Greetings folks,

Haven't been on here for a while. My wife's 93 XLE is acting up again. She says about once every 4 weeks or so when starting it up after it has sat for 30-40mins, she struggles to keep it running in idle until she gives it gas. I have actually seen this symptom on her car about a year and a half ago when she had some intake leaks from a cracked 4" intake hose which was replaced. This previously appeared for COLD starts though. Since then I have never personally experienced it on her car. If it is the same or a similar symptom, then what happens is you start it up and it idles like s**t and can die until you press the throttle pedal down. Nothing else will take it out of this rough idle otherwise. Once it's out, everything is fine again.

I have not had a chance to look at it and it's kind of difficult to diagnose since it occurs pretty rarely, but here are the things I'm going to check into. I'm wondering if anyone has some feedback on priorities:

1) She said she was running the A/C at the time, so I told her next time to try to shut it off and see what happens, thinking maybe the idle up solenoid may be sticky or something is goin gon with the compressor.

2) Possibly a leaky injector?

3) Another intake leak or the TPS sensor, or the ECTS?? Bad Sensor connector?

4) Sticky EGR valve? Maybe I can give her a spanner wrench and get her to tap the EGR valve next time it happens. ;) (ya right! :) )

If anybody has any other suggestions, please let me know. It's funny that it only happens this rarely. She uses her car every day for at least 1-2 hr worth of driving or more. Car has about 190Kmi on it.

thanks

dave mc

Tough to say when it's that sporadic. If it only happens when the A/C is on, the idle up solenoid or vsv would be my first target. Otherwise add the idle air control valve and/or it's port in the throttle body to your list. Might just need cleaning.

"Otherwise add the idle air control valve and/or it's port in the throttle body to your list. Might just need cleaning."

I have to agree. The first thing I would try would be to clean the throttle body, paying particular attention to spraying some of the throttle body cleaner down in to the port leading to the idle air control valve. Here is a thread from another forum on how to do it:

http://www.toyotanation.com/forum/showthread.php?t=157470

Mike