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Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you have an issue. To ensure you have fuel to the fuel rail, look along the front edge of the intake manifold where the fuel injectors attach and follow the fuel rail until you see a valve stem cap like what a tire has. It has a little valve just like a valve stem and you can press it to see if there is pressure. It will bleed off pretty fast by the way.
Next thing is to go to the passenger fender and look into the hole of the timing belt cover, have your wife turn the engine over a couple seconds, see if the two sprockets you can see through the hole rotate. If they don't, timing belt. Although the engines are not interference engines, meaning if the timing belt breaks or shears the teeth off, the valves are most likely not going to touch the pistons and bend, so that is a good thing. Do you know when the belt, idler pulley and water pump were changed? Interval is 7years/100,000miles for all three.
If the engine shuts off in this fashion, it should be showing a set of codes. Just to verify the method of getting them, insert ignition key, turn from off to on (not start), three times, leave it at the on position and the codes will show up in the odometer, write them down and you can check them. A timing belt shows up as a bad cam sensor to start with because that is the first signal lost when the belt goes.
Overheating needs to be figured out why. A fan relay could have gone bad, a leaking hose, water pump itself. Once the engine overheats there could be other problems, such as a blown head gasket. The 2.4 in the PT Cruiser is very good about being able to burp itself so air pockets don't occur, but at the same time, need to figure out why she lost fluid and overheated.
Next thing is to go to the passenger fender and look into the hole of the timing belt cover, have your wife turn the engine over a couple seconds, see if the two sprockets you can see through the hole rotate. If they don't, timing belt. Although the engines are not interference engines, meaning if the timing belt breaks or shears the teeth off, the valves are most likely not going to touch the pistons and bend, so that is a good thing. Do you know when the belt, idler pulley and water pump were changed? Interval is 7years/100,000miles for all three.
If the engine shuts off in this fashion, it should be showing a set of codes. Just to verify the method of getting them, insert ignition key, turn from off to on (not start), three times, leave it at the on position and the codes will show up in the odometer, write them down and you can check them. A timing belt shows up as a bad cam sensor to start with because that is the first signal lost when the belt goes.
Overheating needs to be figured out why. A fan relay could have gone bad, a leaking hose, water pump itself. Once the engine overheats there could be other problems, such as a blown head gasket. The 2.4 in the PT Cruiser is very good about being able to burp itself so air pockets don't occur, but at the same time, need to figure out why she lost fluid and overheated.