Very similar thing happened to me. I accelerate a little harder than normal onto a highway and it just flat out died. It had about 145,000 on the clock. 03 300m. Turned out to be a fuel pump. Without fear of issues with interference at the valves you could:
- have someone crank the motor over inside and spray some gumout into the unhooked intake tube from the filter box
- if you have a gauge set up you can get to the fuel rail test port on the drivers side (bastard to get to down inside the intake runners) and test for fuel.
- unhook the rail at the fuel inlet side and get a basin to see if you have fuel
I know you said the plugs were soaked, but that doesn't necessarily mean you've got fuel.... I thought I had a real problem when mine died, but a quick check with a can of gumout proved the fuel pump was shot.
