Car Died then came Back?

well i am driving home on 75 in georgia and after about a half hour at 80mph the car just dies and i roll off to the side of the shoulder. Tried to restart and nothing would happen. I called a friend to come and get me. After about a half hour i open up the hood diconnect the maf and try to start the car and it starts fine except for the cel which i knew was going to happen but the car ran fine for the next 45 minutes at 80. I left the hood open after noticing the temp of the shifter lever.

A few notes :
The code pulled after it died was 1221. Ox sensor
The boot after the MAF is busted and needs to be replaced,
Before the car stopped the shifter was awfully hot. Like to hot to hold for more than a minute.
I was extremely concerned about the heat on the lever and it was noticably cooler with the hood open. Made me wonder if the clutch on the fan was engaging so i checked it when i arrived home. It does not appear to be locking up. I think this is being caused by not enough air passing thru the radiator.

Any thoughts? on what the initial cause could be for the engine quiting?

Chris
95 530i 163,000 Auto , 1975 Cessna 172M

the shifter gets hot when the car is in neutral or park and not moving, as the shift lock solenoid is recieving 12V, and all that heat goes directly to the steel shaft under the knob. if yours got hot while the car was in motion, then something else is causing it to heat up. its not directly connected to the transmission, but it is fairly close to the heater core.

you should only be concerned if the temp guage on the dash shows above center, as that shows the coolant temp, which is cooled by the radiator, and attatched physically to the transmission fluid cooler.

replace the spark plugs too, as running them with a bad O2 sensor generally fouls them up. i would also relpace the fuel pump and DME relays, the contacts on them probably look pretty shot after 160K miles. lifespan on an O2 sensor in our cars before it starts to cause drivability problems is about 60K miles. they should be replaced in pairs. the boot after the MAF causing a vacuum leak will cause VERY lean running and could throw an O2 sensor code, so fix that first and i will expect the O2 error to go away. however, running the O2 sensors lean until the car dies will probably **** em up anway, so do replace them.

have you had trans fluid service in the last 50K miles? if not, do it now, use Dextron 3 or better (redline D4 recommended)

The shifter gets rfeally hot when the car is running. But it was much cooler when i drove it home after i left the hood open.


i wonder how lean its running because the unit shows me at 25.3 mpg with the m60.

thanks for the reply
chris