Thread: Intermittent loss of power / stalls on idle

Crankshaft position sensors can certainly be temperature sensitive failures, but usually when they start acting up you get a stall and it won't restart until it cools off a bit.

I've heard of some people having problems with cheap aftermarket MAF, though I did run an allmakes cheap-o with no issues, but maybe I got lucky.

If it were happening only while idling I'd think maybe you needed to clean the IAC valve/motor. I had a D2 that had a water damaged ECU that always thought I was traveling at a road speed of 88mph. It would idle very poorly and die sometimes until I got that worked out.

I drove the car into town on Friday night (20km round trip) and couldn't pick a fault. Drove the car back into town today, it was also a very warm day and again couldn't pick a fault. So I will put it down to the coils and or leads (touch wood).

Not as much of an issue, when I started it today, the idle was immediately erratic. Will see how it goes.

May still have a slight problem with MAF or TBS. Does the TBS need to be calibrated? I changed this when I had the initial problem after driving through water?

Had a moment of enthusiasm today, so I replaced the two door actuators that haven't worked for about 2 years. Feels good to have all working centraling locking again. Drivers power window doesn't work, I replaced the motor about 18 months ago and it stopped working soon after, didn't sound very good from the beginning. The Switch works as I plugged the test light up to the plug in the door. The wires going into the motor look at little burnt, when I put the door back together after doing the actuators I pressed the window button and you can hear a very slight sizzle. I will now look at replacing the motor again. Is it worth replacing the whole internal window assembly? Can anyone recommend any of the business that are involved in this forum to purchase a new motor from? Got the last on ebay and obviously not happy with it.

Re "eratic" idle.

Is it hunting up and down or is it sputtering? In other words, do you mean it's idling at abnormal speeds, or that it's a rough, stumbling idle? If the speed is abnormal, it's worth pulling the temperature sender and inspecting/cleaning/replacing. If it's rough, I'd look at MAF then IOC.

Since the repairs last week. Immediately after starting the car the revs drop below idle rpm and then raises again. Happened every time I have started it since the repair. But it immediatley goes away. If that is the only problem I see I am happy. It was idling a little rough at the traffic lights today, but not enough to complain about. Again, if this was the only problem, I would be a happy camper.

Prior to getting the new coils and leds and prior to the main issue starting approx 6 weeks ago. I would have a similar problem only on cold mornings and it would last about 30 seconds where the idle will go up and down and the idle would be rough. Sometime nearly stall and then rev to compensate. This was only an issue on cold mornings, so I could go a month or two and forget about the problem. During winter it would be almost daily. Being on the Fraser Coast, there weather is normally nice.

So.... It appears the coils and leds fixed the main problem (touch wood), but I still seem to have a slight underlying problem.

I will look at cleaning the temperature sender, is this easy enough to do. I can google instructions and see what I find.
I replaced the TBS with a second hand one 18 months ago when I replaced the MAF. SHould I have got the TBS calibrated? I simply put it in and tightened the two bolts.
Is changing the crank angle sensor difficult or hard?
I might just work through replacing everything.........
Thanks for all the advice.

TBS? What's that?

Found a link for temp sender. http://www.aulro.com/afvb/discovery-...or-change.html

I'd buy a new one and chuck it in. They're relatively cheap.

TBS? Good Question! Perhaps TPS would have been closer to the mark. I didn't give that one too much thought.

Throttle Position Sensor.

I will look at changing the temp sensor, thanks for the link.

Not sure on this but I think TPS is probably used for ignition curve, so ignition timing will vary depending on load, revs, throttle position. Engine would probably run fine without it - it would revert to a fixed curve or a flat rate of advance. Anyway, won't affect idle.

Could be wrong on this though, perhaps someone could confirm.