Update. The original missing problem above was 2 yrs ago, and due to a cracked flex-plate, melted fuel injector wires, and/or old spark plug wires. However, 2 weeks ago, I dealt with a problem more similar to zoom zoom's. Our 2002 3.8L van had started dying regularly everyday on my wife's short return from school. I tested it and it died 3 times on the freeway in 20 miles. Each time it would start up after a few minutes and run perfect, as if nothing happened. Each time it died, the tachometer instantly jumped to zero, even though I would expect the tranny to still be turning over the engine. That made me suspect the crank pickup. Before that, I had pursued leads about the security engine disable feature, but the red lamp never lit when this happened.

I disconnected and pulled the whole engine harness down below where I could work on it. I found no problems but a few nicked wires, that I might have done in removing the tape. My prior repair of the injector wires w/ silicone tape was fine. I re-wrapped everything. The only other effort is that I re-installed the original crank sensor, but filed it first to move slightly closer to the pickup slots. The original one showed a slightly stronger magnet than the replacement (2 yrs ago). Since then, no more engine kills or misses.

zoom-zoom's mechanic is correct that the cam sensor can mess up the crank sensor, but not that they "talk to each other". Both send a simple 0-5 V analog signal to the engine computer, but they share an 8 VDC power supply from the computer, so one could draw that down to mess up the other. I found that my crank sensor output didn't just go to the computer, but branched to a box behind the left fender front (anti-lock brakes?). Only the crank sensor is needed for spark in this "wasted spark" system. The cam sensor is used for sequential fuel injection timing. I think I'll experiment if the computer still sprays fuel with it unplugged. If the problem recurrs, I'll try another crank sensor. After 195K mi, the factory one might be losing it's magnetism (Hall-effect type).