Roy  

Answer
Hi Roy,
It could be an intermittant due to a poor connection in the harness from the distributor to the PCM. Try gently flexing the cables and the harness to see if you can induce the shut down. If not, then when it is shut down you could verify that you have 8V on orange wire (or possibly orange/white) on pin 2 of the 5-pin plug. If that is there, then I would go with the cam sensor in the distributor being bad. I assume that after the distributor was replaced that the battery was disconnected so as to erase the 0340 code, and it is still coming back.  If not, do that to be sure. You'll get a 1684 for dissonnecting the battery, but ignore that. You could verify that the cam sensor is not working by measure the voltage between the tan/yellow and the black/light blue wires with the ignition on and while you turn the engine over with a socket on the crank pulley bolt. It should oscillate between 5 and 0.3V a couple or so of times (I believe) per each full revolution. Of course check that the engine still won't start after that test as it could recover before you can get set up to test. You will probably need to use fine pins to pierce through the insulation to get the voltage measurements.
The way you describe it failing and then recovering sounds exactly like how a solid state Hall-effect type sensor such as the Cam sensor will behave when it is failing. You very well could have gotten a bad distributor which is still under warranty, I hope.
Please let me what you learn and thanks for the good explanation.
Roland
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