So I read this very lengthy tread about this guy's poor idle and he finally got it resolved by a mechanic who stated his fuel trims were off. ?? No idea what he's talking about. Below I cut and pasted the final entry made that talks about it. What is this mechanic talking about? Thanks!


"sorry it took so long to update, but I just finally got the car back from the shop where it had been since September 10th.

so, the car IS FIXED. it starts and runs as it should. it is hard to say exactly what the issue was, but whats most important is that the car is running again. according to the Rich, the owner/operator of the shop the fuel trims were out of range (long term @ 105). every other individual system seemed to be working in its own right, however, in relation to each other, the IAC and TPS were outta whack, or at least it would seem. he also reset the base idle and the ignition timing. aaand he lowered the fuel pressure to 37 PSI (to combat a rich fuel condition). I may bump that back up once I put some more miles on the car - she was running really rich for a while, so I want to give it some burn time before I mess with the fuel.

the guy had my car at his shop for a month and a half. but he only charged me two hours of labor, so all told, the car appears to be fixed, and it cost me less than $200. the best part is that Rich was able to eliminate the off-idle stumble which had been an issue since I first got the car on the road back in 2011.

he said that the long term fuel trim was still dropping, but he hadn't road tested it - so it may have just needed to re-learn its fuel/idle/running parameters. I will take it back when the weather clears (in a few months) and recheck the fuel trim. car is running great, but we are now in November where it rains quite a bit here in western Washington until around July, so I probably wont be doing much with it until then."

 

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...96952980,d.dmo

 

Great video and just what I need. Dumb it down as much as possible! lol!


Anyway, do I need a scan tool to get that reading and what should it be? Sounds like the paper clip read will not do the trick. I have had a couple of code 44's but when I test it per the shop manual it tells me it is an intermittent code and not a hard failure.