Hard Time Starting

[bobmoon]

I'm hoping someone has some sage wisdom to share and save my marriage.

My wife has a 99 sportage with 72K miles on it. She claims she can be driving down the road and the engine will just die. It then has a hard time restarting, but when restarted it runs fine. At times, it will have a hard time starting from cold or recently driven, needing to be cranked multiple times for up to 10 minutes before the engine will fire.

I have driven this thing around for hours over the last several weeks and never experienced this issue where the engine just dies. It of course does it immediately upon giving it back to my wife. I have one time witnessed the no start issue, in which the engine would not start for a good five minutes. The engine would just turn over with seemingly no ignition.

I have replaced the plugs, wires, coils, fuel and air filters, cleaned the battery posts and cables.

The good news is that the sporty has run progressively better with each repair. The bad news is the **** thing still dies on her and will not restart for a variable period of time.

Any help would be appreciated as I have grown weary of this headache and my wife thinks it's me, not the car!

[KiaMech]

I'm guessing you checked out the obvious stuff, so another possibility is the crankshaft or camshaft position sensors.

No engine lights? You might want to find a place that will scan it for codes just in case. The check engine light doesn't have to be on to have codes stored.