Questions and Answers

Chevrolet Cavalier Idles Too Low Q. Hello I have a question about my car. First off some details. I have a 1989 Chevrolet Cavalier 2 door. It is a 4 cylinder 2.0 liter fuel injected. It is a manual 5 speed with about 160,000 miles on. It does not have ABS it does have A/C and cruise control, but the cruise was put on by another owner and did not come like that from the factory.

I saw your info on About.com and thought I would ask you this question. I just had my car worked on because it was running badly. Come to find out I needed a new Coolant Temperature Sensor and some kind of computer. Now that I have gotten my car back, it runs great.

However it doesn't idle too good. When it is cold outside it idles a little high which I know is normal but after warming up it idles really low. Low enough where it sounds like it wants to die. It has died on me once.

The person who fixed my car said a code was still showing up as speed sensor. I was wondering if that could be the problem. I have a SHIFT light on my dash that tells me when to shift and it is not working either, just thought I would ask to see what you thought.

Thanks for your time...

A. It needs to be scanned for codes and checking data to see what the ECM is "seeing" as far as vehicle speed at idle and running down the road. I would assume that if the ECM was seeing 20 mph while car was sitting still at idle you may have an idle speed problem.

I hope your technician knows how to read and interpret the data from the ECM so you can get this fixed. There may be other problems here as well. What;s the tune-up like? Fuel pressure? Injector leaking? Vacuum leaks? See what I mean?