Jay Herbert
Enthusiast
Tech Tip From Rich Carlson reguarding \"Car won\'t idle\"
If you have a Gen 1 car that won't idle... at all, or not very well, here is your fix. This problem will not show up until your car has a few mile on it. It occured at the 29,999 mile mark on my '95 RT/10.
1) Remove the intake tubes from the T-bodies. (I find it easier to just remove the entire air filter housing as an assembly)
2) Open the T-blades and clean out the carbon deposits in the T-bodies with "sensor safe" carburator cleaner.
3) Remove the Air Bypass Valve and clean the carbon off the pintal. Its the
round cylinder thingy on the right side of the manifold behind the throttle body, but in front of the right valve cover. It is tilted on a 45 deg angle. When you remove this valve, be carful not to lose the O-ring that acts as a seal between the valve and the housing.
4) Put everything back together, start her up, and hold the idle at about
1000 RPM for about minute.
5) Then see if it will idle.
6) You may have to drive around a little bit to restore the adaptive memories.
You'll need a few hand tools and a Torx driver that is long and narrow to get to the screws mounting the air bypass valve. But other than that, it's pretty straight forward, and will make your car idle smoooooth again. It sure worked great on my car.
I had to make few drives before it would idle perfectly, the first few drives, it would drop to near zero before returning to a normal idle. Now it just drops to idle immediately.
I have to do something similar on my minivan every few years too.......
If you have a Gen 1 car that won't idle... at all, or not very well, here is your fix. This problem will not show up until your car has a few mile on it. It occured at the 29,999 mile mark on my '95 RT/10.
1) Remove the intake tubes from the T-bodies. (I find it easier to just remove the entire air filter housing as an assembly)
2) Open the T-blades and clean out the carbon deposits in the T-bodies with "sensor safe" carburator cleaner.
3) Remove the Air Bypass Valve and clean the carbon off the pintal. Its the
round cylinder thingy on the right side of the manifold behind the throttle body, but in front of the right valve cover. It is tilted on a 45 deg angle. When you remove this valve, be carful not to lose the O-ring that acts as a seal between the valve and the housing.
4) Put everything back together, start her up, and hold the idle at about
1000 RPM for about minute.
5) Then see if it will idle.
6) You may have to drive around a little bit to restore the adaptive memories.
You'll need a few hand tools and a Torx driver that is long and narrow to get to the screws mounting the air bypass valve. But other than that, it's pretty straight forward, and will make your car idle smoooooth again. It sure worked great on my car.
I had to make few drives before it would idle perfectly, the first few drives, it would drop to near zero before returning to a normal idle. Now it just drops to idle immediately.
I have to do something similar on my minivan every few years too.......
