minor issues

[Guest765]

Its been just far too cold here to do anything since buying the 86.0, and I've changed the thermostat so far. Plan to do the tb as soon as its warm enough to work and some of this snow melts down. Since I kind of can't poke and test myself to narrow these things down hopefully some of the experience here can help until it warms up.

Car starts easily ice cold but then idles so low it will stall itself out unless you keep your foot in the throttle. The ac does work, tested in fl before I left, and the idle does not droop with the ac on, so I don't suspect the iacv yet.

Antilock brakes are finicky at best, suspect its the front passenger sensor because the wires are trashed. Any way to be sure without buying a new sensor?

How do I get to the windshield sprayer motor and the wiper fluid tank? Seems to be buried in the fender from what I can see. The headlight sprayer worked for a split second and now nothing, thinking the lines at or near the pump are clogged.

Rear defrosters poop, relay clicks but doesn't clear the window, too cold to play with the multimeter right now.

Ball joints are shot, lower ones seem to be a bolt in job? Will the rebuild kits for the upper joints work on my pre-1000 vin car? The years listed on most of them are confusing.

Thanks for reading.

As soon as I can I'll be having kinkos print off and bind the wsm for me, going to be a little while though.

[Danglerb]

Idle is controlled by the brain via an Idle Air Control valve, almost all modern cars use something like this, and they go bad. Rather than saying just replace it, you should really plan on doing an intake off top end refresh of all the vacuum and breather hoses.

Maybe start by fixing the wires on the ABS.

Panel I think comes off, but I think someone has done a write that maybe will have a link posted.

When you go to Kinko's, have the wiring diagram for your model year printed on a large format printer. Make sure you are working from a "good" set of CD files, some are terrible to print from.

[harborman]

The windshield washer tank is behind the passenger fender. You need to remove the inner liner to access it.

[Guest765]

Thanks for the info so far.

Standing question is what explains low, relatively solid idle? The idle never really comes up even when warm, it looks like 450-500 from wgphat I can see on the tach, I would guess closer to the last hash before the 1k mark is best? Right now it sits almost halfway from 0 to 1k on the tach probably closer to the low end by a hair.

I've searched hard but I only come up with threads for high idle, never seen anyone mention low idle.
Also what are the best suggestions to handle these ball joints? They're really bad and are number two on the list after the tb.


Thanks again

[Danglerb]

Check the idle rpm with something other than the tach in the dash.