It was the storm's fault...

My car no longer stays on by itself!


I started my car this afternoon to find one of the hoses from the idle vacuum popped off. I thought this was pretty odd but I didn't think anything of it...I put it back on, started the car and drove off.

Everything was fine until I got about a km away from my house. I came to a stop and the engine just stalled. I popped open the bonnet to see if the hose had come off again but everything was ok. I managed to get to my destination the whole way because I kept my foot on the accelerator a little bit whenever I had to stop. The engine itself actually drives normally, it just doesn't idle.

There's dust all over the engine bay, so my assumption is that the idle stabilizer has had some dirt in there and now it's ruined. I tried cleaning it with brake cleaner and starting the engine again but that did nothing.


This sounds far-fetched I know, but this is all I could come up with...CAI pipe takes heaps of fast, dirty air into the intake, so much so that the stabilizer hose pops off from the pressure and by this time there's already enough dirt and crap in the stabilizer to ruin it.

Could anyone suggest anything that might be wrong? I'm stumped.. the car drives fine, but it doesn't idle, it just stalls.

the idle stabiliser may throw a code if its not working properly. Might pay to have the car scanned.

Do you still have the black plastic dampener box attached to the ISV? If something has caused the pipe to pop off the ISV maybe it has damaged that box and you have a leak there somewhere?

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Originally Posted by Tim

the idle stabiliser may throw a code if its not working properly. Might pay to have the car scanned.

Do you still have the black plastic dampener box attached to the ISV? If something has caused the pipe to pop off the ISV maybe it has damaged that box and you have a leak there somewhere?

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Yeah I was thinking Vagcom.

The ISV thing broke like last year so I've just bypassed it with a fuel-line hose from repco. It's been fine until now, and I'm finding it a bit too coincidental that it wouldn't work when there's dirt in the engine bay and when it's popped out for no reason. :???:

Man, my car is such a bitch.

I took the idle stabilizer off and sprayed the living hell out of it with brake cleaner; it must have freed up the valve because the car idles fine again. Haha.

Plenty of workshops and/or friendly faces that can do a scan for you just to cross that off your list if your keen.