Bought this car last week. Just got this car serviced they checked it for the 100,000 mile tune up and it was good to go.got the trans fluid changed and everything ran great. the other day I was driving and the car died on me so I pulled over turned it off and turned it back on. It started right up and I was on my way it did this 2 more times on the way home. what could this be a bad sensor? when it happened the oil light goes on and the battery light goes on.
See if the throttle body is dirty, that could be one of the causes. The other ones I can think of are clogged fuel injectors or a clogged fuel pump. I'm not sure that a computer issue would be the problem for a car this old, perhaps the shop didn't check the car very throughly. You could also try running a scan tool while you're driving to see if it trips any codes or any of the data goes wonky when or if it stalls.
I've also heard is if you use a low grade fuel can cause backfiring which causes carbon buildup in the throttle body. As the carbon builds up it clogs both the idle air control and the throttle plate. The throttle plate is machined to fit perfectly with the body so some air can pass while it's closed, if that space is full of carbon then it won't let air pass, choking the engine at closed throttle, like when you're driving and take your foot off the gas.
should I be using a higher octane fuel? should I use a fuel injector cleaner when filling up?
also drove the car for 2 days now went about 20 miles and never did this again. If that helps with finding out the lroblem.
Try using a higher octane fuel, I use it for my really old cars and it works better than regular (Normally I'd use 93 octane for all my cars if I could afford it lol), You can try fuel injector cleaner but do some research on which one would be the best for your type of car. Not really sure about the issue going away recently, but I have had some of the cars I've driven have little hiccups in the system while I'm driving, and sometimes they would just vanish after a while. So while it's possible the problem could've fixed itself, I'd keep an eye on it for a while just to be sure.