Ok guys,

here's what I discovered.

My car has been having low idle and stalling problems lately, so I opend the hood up and did some investigations.

This is what I discovered.

Near the throttle body, where the throttle cable attaches to the spring loaded butterfly valve,, there is a vaccuum activated solenoid.
When the car is ON, the solenoid activates, and when the car is off, it turns off.

There is a little cylinder about the size of a pencil eraser that is attached to the solenoid. When the engine starts, the cylinder gets sucked in.

I think the purpose of the cylinder is to keep the throttle from completely closing when the car is turned off.

When the car is turned on, the cylinder retracts, therefore allowing the throttle to fully return to the "off" positon.

when the car is off, the cylinder pops back out, keeping the throttle from completely closing;

What I did was, I unplugged the vaccuum hose that goes to the solenoid. The vaccuum hose is connected to the throttle body. When I unplugged it, the cylinder DID NOT retract back in because there is no vaccuum operate the solenoid.

The effect is, the throttle WILL NOT go back to the complete "off" position because the cylinder is keeping it from doing so.

The result, my car now DOES NOT still anymore because the throttle body PHYSICALLY CANNOT close all the way. And the idle speed is now about 1000. I'm gonna drive like this for a while and see if the CEL light comes on.

Anybody know what the purpose of the solenoid is?

If you've never noticed it, go check under your hood now. It took me 2 hours to discover it.

 

Do you have a y-pipe? Is your's Cali or Fed spec?

 

can you all check under your hood and see if your solenoid is working properly?


on mine it is "in" when the car is on, and "out" when the car is out.

i'm not sure if its' supposed to be like that or the other way round.

 

you mean if the car is in 1st and you're at a stop light and you take your foot off the clutch the car wont stall?

 

when the car is in neutral, or when i press the clutch, the engine would just die.

it doesn't happen everytime, but it happens quite often.

for example, i would be cruisin, with the rpm at 3000, or whatever, and when I press the clutch, the revs would start dropping, and it would drop all the way to zero.

but now, the throttle cannot close all the way because that little cylinder is blocking the way, so it would idle at 1000.

but no stalling anymore!

 

when mine did that, it was the MAF.

 

Does it still idle high (around 1000) even after the car warms up?

(If so, this would solve my mount vibration problem. After my car warms up it idles around 600, with PR mounts it is really rough. But this roughness smooths out around 1000.)

 

even after the car is warmed up.

But the car seems to buckle more when I pull my foot off the throttle..

So for now, I put the vaccuum hose back on.


Try it and see for your self, it takes like 5 seconds with a needle nose plier.

 

Buckle more? Sorry... could you explain what you mean.

 

1000 rpm for IDLE sound like a little high, doesn't IDLE rpm supposed to be around 650.

Cheers

AA

 

You might also want to try to re-setting the ECU. Just disconnect the ngative battery cable overnight. Then in the morning, to get rid of any remaining charge, touch the negative cable to the positive terminal on the battery then reconnect the negative cable.

After I did a mod a couple of months ago, I quickly noticed a power loss. I took the car to a friend's body shop since they had just purchased a professional grade Consult tool. Turns out I had a couple of trouble codes, the main one being a "#2 cylinder fuel injector circuit" code. Anyway I disconnected the battery and then took the car to the dealer the next day. They showed no codes! I also noticed that the car ran a lot better right away. I then took it to my friend's shop and they also showed no codes! My friend was telling me that the ECU may have gotten stuck in a "feedback loop" somehow caused by the mod I had done (since I hadn't bothered to re-set the ECU then). It's been about a week now and the car is still running perfect!

I'm not saying this is a cure-all by any means but at least it's worth a shot.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by sleepermax
[B]You might also want to try to re-setting the ECU. Just disconnect the ngative battery cable overnight.

I've read that you can just disconnect the battery and step on the brakes a few time to "purge" system and reset the ECU. This would be quicker than leaving the battery disconnected for a long period of time.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by 2k2max
[B]You'd be surprised how long the ECU (capacitors ect) can retain a charge. That's the mistake I made, and assumed the ECU had been fully re-set.