[T3] cool weather idle hunt

[Daniel Nohejl]

Well, we lifted up the back seat and found that all the connections running to/from the battery were okay. However, the ground screw for the FI power relay was really loose and I was able to easily rotate the connector side to side. We started up the car and waited for the idle to come up. It started to hunt but when I moved the ground wire, it stopped. We turned the engine off, tightened up the ground screw, and went for a ride. For the first time in months, there was no hunt at cold idle at all!! We drove around for a while with the lights on and there was no lope whatsoever but that’s an intermittent and can’t be ruled out yet. 

I’m reluctant to think that everything is fine, but that might be because I don’t understand how a loose ground screw at the FI power relay would cause a hunt/lope at cold idle and an intermittent low lope and stall once warm while having no other effect on drivability. Can someone enlighten me? Was my experience with stalling the car by plugging the AAR hose another red herring?

Oh…..I think this has been covered before, but why do I never get Bob’s messages directly to my inbox? I only see them if I go to the type3.org archive or when someone quotes them. Is this a gmail/AOL thing?