Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting High Idle......Again

My SVT is idleing high yet again. It the revs will drop slowly to 2K then sit there for a while and maybe drop to 1.5K if it feels like it. Sometimes it idles correctly though. I already put a new IAC, TPS, and UIM/LIM gaskets on it. I checked around for air leaks, but I could not seem to find any. If anyone has some ideas that would be great.

Anyone play with the TB setscrew? Other guess is the temp. sender is relaying bogus data and the EEC thinks the engine is cold. I gather you already checked for any and all vacuum leaks. If you have any the engine will lean out and throw a code.

Silly question, but are you running the 'moose' fix? I know mine was doing that same crap since it has gotten hot out... i took it out and within 10 miles of driving it was fine again.

I do have it in there, I will pull that out tonight when I get home. I did't think of that.

That worked? The TH fix actually fixed my high idle (hung around 2k when i depressed the clutch)... until today that is. Car started giving my probs this morning for the first time in over 2 months. I'm thinking i'll replace the TPS this afternoon and see what happens.

My 99 SVT (now at 102,000km) has had this problem off-and-on since around maybe 50,000km. After many trips to the dealer, the one fix that seems to work is giving the throttle body a good cleaning. That usually lasts for 20-25,000km, then it starts doing it again - just now and then at first, but within a week or two, it does it almost all the time.

Symptoms are high idle at a stop....drops to about 2000 pm, then s-l-o-w-l-y settles to around 1300. When driving, it's like a really, really bad case of throttle hang.

So do you think your TB is sticking, or just getting so gunked up that it's making the TPS give bad readings?

I took the "moose" fix out and now it will idle, it just takes 30-40 seconds to get there. If you are driving, you can forget about it dropping below 2500rpms for a good 15 sec. I will check out the TB, but I cleaned everything about 3000 miles ago.

That was the theory of the tech at the dealership - that crud in the TB was messing with the TPS's mind, although he admitted he was only making an educated guess.

I've never cleaned the TB myself, so I'm not sure if the dealership has some special technique, or that when they're messing around in there they accidentally reset something else back to where it should be. (I wonder if that could be the case, because in one early attempt to correct the problem, they made a mechanical adjustment to the throttle stop - or something like that. That worked, but only for a couple of weeks.)

I've talked with the techs at length, and they're quite candid in admitting that they really have no idea what the problem is.

In any case, the TB cleaning is the only thing that seems to work for any length of time on my car when it starts doing the high idle thing.

I'm pretty sure that's the issue we're dealing with, because even unplugging the TPS this morning and plugging it back in made the car run great. I tried to replace it this AM, but the damn screws seem to be pretty galled up and won't budge. I'm going to break out the PB Blaster this afternoon to see if that can help. (It's all of a 2 minute fix and I can't get the darn thing off!)

I'm replacing my plugs and wires this weekend, so I'll probably take the TB off and give it a good cleaning again.