Skip to main content
vanagon.com
Checking account...
← vanagon.com home · Continue the discussion in the forum
Subject:erratic and weird idle discovery...
From:Dan N
Date:Tue, 13 Aug 2019 11:06:37 -0700

hi all...

here's a discovery I want to share...

the idle of my van time to time acting up..- going from 950 rpm to near
2000 rpm for a few minutes then back to normal 950 rpm and doing that a
couple time during a short trip around town.. not all the time - in short
an erratic behavior... swapping in a known good idle controller from
another van didn't solve the problem, vacuum is good, TPS is good... heck I
left it alone till I found this..

over the weekend I did a tune up on my son's van, nothing special and I
noticed one of the power steering switch wire was broken and I fixed that.
After the tune up I start the engine (2.1 wbx) and a surprise... -  the
idle went up to 2000 rpm like on mine, drive it around the idle eventually
went down and then up again... hmmm .. scratching my head and check..
nothing... the only thing I did extra is fixing the broken power steering
switch wire... so I disconnect one of the wire the idle went back to
normal.. aha... so I went to my van disconnect the same wire and bingo the
idle is normal too...

so in conclusion the erratic idle behavior on both van was due the
defective power steering switch, locking up in full...

dan