Following-up on a lead that I read somewhere on the forums regarding a dirty Throttle Position Switch (TPS) leading to erratic idling and engine stalling, I decided to give my TPS a thorough cleaning to see if that solves my engine problem ... or at least eliminates the TPS as the source of the problem. At present, I'm not entirely sure of the mechanics of how it might contribute to the issues I'm having as I read about it late at night while I was half asleep, but detaching the plastic cover revealed some black scuff marks on the contacts as indicated by the red arrow in the first photo below. This was easily rubbed out with electronic contact cleaner and q-tips, followed by light dusting of the entire unit with the Dremel rotary tool with the soft bristle brush attachment.
Before:
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Nope - didn't change a thing. Engine still starts up and idles fine until it warms-up, then it starts idling erratically and stalls. I didn't think it would work anyway since the symptoms are obviously heat related. I have my money on the coolant temperature sensor for now as the Fuel Injection Control Unit relies heavily on this very sensitive piece of equipment. Testing the resistance of the temperature sensor with a cold engine yielded a reading of 3000 ohms (within specs at 65 degrees room temperature). I took another reading when the engine was hot (after letting it run for a while until it stalled), and I got 0 ohms. I'm not entirely sure if its supposed to go all the way down to 0 since none of the resistance charts that I've seen for the temp sensor bother to show that range. Based on those readings, it does seem that the temp sensor is working like it ought to. However, it didn't occur to me while I was performing the test to see how quickly it reached 0 ohms. I'll do that this weekend, starting and stopping the engine at 1 minute intervals and then taking resistance measurements to see if I get a range of values.
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