I have read that the failure of the Idle Air Control is often caused by coolant causing a short - destroying the Idle Air Control and often the ECU as well.

If the part is functioning properly, would replacing the gasket prevent the short, and protect the ECU from failure?

 

 

uuhhhh....this is news to me.

 

maybe its bad information - that's why I asked.

yesterday somewone posted that the IAC would not just fail and short - killing the ecu, that it would malfunction first, giving warning before killing ecu. true?

 

I'd 'speculate' that ECU gets fried because one of the step motor windings develop short and that creates an excessive current through the step motor driver chip in ECU and that in turn 'fries' it. Beats me to see why it gets shorted in the first place and I wouldn't expect it to give too many warnings before get shorted completely.