Car question

[glatt]

Originally Posted by glatt

Based on a few different posts at Toyota Nation, where people had this exact same problem, and the ECT sensor was the culprit, I'm fairly confident this is going to fix it. We'll know if the car doesn't stall before the end of March. 2 months is the longest it ever went without stalling. I may be eating my words. We'll see.

Did I mention that the car stalled again about two weeks ago, a month or so after switching that sensor?

So I widened my search of potential problems. I tried to take the Idle Air Control valve off to check it and possibly clean it. I had trouble because the phillips head screws are difficult to reach, and lock washers make them very hard to remove. I could feel that I was stripping them, so I stopped. Instead, I took off the entire throttle body, to which the IAC vavle was attached. Brought it inside, clamped it in my bench vise, and used vice grips to remove those now slightly stripped phillips head screws. I took the IAC valve apart, and cleaned it thoroughly. Also cleaned the throttle body. Both were a little dirty but not too bad.

Then I replaced the air filter. I had thought it wasn't dirty, but when I compared the new air filter to the old, the old was clearly pretty dirty.

A week went by with no stalling, but the cold start up idle is slower than it should be now. It's at about 800, which is normal for warm idle, but pretty slow for cold idle. Once it warms up, the idle stays at 800 and feels good. I'm hoping it's just that the computer needs to learn how to react to a clean IAC and it will fix itself after a while driving it.

Then on Sunday, I pulled the Exhaust Gas Recirculator to make sure it was clean. It was slightly dirty, but not bad. The valve seemed to open and close properly. But I cleaned it anyway and it's really nice now.

I keep being impressed with myself when I take all this stuff apart and put it back together and the engine fires up.

I think now I just drive it around for a while and see if it stalls again. It seems to go a month or two between stalls.

One thing I recently realized is that it only stalls for me. Something about the way my wife drives doesn't seem to bug it. So either my driving style is really hard for it, or moving my seat back sends some sort of electric signal to fuck it up, or perhaps most likely, my key chain is too heavy and it's messing up the ignition switch intermittently. How do I test for that? Wiggle the keys when it's stalling?