See if this sounds familiar....

[jeffcoslacker]

My car did something yesterday that had me a little concerned. The MIL came on early in the day. Ignored that, it happens every few months, and was overdue to happen. I told you how I deal with that. 90 mph, 5-6 miles, light goes out, won't be back for a while.

I didn't have a chance to run it out, so later I'm driving and I realize I'm idling at about 1800 rpm and 40 mph. Then when I stopped at a light, idle was above 1000 rpm, normally 700-800 in gear. On the takeoff, it hung in first longer than normal, but didn't have the abrupt, neck snapping upshift that they do when something is mechanically wrong (bad modulator, valve body stuck, etc) It was just winding out too high. The other shifts were normal.

Then after about an hour, it calmed down and started working normal, the light remained on. It was still on this morning, then sometime today it went out. It's running perfect.

Ever see that combo of symptoms before?

I'll pull the code and see what was happening, but I like to speculate first and see if I'm right. What do you make of it?

[Manny_boy]

I dunno, never had that one happen before... Here's a thought though (forgive me if this sounds dumb) ...since your idle was already higher than normal, when you took off, since our trannys are vacuum modulated, maybe it had to wind longer because it still had to achive the normal amount of vacuum before a shift to second gear....just a thought.

[radioman2002]

If you have any sort of vacum leak anywhere, you car will idle higher than usual, if you have a bad trany modulator or intermitant leaky one, that may be the trouble. BTW whats the MIL code?

[RPolite]

Same problem with my wifes car. Went to AZ and they said it was the TPS. I'm just wondering how easy it will be to replace?

[Manny_boy]

easy... two torx bolts... and a wiring pigtail. (before you go spend money though, verify that it is your TPS) (throttle position sensor) - it is a potentiometer (rheostat). does your wifes car stumble on light acceleration and is fine through the rest of the pedal? spots on the tps eventually wear out, and cause that symptom.

[richtazz]

sounds like a tps or iac valve malfunction, a vacuum leak would act up all the time, and/or get worse. I would put my money on a sticky or gummed up IAC, as they can go funky without tripping a code.

[jeffcoslacker]

Originally Posted by richtazz

sounds like a tps or iac valve malfunction, a vacuum leak would act up all the time, and/or get worse. I would put my money on a sticky or gummed up IAC, as they can go funky without tripping a code.

This was my best guess too (IAC) maybe the vacuum leak it caused raised the baseline for the modulator to react to the maniflod vacuum, if that makes sense? (modulator senses when load drops on motor (vacuum increases) additional intake air changes base vacuum level)