Jrs3800: does your tach read 700rpm?

Mkaake: Well, I don't mean to offend you, but they made quite a few bad decisions back in '89. If I were designing the car, I would have done some things differently.. oh well. Sometimes factory settings aren't the way we all want it. That'* why there is an aftermarket for just about everything. Hence why I want to adjust the idle speed, because I feel that it would be a good idea for me, personally.

I don't go past 5200.. and I have only pushed her there twice, but I really want to find out how off my tach is, because now I feel really stupid.

Is it possible for me to get an OBDI scanner, and hook it up to display the read outs? Something perhaps.. free, like at an Autoparts store? I kinda sold all my notebooks, and the money is all going to car parts..

-justin

Not free, most of those are just code readers at autozone. You'll need something that'll read the datastream. Got a laptop?

So why do you want to change your Idle? There'* a reason no one here has done that to a car running in good shape. It runs high when cold to warm up, and keep oil flowing, then it drops down once the oil, and motor is warmed up. Are you trying to save gas?

If you mess with your IAC it'll be off that much everywhere in the range, it may not even go full open at higher throttle openings like it'* supposed to. That can mess up your AFR as your IAC is supposed to be open after a certain throttle opening percentage, and the fuel table takes that into account.

I know what you're going through thinking you want to change it because you can do it better. They do have reasons, they do have educations, etc. Yes these cars do have compromises as well.

The only good way to adjust your idle speed is to reduce it in your ECM. By getting a chip or whatever. I hooked up a Tech I to my friends '92 Buick Century with the 3300 and we kept turning the idle down to see how slow the engine would run, well the Tech I would only let us go down to 300rpm and the damn thing was still running, and it would only stall if you mashed the gas from 300rpm. But it ran pretty smooth at 300rpm. Tricking some sensor is not going to get you much of anywhere.

My idle on my STE is 800rpm and that is about perfect IMO. With the stock chip it was 700 and the engine just wasn't near as smooth. It idles smoother now at 800rpm with my cam then it did stock at 700rpm.

Shawn

this only raises idle though

follow up, way after the fact:

i was doing a tech2 run today on my lesabre, and kept a close eye on the idle speed, for your pleasure. when cold, and before any driving, the pcm was commanding a constant 1300 rpms. once i had warmed it up, and driven around a little bit, even while back in park, it was requesting 800 rpms.

so don't worry about the high rpms on start-up... your car wants it that way i know it'* been said already, but i thought maybe this would help put your mind at ease a little bit -

Thats because they dont WANT to idle they want to SCREAM.

And low idle makes ur car shake sometimes, doesnt feel smooht.