J,

Sorry you never received an answer for this question. I've only been registered on AllExpert.com for about 4 days. It may have been a previous expert you wrote to. Either way, I may be able to help.

First off, there is a slight chance that your battery is under-rated for your car. Though, you would experience other problems, it could be something to look into. I doubt it's the alternator, because you said once the car gets warmed up, it runs. Now let's get into some more in depth causes to this problem…

I used to think motor oil was motor oil; and if you had 20W-40 or 5W-50 in your car, it wouldn't make a different. In fact, for a car of your age, it really doesn't. But make sure you are using the correct grade motor oil. If the cold rating (e.g. the 20 in 20W-40) is too high for your car, your engine could have a difficult time running and may in fact stall until it warms up.

Here's something a bit more notorious… You may have dirty EGR solenoid. The Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) solenoid is attached to your throttle body or intake manifold. It recalculates unburned exhaust gas back into your intake. It may be so dirty that its allowing too many hydrocarbons into the intake, and not enough oxygen. When your engine is lacking oxygen, your car's computer tells your fuel pump to slow down. Then your car stalls. Since your engine isn't warm enough to burn off the hydrocarbons from a cold start, it's not gonna get enough oxygen. Funny thing is, completely blocking of the EGR solenoid will help this problem, though that would make your car smog illegal in every state.

Another problem along those lines could be with the oxygen sensor. If the sensor is bad, it may not operate properly upon cold starts. That sensor can be checked by a mechanic to determine if it's bad or not.

Another possible electrical problem could be in your Intake Air Temperature (IAT) sensor. The IAT sensor is the one used to detect the intake air temperature of engines with good response, achieving the precise control of the A/F ratio. The ECU (the car's computer) uses this sensor reading to set injection timing and adjust the air-fuel ratio. This sensor is located in or near you air box; where your air filter is located. Have this checked out. Any decent repair manual will give specifications as to what that sensor should read for various air temperatures. If that sensor is malfunctioning, it could indeed cause you car to keep stalling.

So those are just a few things to check out. Hopefully I helped either pinpoint what's going wrong, or at least gave you some ideas that could lead to finding out the problem.

Good luck!
Anthony