weird idle today

I drive to work today, I'm idling at 1500 cold, 700hot, as normal. I leave work today at about 6, mind you it's pretty cold, but nothing out of the ordinary. I start the car up and my idle immediately rises to about 2000. I disengage the clutch, it rises about 2-300 more, engage it and it rises again slightly. Eventually it got to 3000rpms. Everytime I shifted, it felt like a power shift because the idle would rocket to about 3500 everytime I would push the clutch in. I drive about 3 miles and it's still idling high, sometimes the rpm guage would rapidly move up and down, the engine would do the same. I drop my friend off and leave, warm engine, everyhting returns to normal. No high RPM and I'm back to about 1000 rpms.

I had a check engine light come on a few weeks ago for the EGR system, it was reset and ever since then the light will come on every once in a while for 5 minutes or so, then shut off. Would an open EGR valve cause this weird idle problem? Tonight was the first night my idle has ever skyrocketted. This is for a 94 N/A.

Sounds like your iac needs cleaning

well the problem stopped for a while, then started again. After getting very annoyed, I decided to unplug my maf with the car running, and the car returned to normal idle speed, and ran much better. Plugged it back in just to test, idle raced back up. Until I can clean my maf tomorrow, I left it unplugged, since the idle is normal.

What really happens when you unplug your maf? I feel a slight power loss, is this just me? Also, the engine seems a bit more chuggier. Will it hurt at all to leave it unplugged?

OK, well I cleaned my MAS today. Unless I'm missing something, I assume that our MAS only has one resistor and the IAC and MAS are run through the same one. Well, my cars idle is still running better with the MAS unplugged, which leads me to think maybe I need a new MAS. I don't wanna spend the money on a thought, I would really like to be sure this is my problem. What else can I do to test this, or does this sound like the MAS is def. the problem?

where do you live? i'm sure there's someone nearby who could lend you their MAS just so you can see if your's is good or not.

:1:

if you wanna drive 3 hours, ill help you out, lol. Im sure theres someone on here or 3si whose fairly close that will help you out.

yea, I live in Corning, NY, about 3 hours from Bufallo. The only 3k I've ever seen here is a first gen, and other than that I saw one other like 2 years ago, so I don't think anyone that has one lives nearby, lol. I'm content with the CEL light on, as long as running the car without the MAS is 100% safe. It's onbly temporary until I can figure something out.

well, running car with ur maf IS safe, but not recommended.. and u prolly do loose power, dont ask me how. anywho. yea get it cleaned, have u chnaged it recently?? dropped it maybe??? check if the mesh is damaged. they sel a kit to clean it, not expensive.

Clean your IAC, remove your y-pipe and make sure nothing got sucked into your intake and is stuck on the butterfly valve in the throttle body. Check for massive boost leaks from a blown off intercooler pipe or something. I wouldn't jump to the MAS yet. I'm pretty sure a bad MAS throws some CEL code, as well, cleaning it is a gamble because it is so delicate, I've seen many damage them while attempting to clean it.

Well, I'm almost posative it's my MAS because the car acts fine with it unplugged. I just get a little loss of power because the airflow is no longer monitored.

OK I found a MAS on ebay that I'm thinking of buying, but now I'm not so sure. For the past day, my car all of a sudden, either with the MAS plugged in or not, stalls a lot. I have horrible low end torque until I reach 2-2500rpms, and my tach goes from 1000 to 200rpms back and forth until it eventually dies. When the car is about to die the lights on my dash begin to light up, (battery light/washer fluid light) and my headlights get dim. I also am hearing a squeaking noise near the valve cover.

I thought maybe I slipped a tooth or something on my timing, but the car handles fine at high RPM's, and then I also thought maybe my alternator is going dead. With the car running my voltmeter guage is reading close to 16. Is this normal? How could I test my alternator?

got an autozone/advance auto near you? theyll check your battery and alt for free. only squeeking noise near the valvecover would be a belt, prolly serpentine

Yea lol, After I posted about the squeaking I felt like a moron because I thought it was coming from the inside of my valve cover, but it was just the serpentine. And thank you because I forgot autozone checks that for free. I have the symptoms so I hope that's the problem cause I'm gettin sick of all this stalling.