and by cold i mean like upper 60*'s (after all i am in arizona) the maxi has trouble staying on... it'll start up just fine but then it'll die in a few seconds. i have to repeat this several times untill i am able to keep it on long enough to rev the engine up to higher RPMs for a minute or two to warm it up. even after its warmed if i let off the gas when its sitting at a light or something it will die so i am forced to keep one foot on the gas (keeping the RPMs at around 1K) and one foot on the brake to keep it from dieing on me.

considering the fact that i deliver pizza with this car this gets quite annoying as it will die every time i go from forward to reverse and back around...

 

ohh! gut instinct tells me carbon buildup in the throttle.

take off the air intake tube at the throttle body and make sure the throttle plate inside isn't gummed up with carbon. that's a common reason cars "die" at idle but not when you give it some gas. look inside there. a happy car has a nice shiny throttle body. any black buildup is carbon. the carbon buildup essentially chokes the engine and causes it to stall. get some STP throttle body/air intake cleaner, hold the throttle wide open, spray it in there (while the car's off) and scrub it with your finger. there's probably at least some carbon buildup. it'll come dripping down. clean it out nice and shiny, and start her up. if you've never done this before, it'll prolly make the difference. she may be hard to start at first cos you've essentially "flooded" the engine. just remember not to use regular carb cleaner, cos that can eat away at the teflon coating inside the throttle body. seafoam also helps clean carbon if you pour it through the brake booster vacuum line, but I'd start with the STP.

if that's not the case... good ol' mode III diagnostics.

hope this helps.

Dan

 

I cleaned out my TB and the car ran much better, smoother across the board and butt dyno indicated quicker and more linear response. I took the hose off and went at with a toothbrush (my brother's....j/k...or am I?) and some SuperClean.

 

I try to make an effort to warm up to "C" before taking off. This usually involves keeping the rpms at around 1000 and takes about 5 minutes or so. After that all the roughness usually settles down.

I haven't gotten around to it but the AAV fix sounds like it would address this problem too. I've got to get to that myself. I'll also check the throttle body too.

 

Unhook your EGR valve and see if the car can run right after start up.
Also check the TPS make sure its straight. If its at an angle then the EGR could be on at idle and chocking your car with exhaust. Also the timing might be off.

Hope you find the solution.

 

thanks for all that advice blackmax i'll go ahead and clean out that TB pretty soon here when i can find some time. i did that with the '95 a while back so i know what you're talking about how it makes the engine run so much smoother. the 4th gen hardly had any deposits in there when i cleaned her out but i swear i felt the difference once i was done. good to hear that this will likely solve my problems cause i ain't spending more than $20 getting this thing fixed

hmmm i was thinking while i was typing this out that i'll probly go ahead and throw my JWT popcharger on there while i'm at it. god knows what that air filter looks like or when was the last time that someone changed it

 

hey man my car looks exactly like yours (well exept it appears that yours didn't plow into a wall at some point in its life )