Idle drops and shuts off when headlights come on.

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05-26-2010, 10:09 PM

luiml73

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Location: Miami, FL

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Idle drops and shuts off when headlights come on.

This is the first time that I've had to drive the car at night and when I turned on the headlights, the car rpms dropped the car spuddered and shut off. I turned it back on and it Idled fine with headlights off, but as soon as I turned them back on it shutt off again.

It did the same to me the other day when I turned on the AC. Any suggestions on what it might be. Maybe a setting in the Link ecu?

Thanks

Luis

05-27-2010, 01:01 PM

luiml73

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Well It turns out my MK1 ecu is so old, that it won't read Voltage of the keypad LOL!!

Anyways, I drove the car for around 20min to warm it up then turned on the lights. The idle did drop but this time it did'nt turn off. I was going to try and adjust the Z7 row on the ecu, but FM recomends you don't. (Then why is it there?)

Quote:

VOLTS: (Z7) Battery voltage correction factor used to compensate for heavy electrical loads.As the battery voltage drops, injector duty cycle drops, leaning out the mixture. The default value works well, do not change it.

Next was the AC Idle problem. I notice on the keypad theres a window to adjust the idle speed for when the AC comes on.

Quote:

Problem: The idle speed drops too far when the AC turns on.
Solution: The AC IDLE screen provides an increase in the IAC duty cycle to offset the load
on the engine from the AC compressor. Raise this value so when the AC compressor turns on
the idle varies less than 100 RPM. If the idle jumps more than 400 RPM when the AC compressor shuts off, AC IDLE is set too high

The previos owner had this window set at 22. The AC system was installed in the car but with no freon in the system(Ac not working). I went ahead and brought this number up to 30 and stored. The idle speed did go up, but as soon as I hit the throttle the car shuts off.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujZqnJNKg50

1. Could my alternator be giving up. Maybe recoiling my Alt help?