mikewal

I own a 1993 Sable. I'm having problems with the idle searching up and down (almost stalling) while in park or neutral. The weird thing is while under load the idle is smooth. If I simply put the car in drive or turn on the AC while in park the idle smooths out. I was previously having intermittent starting issues and found a service bulletin relating that to the fuel pump. With the fuel pump replaced it now starts consistantly but has this freaky idle thing going on. Can anyone help?

drwhit73

Possibly could be your throttle position sensor.

afordmnhere

THE ANSWER TO YOUR PROBLEM, same thing just happend to me , i replaced the ( IDLE AIR CONTROL VALVE ) and it runs great now , no more surging. Its located under a black cover near the throtle linkage , it costs about 50 bucks . Hope i solved your problem , later

mikewal

Thanks for the replys. I did some reading and found the solution to my problem. Apparently, the onboard computer in the car looks at various levels (o2, air flow and whatnot) and adjusts things to make the car run smooth and efficient. Over a period of time there is carbon build up in the throttle body and on the idle air sensor but this doesn't matter because the car's computer compensates for it. When I did the fuel pump replacement, I disconnected the battery. Doing this reset the car's computer to factory defaults. When I started my car for the first time after the pump replacement it was running with what it thought was clean new parts. Simply cleaning the throttle body and the idle air sensor of its carbon fixed the problem. Hope this helps someone else.