My Civic is sometimes having an unsteady idle after starting it when it is still a little warm, and it goes from 1k to 1.5k revs, fluctuating, for about 8 seconds, before dropping back to normal idle: 800 revs. The other night it started to feel like it was trying to die. I had my headlights on, my heater on low, and my OEM stereo quietly playing. I was waiting to turn left, and my revs dropped to below 600 revs, and just played around there. The engine kept catching itself, but it really, truly had me worried. It hasn't done it since, but I took it to my boys at AutoZone to run an alternator test (I had other reasons for doing that as well). The alternator was fine. So my next task is to clean the IACV. It's behind the throttle body, so reaching it may be a little difficult. Does anyone know how to remove this tricky mother? And when I do remove it, how should I clean it? Help is much appreciated, thanks.

 

To remove the IACV it's pretty straight forward, but get 2 spark plugs, just to plug the hose that you remove from the IACV so you wont loosing to much coolant. To clean it, just use a brake cleaner, and wire brush, pretty much you cleaning up a lime built up in there and maybe some rust, prepare a new gasket from dealer. After cleaning up, put back everything back like before, fill up your radiator and reservoir, there a screw right at the thermostat housing that you can loosen up and the coolant gonna came out from it, keep filing up the radiator as you see the coolant coming out steady smooth from that bleeding screw, then start you car, don't close the radiator yet, as the car warmed up coolant gonna go down and you gonna fill it up to the radiator neck, that can goes from 10 - 15 minutes. When it's stop going down you can put the cap back on and try driving it. If it's not solved it, check all the hoses, and vacuum line, use soap water to see if it bubbles, I bet you cannot point out hissing leak when the car was running. That all I know and I did last month, somebody fix me if I'm wrong.

 

Thanks for the advice. It sounds really hard, and it wasn't helped by the fact that you use a lot of run-on sentences, but that's okay, I don't want to be the grammar ****. Can anybody else provide some input?

 

Search. There are a ton of how-to's on this. It's also super easy. Two bolts and a molex -- just disconnect the electrical and take out the bolts. Pull it off and clean it out. Don't know what engine you have, but on many engines it's very easy to find and access on the back of the intake manifold.

 

If your engine has a fast idle thermo valve, check that before the iacv.

 

Its not hard at all. I did this at work one day on a 15 minute break. Couple bolts hold it, disconnect the wiring pigtail, spray it with carb/throttle body cleaner. But like it was said before, if you have an FITV, clean that with the IACV


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