The idles surges up and down on 2000 civic SI

Question

i just got a 2000 civic si and the rpm surges up and down between 1500 and almost to 0. it feels like it wants to shut off. what is it?

Answer 1

Yo, got a trick you can try. Find the throttle cable on the engine, where it connects to the engine is your throttle body. Remove the plastic tubing that connects to the throttle body, get you some throttle body cleaner fron you local autoparts store and an old tooth brush. Open the throttle up by hand a spray some throttle body cleaner in it and scrub the throttle body and the plate inside that moves when you press the gas pedal. Once you scrub everything really good, take a lint-free rag a wipe out the inside of the throttlebody and the plate to, when you do this you should have alot of black oily residue on the rag, this residue comes from cheap gas and builds up on the throttle position sensor and the metal plate in there, this sensor tells the engine what RPM to idle at, alot of times this sensor gets really really dirty and the computer can't read the sensor, therefore the computer can't find where to idle. If this doesn't fix you problem, check all of you vaccum lines for dry-rot and make sure they are all connected. Goodluck!

Answer 2

Does it have a new intake?  Its prolly a vacume line.  Make sure that they are all connected to where they should be.

Answer 3

try a bottle of fuel treatment or have the fuel system flush

Answer 4

idle air control valve. Let the car warm up for a min or two and unplug the connector to the IAC. it may run a touch rough but if the idle smooths out you know you need an IAC. Its possible to clean them but more often then not it does not work. I warn you they are very expensive haha. Here are some pictures to help.

http://k43.pbase.com/u25/garyq/large/147...

http://www.clubcivic.com/board/attachmen...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v219/w...