legacycentral bbs

Been trying to mess with the idle on my girlfriends 90 Legacy L with an EJ22 and 220 cams. Had the car about a year now with this motor in it. I have taken the liberty to drive it around lately since my 96 is out of commission.

I have realized how annoying the idle is with these cams. My Frankenmotor with 220 cams doesn't do this.

The car is running a 92 IACV that was cleaned when we refreshed the motor a year ago. I tried messing with what I thought to be a "idle adjusting screw" on the Throttle body. Come to find out that's not what it was. I was merely trying to just open up the throttle plate a little bit to bring the idle up so it wasn't scattering between 500 and 1500rpms. That worked for about 20 minutes and the car threw a CEL and ran like crap.

What have other done to remedy this problem? I am just looking for the motor to stop trying to stall when it goes down to 500 rpms.

I experienced the same issue with anther 22E that I put 220s in. The owner ended up taking it to PIA after we swapped the IAC for a known good unit and still experiencing the issue. He says they adjusted the IAC and the problem is gone, for the most part. He says it will still do it every once in while, usually while the car is warming up. How PIA adjusted the IAC, I don't know.

Unfortunately, I think this is an issue with the cams and how the stock ECU wants to control the idle and base idle timing. On a stand alone or even older engine with carburetor, you would adjust the idle up a little bit and or change the timing.

To adjust the idle with the IAC, you could try rotating the electromagnet portion/head of the IAC valve. The problem with this is your are essentually adjusting out the flexibility of the IAC to compensate for different temperature, barometric, and engine operating conditions, but it's probably the better of two evils.

http://youtu.be/609ML5FTx1I Idled like that for the 2 years I had it with the 220 grind.

I could live with that idle. However can't deal with the 500-1500rpms. With an exhaust it is extremely annoying.