[101lifts2]

Originally Posted by TIGGER

Haha! That's a good one! The thing is baby, you will NEVER become capable of working on your own car until and unless you try! You have to start some where! If you lift the hood, the vac lines are small, black hoses that generally run from the fuel injection system.



On this picture, the guy has painted his "air box" red. It is on the right and is the piece with the large hose/tube coming out of it. The cover is usually held on with a few screws or clips. The clips can be popped with a screwdriver or even a butter knife. If you follow that "hose" to the left, you'll see that it connects to a "valve" which is the throttle body. The throttle body has a couple cables coming off of it and some small hoses which are vacuum lines. From there it goes to the fuel injection system which is that "box" to the left. Also, if you look at the top of the engine, you'll see four wires coming out of it, which are the spark plug wires. I want you to visually inspect them for any cracks and see if they are possibly loose where they plug in to the engine or at the ignition module (the black box between the air box and engine), it's unlikely that your car has a distributor cap. Just make sure that they aren't loose or obviously cracked.

If you are feeling really brave, the throttle body has an idle adjustment screw that can be turned to speed up your idle and possibly end you problems. If you look at the throttle body closely, you will see that the cables are attached to a "wheel". The screw controls where the "wheel" stops when the cable is released which controls how fast the motor runs when you aren't pushing the pedal (idle). Now all you have to do is turn that screw 1/4 turn clockwise increments and see if you situation improves. I would do this with the car running but if you are uncomfortable with that, just turn the screw a 1/4, start the car. If it's better good, if not try again. I would not go over one or two full turns. If this doesn't help, I'd try your Asian friend. The steps I have outlined to you are basic and will not harm your car in any way. If adjusting the screw doesn't help, keep track of how much you turned it and just put it back.

You really shouldn't tamper with the min. idle set screw on fuel injected cars. I know that Mazda had issues with their early 1990's Protege's. We would bump it up to 700 cause the idle was pretty shitty on some, but there was no other fix nor was there an issue with the vehicle. Usually, cleaning the throttle body would do the trick. Also, I doubt an air filter is going to do anything. But as periodic mantenance, it should be changed at certain intervals, though.