Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Idle Issues

I have a 1995 Ford Contour LX, V6 2.5, it surges at idle in gear. We tried to clean the IAC with carb. cleaner (as was explained to do in a previous post) and that didn't seem to help or make any difference. Anyone have any ideas of where to go from here?
Any ideas would help. Thanks!

take some of your carb and choke cleaner and spray around the intake gaskets and see if your idle improves any. if so then u know where to fix the prob. spray vac lines also. thats the way i use to find vacc leaks works pretty well

The rubber hose from the intake to the PCV valve has a habit of collapsing and leaking. It's under and to the back of the throttle body. If it does not have a new PCV valve yet, get a motorcraft one and the hose and replace them. Make sure the return lines from the top of the valve covers to the intake tube are not cracked and that they are on. Check other vacuum lines by listening for hissing, inspection, or spraying. Sometimes pushing down on the intake will make it stop if the gaskets are bad.

Try doing the throttle hang fix. I'm sure that will help a little.

Thanks guys for the replies. I will try all of the above. The PCV valve has never been replaced before (178,000 miles later) and I did order it thru fordpartsonline, and it should be here tomarrow. Saturday I am having the PCV valve replaced, new spark plugs/wires, and also a new radiator. Wew. Another list to work on.
But we will try the thf, and other suggestions.
Thanks again!

contour girl dont forget about my parts discount offer to all of CEG its 25% off the wholesale cost.

WESSVT, so you sell Ford parts with a 25% discount? Are they cheaper then fordpartsonline? Do you also charge for shipping? I am sure I will need something soon (after we diagnose the idle problems). What payments do you accept?

Saturday we are doing the PCV valve, radiator and spark plugs/wires. I am crossing my fingers that one of these fix the problem or we find the problem as we do all of these repairs. Especially since I don't have a check engine light. I never wished I had one until now, so at least I would know what is wrong. But it could be something simple and cheap.

Wish me luck!

Ok, we were very busy with my car this weekend.
Friday, we changed the spark plugs/wires. The old ones were pretty bad. The spark plugs were wore down to nothing. I was using the Bosch plugs/wire that I bought awhile ago. I put in autolite platnium plugs, and Carquest wires that have a lifetime warrenty on them.
Then we changed the PCV valve that's never been changed before. The old one didn't look to bad.
Then we checked the MAF, and the throttle plate. The throttle plate had some carbon build up on it so we cleaned it off. And the MAF is perfect.
After all of that work. It was getting late so we left the radiator for Saturday. We started at 9:30 am and finished at 4 pm.
Well, we started her up. And she runs great!
Once the car cools off (It was 1 degree last night). After going out, and letting her sit for 4 hours, the idle problem returns.
Anyone else have any other ideas what to look for in this idle issue? Today I went about 2 miles, and stopped 2 times at 2 stop signs and both times she idles low and is almost ready to kill. I am hoping that this is weather related.
This is becoming a very frustrating problem.
Anyone else have any good ideas?

I'm having the same problem with my 95 SE 2.5L. I checked it with an NGS and noticed the BARO, barometric pressure, reading was at 150Hz which translates to about 5000 feet above sea level? I'm at about 450 feet. Now the Tours don't have BARO sensor but they infer the reading from the MAF and TPS through a lookup table. This reading will get updated when you perform a WOT. I did some WOT's but no change on the reading. I disconnected the MAF and started the car and the idle prob went away. By disconnecting the MAF the vehicle looks at engine RPM and TPS to correct Air/Fuel mix. I installed a new MAF but disconnected the battery for a Min of 5 minutes to reset the computer. I also found a collapsed hose leading to the PCV valve. I restarted the vehicle and noticed I still had rough idle problems so I did some WOT. 10 to be exact and my BARO readings updated to 159Hz or about 500 feet. The tour runs now, just finished it, but every so often it seems to hunt for the correct RPM like it is trying to learn a new idle. I'll find out tomorrow morning when I do a cold start if I found everything that was wrong. In short, even though the MAF looks good it doesn't mean much, mine was way out-of-wack. Also watch for the pesky PCV collasped hose.

Ok, this problem is driving me and my friend nuts!
I went out on my break and decided to pay attention to the idle and see exactly what happens.
It is very bizzare to me. It idles at 500 rpm, them all on it's own hops up to 2,000 rpms. It did it on it's own. I watched this for about 10-15 minutes and it kept doing the same thing. A few times it dropped below 500 rpm's and the battery light came on a couple of times.
This is confusing me. Do I have more then 1 problem going on here? Do I also need another battery? I bought this battery back in May of 2000. Also, I usually have the heat on high while it idles (I have a remote starter so my car can be warm by the time I get outside to it, 12 degrees is way too cold for me) so I turned it on low and it didn't die this time. What about my alternator? That was replaced way back when also. I do have an extra alternator so if that should be replaced I have one on hand.
Any ideas?
Thanks!