Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting IAC problem: SOLVED!

Again, this message board has proven invaluable.

I post this message for future searches.

1999 SE 2.5 MTX 88,000 miles.

About 1 month ago I was having cold start issues where the car would run for a few moments and stall. Keep you foot on the gas and the car would idle after a few miles of driving. This happened every few days and for a while I thought I would just live with it and fix it when my schedule allowed. 2 days ago the car decided that it was not going to idle at all, NO CEL's and otherwise the car drove normally. I was getting pretty good at using my right foot for braking and keeping the RPMs up at the same time. I did a careful search on this board for "idle" "stall" "iac" and "starting" and after about 45 min of reading was fairly convinced the IAC needed cleaning.

Removed the IAC (lower 10mm screw is a PITA) and the plunger was stuck in place. Cleaned with carb cleaner and moved plunger around to loosen it up. reinstalled and PRESTO! got my idle back. I don't expect this fix to last forever, but I'm at least able to relax in traffic again.

Thanks again for this valuable resource.

FWIW, It would be nice if the original poster put "resolved" or "fixed" in their subject line with successful solutions. Would have saved a LOT of time...

I had the exact same problem...but when I went to clean and test the IAC I fried it by mistake...so I had to put a new one on. This was 2 weeks ago!

No more cold start hesitation....however...it's starting to rear it's ugly head again, ever so slighty..... and it looks like it may be getting worse.

Keep an eye on it over these next couple weeks and update this post if it changes. I am really curious if your cold start problems come back!

I had this same issue, though mine would flat out and stall going into braking turns.

I took it to the dealer, after my regular mechanic tried cleaning the IAC and everything else.

The dealer's techs applied a software fix which has completely resolved the issue. Apparently the idle is set a little low on stock contour's and the result is that ~100k km they can start this behaviour.