[2k3windstar]

I decided to go ahead and clean the IAC this morning. It did not make it worse, and may have helped. Idle is good. Its been hard for me to duplicate the conditions where it died before. Its not dying today. I'll have to give it some time before celebrating. Go to the beginning of the thread to see the original symptom.

A few suggestions for cleaning the IAC:
Have some pipe cleaners and Q tips on hand. Spraying with carb cleaner alone did not really do much. The carbon comes off pretty easy with gentle rubbing with pipe cleaners. I gently pushed the valve open to give plenty of room for the pipe cleaner, and then rubbed it around. Periodically I would cut the end off so that I had a clean end to work with. Spray it occasionally and rub some more. Cleaned the larger parts of the body with Q tips. Got things pretty clean. Then I gently pushed the valve towards closed and cleaned the stem. Sprayed more carb cleaner, and followed up with MAF cleaner since it leaves no residue behind. Plan on being generous with the carb cleaner so you can "hose it down good."

The last piece is humidity related. Those of you in Arizona probably won't have this problem. Spraying the IAC down with carb cleaner and MAF cleaner cools the IAC body down a bunch. With dew point here around 78 deg, I quickly had water condensing everywhere. Periodically I would stop and sit it in direct sun for about 5 to 10 minutes and let the body heat up to dry out the moisture. A big hint: don't do this on a rainy day unless you want to use a blow dryer.

Using the pipe cleaners and Q tips helped a lot. As for performance, the car cranked up perfect first time and is idling fine.