I've got a problem developing where the engine races with my foot off the gas. It was pretty bad this morning, with the car able to hold about 50 mph with my foot off the gas. When I got to work and put it in park, the engine was really racing. I shut it off and started it again, and it seemed fine, so obviously it's some kind of intermittent thing, which I hate. I've not had time to scan for codes, but I'm not confident it will have stored anything.

Check the cleanliness of your throttle body/blade. IAC dirty also? If not, faulty IAC would be a likely suspect.

Alex.

Check your throttle cable as well. The spring on my throttle cable used to come out of the metal sleeve and bind up when my mom depressed the throttle. I sprayed some white lithium grease into the metal sleeve and stuck the spring back in there. Haven't had that problem since.

When you came to a stop, was the car pulling at the light/stop sign? It just might be a physical obstruction of some sort that's keeping the throttle open, like GM_Guy said.

Packman

Assuming no binding in the throttle or TV cables(which won't generally fix them selves on a restart) fairly common problem with a failing/misadjusted TPS... Computer becomes confused, thus is holding IAC open...

I'll try cleaning the IAC and throttle body, but I've got a feeling this may be a failing TPS.

Poking around on the net, I did find this procedure for adjusting the TB when installing a new IAC, which may be of interest to others:

http://sbftech.com/index.php/topic,1031.0.html

I once replaced the upper to lower gasket on my old 90 and missed a chunk of the old one when i put it back together... long story short... a massive vacuum leak will have a stupid high idle. but how that would translate into an intermittent problem I dont know.

I drove the car to work this morning and it was perfectly fine. Next week I'm off work, so I should be able to find a day to work on the car.

I've been busy, so didn't have time to look into this until now. Thursday and Friday of last week, the CEL kept coming on, usually when I was trying to hold my speed constant or when I was coasting a bit. I finally got around to retrieving the codes today and got: 63 - TP circuit below minimum voltage.

I stuck my volt-meter on it (key to RUN, but engine off) and got 0.7 volts up to 2.6 volts with the throttle all the way open. From the graph in my Haynes manual, the WOT reading does seem low. I suppose it's time to buy a new TPS and see if that fixes it.

Yeah, WOT should be pretty close to the supply voltage, which is 5v unless its different than any other TPS. Usual range is 0.5-0.9 with the throttle closed, to 4-4.7 at WOT. Pretty generic numbers, but the rule of thumb is pretty much the same for any 3-wire TPS.

Thanks for the info. I'm hoping it's just the 25 year old TPS gone bad and not something more involved like the computer or the wiring.

Hopefully I'll be able to buy a new TPS this week and install it. It's still driving o.k., but the CEL keeps coming on briefly when I'm driving it.

This car has to last me another year as my daily driver, so I'm still trying to keep it in good running condition. I've got an alternator/power steering belt to put on it and an oil change and lube to do too. If only the weather would cooperate a bit more. It's been quite wet this summer. Hot makes working on the car miserable, but rain makes it nearly impossible.

When I still had my 87 it had some issues similar to yours, TPS took care of most of it. The rest was due to IAC valve. Man I miss my old Box Bodies.

After a year passes, what will become of the CV?

Packman

If my oldest son ever gets his driver's license, he would get the Vic. He's currently at college, so wouldn't be driving it much anyway, so gas mileage wouldn't be as important to him as having a car that's already paid off. My grandmother gave me the car when she stopped driving, so I'd like to give it to someone else in the family that needs a car.

I hadn't driven the car in a week or so, because it didn't want to stay running anymore. CEL kept coming on and it felt like it was missing.

I ordered a TPS and a few spark plugs from RockAuto last week. After replacing the TPS and plug #8 (gets oil fouled), the car fired right up and ran like a top.

I also replaced the alternator/power steering belt since the old one was cracked and would squeal from time to time. I used a slightly longer belt since I'd done the 3G swap and the pulley on the new 3G was a bit bigger than the old 2G, making even the old stretched belt very hard to get on (new stock length belt would have been darn near impossible to get on the thing.

I mistakenly bought the large case 3G several years ago. Didn't discover my blunder until I installed it 2 years ago. I had to grind down the alternator bracket so the 3G could pivot down a couple inches. That allowed me to barely squeeze the belt over the pulley.









Packman