82 Cutlass Supreme 3.8 Auto. Seemingly more often the car keeps kicking into fast idle. Sometimes I can kick it down, sometimes I cant. This happens at random, not just when the car is cold, but its definitely becoming more frequent. Any ideas?
Fast Idle Problem
- Thread starter Bourkemaster
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the fast idle refers to your choke... it raises rpms (faster) until it warms up, then steps it back down to curb idle. What do you mean by 'kicking into fast idle'?
...if it is something wrong with the choke, just set it so the choke is off & warm it up with the throttle
...if it is something wrong with the choke, just set it so the choke is off & warm it up with the throttle
The car has an automatic choke so I cant control any of that. Usually I race the engine once and the car will then settle to curb idle. That's usually ok. However, if I'm driving along sometimes the car will rev up again like its trying to warm up. So in gear, the rpm starts increases (bad for driving in town). When I get to my location and put the car in park, the engine starts revving up wildly. I try to kick it down to curb idle again but cant, so I usually try to kill it quick. I cant tell you just what the tach is reading, since I have the useless gauge pack. Could the automatic choke be bad? Is this an ECM problem?
What position is your HVAC control in? If you're using one of the air-conditioning settings, the computer will bump up the idle speed automatically to compensate for the added load on the motor.
Off, I never use it. I did notice one time when I hit the brakes pretty hard the engine kicked up. Thanks for the help so far by the way.
Late model chokes can be modified to be adjustable. It's a bit of a chore, as you have to carefully drill out the rivets, tap threads in the rivet holes and replace with machine screws, actually returning to the 70's setup. There are index marks cast on the choke housing as reference points. My typical starting point is to set the choke blade just barely closed at 70-75 degrees ambient temp, then fine tune from that point. Most later chokes are set way too rich to overcompensate for cold stumble problems. Adjusting the choke, verifying operation of the choke heating element and making sure the fast idle cams and linkages are clean and free should cure your issues.
Bill
Bill
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