When I first started the engine of The Black Toenail before handing over a wad of cash, I did notice the tick-over speed was rather low. Not bad enough to stall, and nothing wierd happened when driving, but still too low.
So low in fact that the car would shudder when held on the brake in 'Drive' mode. Switching between D, N, R and back again made no difference to the tick-over speed, so I could see this wasn't simply about drag from the torque converter. This car was just deliberately running slow, for some reason.
This seemes to have been getting worse, and once or twice did even stall. And the dreaded engine management light came on - and this I really don't need. I bought this car because the last one had a defiant EML light I couldn't track down, I don't need two like that!
Yesterday I took the Fiat to a scrap dealer, who slapped £100 in my hand, which I gladly accepted and ran away. I'dve only paid £60 if it had been me, but then, I've no interest in Fiat parts and no customers who might want any. I decided I didn't want a shed full of Fiat parts, so £100 seemed like a fairly good deal.
This gave me enough cash to buy (yet more) petrol, a gallon of oil, aerosol carb-cleaner and a tub of grease. I'm not sure what oil these use yet, so I've thrown in some 10/40 part synthetic for the time being. Anything's gotta be better than the limp black sludge which poured out of it. I spent considerable time cleaning the idle bypass valve, and as far into the throttle as I could reach.
I did notice the throttle felt a bit sticky in it's closed position. I also noticed someone had tried to "repair" the poor idle by twisting the throttle linkage to almost it's maximum extent. Gradually I encouraged the throttle to break it's crusticles of oil into an emulsion of sludge and carb-cleaner. The plan was to start the engine and have it suck all this **** in and burn it all. Turns out they don't run very well without the intercooler pipe attached. Hey - I'm still learning!
I gave everything another blast with the aerosol, left it thoroughly wet, and re-attached the intake hose, and started the engine hoping that woudl be sufficient to get it working again.
The throttle stop screw didn't appear to have been moves, so I adjusted the throttle cable to meet this appropriately. Now the throttle could close fully, and the idle bypass valve had better start doing it's job. From the amount of black gunk which had emerged from it, I had my doubts.
I had doubt about all of this, to be frank. Yet it did seem to work. The idle speed is now much better. It's not threatening to stall anymore, and no sign of the EML light. So I'm chalking this one up as a victory.
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