My baby (95 with almost 300k miles) is slowly dying but I want to keep her until she finally needs to retire.

Two issues right now:

1. Idle is low (around 500rpm)...but what's odd is that at times it will idle around 1300rpm. Just mess with the idle (IAC) or what?

2. I had to replace my idler pulley and the belt recently. Ever since then if I'm not accelerating it has a nice whine to it. Once I start to accelerate at all it goes away. Ideas?

One of these days she'll need to be put down...but I'm not ready yet.

 

1. It'll idle at 1300 just...randomly? Or only when cold?
2. Narrow down the source of the noise to a specific pulley.

 

Randomly...but once it starts it will continue that way until I turn it off for a while.


The source of the pulley problem is definitely the idler pulley, just not sure why it whines when off-throttle.

(and I tried to click in your signature line...lol)

 

I tried to troubleshoot last night.

Got the idle adjusted, opened it up a little, and it seemed pretty content around 650-700 rpms.

Starting the car still has a lot of belt whine and will die if I don't goose the throttle a bit.

The pulley/belt whine near the idler pulley is still happening though. I tried tightening the pulley nut super tight...still the same. I tried adjusting the pulley up and down to tighten and loosen the belt...and it does adjust the pitch of the whine, but still no joy as far as removing the whine. Funny thing is that the whine isn't constant, it is more of a whine-silent-whine-silent-whine-silent every half second or second.

Any more ideas or tips to try out are appreciated. I can't find anything in the FSM that has helped yet.