I just picked up a perfect, minus a few quirks, 02 Outback LL Bean Anyways it has around 90,000 miles on it and the Check engine light is on. It starts up fine but idles at 1200+ rpm no matter how warm the engine is and you can't get it to "kick down"

 

I you drive it it seems to run fine just lacks a little power, and usually when you drive it and park it the idle starts to fluctuate up and down really fast almost as if your sitting in the seat and reving it up, then letting off, then revving it up, then letting off and it does this until you either put it in drive again or shut it off.

 

What could be causeing this, possibly an idle air control vavle maybe? I dunno. Any help on this is certainly appreciated because I am very new to this 3.0 engine.

 

Thanks,

I just picked up a perfect, minus a few quirks, 02 Outback LL Bean Anyways it has around 90,000 miles on it and the Check engine light is on. It starts up fine but idles at 1200+ rpm no matter how warm the engine is and you can't get it to "kick down"

 

I you drive it it seems to run fine just lacks a little power, and usually when you drive it and park it the idle starts to fluctuate up and down really fast almost as if your sitting in the seat and reving it up, then letting off, then revving it up, then letting off and it does this until you either put it in drive again or shut it off.

 

What could be causeing this, possibly an idle air control vavle maybe? I dunno. Any help on this is certainly appreciated because I am very new to this 3.0 engine.

 

Thanks,

 

The Idle Air Control (IAC) valve may have some carbon deposits on it, causing the valve to close improperly, causing a high idle and fluctuations. Simply remove, clean, and reinstall and that should help.

IAC, yeah thats what I was thinking, the idle is so rapid up down up down quite fast whether the A/C is on or not.

 

 

One more thing, where is the IAC located on this engine, as I said i'm extremely new to these 3.0's and dont have any service manuals on them (yet)

 

 

Any other possibilities that could cause this idle problem that I should look into?

 

Thanks

Rcoaster could you tell me where the IAC is?

Please help i'm clueless when it comes to this engine

 

Thanks in advance...

I took the Plastic cover off of the top of the engine trying to locate the IAC. There are 2 sensors located on the throttle body is it one of these?

 

I also noticed that when it is at idle and the A/C cycles on the idle stops going up and down and levels out but stays in high idle...Around 1300 rpm or so.

 

Anything else I should look into?