drivability

maridanne · Post by **maridanne** » Wed May 04, 2005 8:49 pm

i have had my '87 tercel calif 4wd automatic wagon for a year (love it) and over the past few months it has been stalling at stops as it warms up. for the first mile or so it starts and runs great. (with morning temps in the 20-40 deg f range) then it will hesitate and/or die after stopping at a stopsign. the stalling will occur after the first two minutes and not after 10 minutes. it has more recently started running rough at idle in drive. once fully warmed up it does just fine. i replaced the plugs and wires which didn't change anything. one other characteristic: the idle speed will sometimes rev up and down a few hundred rpm when stopped or when coasting. the car has always done this but is hasn't caused a drivability issue. i think this might be related. i get 20-22 mpg with the 3a engine with a mix of hw and city driving and suspect i should get better than that. i am looking at the o2 sensor as the lead wire has bare wire showing in a few places. any other suggestions to start with? i have a toyota shop manual and they give good descriptions of testing the ec components but don't address very clearly the drivability issues i'm dealing with. thankyou. dan byl

Typrus · Post by **Typrus** » Wed May 04, 2005 10:40 pm

You might have a croaky carb in need of some Sea-Foam. Try putting a can in a full tank. Unless others discourage it. Mine did that (manual) and it got a lot better after I ran 2 tanks of Sea-Foam enriched gas. But I dunno.

takza · Post by **takza** » Thu May 05, 2005 4:34 am

Sounds like the choke is opening up too soon.

The other might be caused by leaks at the ends of the vac lines somewhere. Might be the vac modulator that's connected to the EGR. Might help to adjust the idle mix?

Simplest fix is to up the basic idle speed some.

2wagons · Post by **2wagons** » Thu May 05, 2005 9:37 am

The seafoam and choke ideas are good. Another place where temps control engine performance is the dreaded TVSV. Easy to test- your FSM wil tell you how. Just be carefull removing it, they can break easily-don't ask me how I know that...

maridanne · Post by **maridanne** » Wed May 18, 2005 8:48 pm

thanks for the responses. here's an update on my drivability issues with my '87 tercel auto 4wd wagon: seafoam didn't help but i'm sure it didn't hurt. reading some other online info i decided to try to disconnect the egr system. i did this by pulling and plugging the vacuum line. this cured my rough idle problem which accounted for about 90% of my drivability irritation. i am now trying to add a bit more choke to see if i can eliminate the warm up stall. ( test of the tvsv checked it out ok. it's amazing a 18 year old piece of complex plastic still functions as designed) i believe to do this you rotate the choke bimetal housing counter clockwise. it doesn't seem to want to budge. the flange that secures it is rivited and i don't see any devise to loosen to allow adjustment. i'm afraid to grip the plastic with a channel lock as it could be fragile. is it a friction fit or is there something to loosen to get it to rotate? thanks again, dan

takza · Post by **takza** » Thu May 19, 2005 7:20 am

MAYBE...you drill the rivets and replace them with screws?

I have a manual choke setup from JCWhitney that I haven't installed.

3A-C Power · Post by **3A-C Power** » Thu May 19, 2005 10:58 am

My choke coil housing had screws on it but if I remember correctly the one on my old 85 didn't and when I rebuilt the carb the rebuild kit came with a new housing and screws. Either the carb had threads already or the screws in the kit were self-tapping and went into the existing holes.