Question about IAC valve

[1LowLeSabre]

Any one have to take theirs out and clean or replace it due to idle problems? Mine have a bit of a rough idle and I thought about doing this but it looks like it's buried!

 

[chrisgarrett]

Take it off and swab out the hole. Use q-tips and carb cleaner. Keep cleaning until the q-tips come out clean. If it's dirty in there, it will improve your idle. A dirty IAC can not only make your car idle poorly, it can make it stall when idling.

 

[1LowLeSabre]

Thank you, great info there.

I'll get it off and clean it.

 

[WS6]

IAC's are a somewhat fragile stepper motor. Don't be messin' around with the pintle by trying to manually extend it or retract it. Or you'll be buying a new one.

 

[1LowLeSabre]

IAC's are a somewhat fragile stepper motor. Don't be messin' around with the pintle by trying to manually extend it or retract it. Or you'll be buying a new one.

What do you mean by stepper motor and "extend" it?

 

[chrisgarrett]

When you remove the IAC be very careful with it. Do not push in or extend the pintle, which is the little bullet shaped part on the half that goes into the throttlebody.

 

[WS6]

What do you mean by stepper motor and "extend" it?

The technical definition is
"The armature of a stepper motor can be rotated an exact number of turns or just a fraction of a turn. Stepper motors are controlled by a computer to position a mechanical device in an exact location. A typical stepper motor can be positioned to 256 different positions."

The internals have plastic and the pintle, as Chris described, can be accidently manhandled when cleaned and will strip the internals.

After that the ECM will never gain control over it again.

And yes, I have effd' up a an IAC motor before and it cost me.

And not that this needs to be mentioned, but I've heard of people plugging the IAC in and turning on the key...it will hyper extend the pintle. Why this occurs to some people to do, I don't know, maybe they want to see how it works.