Hello Fellas,

Well, it all hit the fan yesterday. I was on my way back home from school (about a 40 minute drive) at around 3 o'clock. As I came to a stop at the red light right in front of the entrance ramp to the interstate, the car began that familiar, violent shake and marginal throttle response. I immediately changed lanes to pull into a parking lot of an abandoned garage, but evidently asked too much of the throttle and the car died, with all the dash lights coming on. Not again! After about 45 minutes of attempting to restart the car without the shake so I could at least get home, it was to no avail.

As I was in a sketchy part of town, I was getting funny looks from the crowd walking on the side road, so I decided it in my best interest to put my flashers on and creep down to the nearest parts house. The first, less than .5 mile, was an O'Reilly. Went in and got the gentleman working the counter to come out and check for codes for me, so I at least knew where to start. It generally read that it was "low engine voltage." He advised me that this was too vague of a reading and I should take it to a specialist. Well, I crept on down to the nearest dealership, Action Nissan in Nashville. At this point, I was just looking for a safe place to chill and to figure things out.

I ended up waiting at the dealership for ~3 hours for the tow truck after realizing that i was stranded and something had to be done with the car, and me. Haha. They were more than welcoming at the Nissan dealership and invited me to get complementary coffee, water and popcorn. I even spent some quality time with a new $98K GT-R in the showroom as I waited. Right before the tow truck arrived, I tried the engine one more time only to find it was experiencing the same issue. This was the most persistent it has been. Now 7 o'clock, the tow truck finally arrived. I went out to move the car so that he could pull it onto the flatbed. It started right up--no issues. Frustrated, I went ahead and had him take it to Franklin Dodge & Chrysler, the only place I will let service the car. They have a dedicated "Mercedes Tech" specifically for their Crossfire clientele.

They haven't had the time to fully check everything out, but the tech called today and advised me that it could simply need a tune-up, could be a spark plug(s), or could possibly be something with the throttle body, all of which have been mentioned throughout this thread in some estimate. I guess this is what I get for being too busy to find time to diagnose this myself. I also, however, lack the expertise, time or luxury to just trial-and-error this issue until I get it right, because I am either at school where I do not have the space or tools, or at home, where I don't have the time because of work. Plus, the problem is intermittent and temperamental, so there is no immediate way of knowing if a change is actually the solution. So for these reasons, I don't mind serving as the guinea pig for the issue. I'm going on vacation for a few days to get away from all of this.

I will keep you all posted as it all progresses. Thanks for all the advice and for sticking with me! As he was pulling the SRT onto the truck, I realized I couldn't be mad at the car. She's so beautiful, even incapacitated on the back of a truck!