Problem with C4 100 surging

[paulfern]

Hello everyone,
I want to know is anyone can help me.

I have a 100 (C4) from 1991 one with the 2.3 AAR engine...all worked well until about two days ago I was washing the engine area. After all was dry I took here for a drive and notice something.
The car now does some really violent engine surges...it idles at around 1500...then starts to surge between 1800...as high as 3000...!!! it is almost impossible to drive like this.
I have tried drying out all ignition cables..used ether...I have made sure the cap was dry as well...but still nothing improved.

It seems I may have done a really dum thing by washing the engine...but I cannot figure out what is causing the problem.

Anyone with experience on this one??? ANYONE

[paulfern]

It's OK everyone...I found the problem..

Actually it turns out to be two problems...
1) the engine was so baked with grease and old oil that when I washed off all the old oil and gunk some of that old oil or grease was sealing some of the hoses!!
This is no joke ..because I found several air leaks after...new clamps or hoses fixed this one.

2) when washing the engine...I of course sprayed water everywhere....engine degreaser was used in exaggerated amounts as well .. ...
Anyway after it all dried up all is clean of course but what I found was that some water possibly got into the idle stabilizer...which is I assume lightly oiled maybe by the engine itself..
So as it turns out the stuff I was using was so good it really wipes all oil from the everything it hits...the inside of the Idle stabilizer was just a tad DRY! the result...
as I was messing around to trying to figure out what was doing this..I started tapping with a screw driver everything....I finally tapped on the stabilizer...and ...It died..Opps..

took out the stabilizer...sprayed a very lights squirt into it's nose
Installed it back in...and WALLLAA! the car runs better then before...

Lesson learned folks..

[Mario20v]

Now you know what you have NOT to do!

I cleaned the engine of my v8 3 Years ago,
the distributercaps were wet and i flooded the Hallsensor in the right distributer.
The engine only was running well at idle rpm or full open throtle,
between that is the rpm bounced between 1500 and approx. 3000 rpm.
Impossible to drive.
So i disconnect the Hallsensor so i could drive allmost normally,
when the Hallsensor was dry aganin, everything worked well!

[mAARk]

Well, Paul, the problem was obviously that the air hoses / vacuum hoses were already in bad shape before the engine wash. I have washed my AAR with LOTS of degreaser and water, and I've never had any problems afterwards. (Caveat: I don't use high-pressure water or steam, just a normal garden hose with an adjustable jet.)

And yes, the idle stabiliser does require a bit of light lube. In my experience, the blow-by gases contain enough oil vapour to keep it lubed.

Cheers,
Mark