Your success with solving the high idle complaint will come easier with a good plan of attack. The first thing to determine is whether the high idle is caused by a mechanical issue, such as a faulty IAC, or a throttle plate that is not closing, or if the idle speed is actually being commanded high by the computer. One of the easiest ways to do that is to simply unplug the IAC with the truck at idle, and allow the engine to slow to the "minimum air rate" or base idle speed. There is no published spec, but if your minimum idle speed is in the 500-600rpm range in park, thats close enough. There is no normal service adjustments required, but if something is keeping the throttle plate from closing, then you'll have to correct that. Most likely, when you unplug the IAC, you will find either a normal minimum idle, or no change at all. If there is no change, and the throttle is not sticking open, suspect air is getting around the throttle plate, which could be a bad IAC, because thats exactly what it does, it allows air to enter the engine around the throttle plate. Normally the computer has complete control of the IAC, but it can fail mechanically, so it must be checked. The last senario has the idle speed being correct when the IAC is unplugged, and then going back up when it's plugged back in. this would suggest the computer is actually commanding the idle speed high. The questions from here are, is the computer getting a high power steering pressure input? Is the TPS spiking low, causing the computer to think the engine is at part throttle? Is the ECT, or IAT reporting to low of an engine temperature? This is where the correct scan tool becomes so important, because it allows the person trying to fix the car to see this information right from the computer.

This time last year this happenend to me, wd-40 did not work! After $300 and a lot of time on-line, I got a refund check for $215 from Ford. This is a common problem! A couple of other things to watch for is the rear wheel bearings it is also common for them to wear out, The wheel bearing are covered under 100,000 mile warranty, however, according to Ford the wheel bearing cannot be purchased alone, it comes in a hub assembly which is not covered! Tricky! They ended replacing both rear wheel bearings for the deductible of my warranty $100 vs $250 each! The other is the head. Took the car in for scheduled oil change and found the head was warped. They fixed it, the next week after finding oil under the car, they replace our engine. Good Luck!

dnt1 said" john g you have gotten yourself stuck on the wrong area with your business. You have to show people something besides good work and here it is. People dont care how much you know until they know how much you care. Customer service good listening skills and lots of empathy man, now get on it and get that business growing as it should." Well if it was really only that easy. I repaired a Jeep Cherokee that had bounced around between 5 shops/techs. The problem surfaced alledgedly right after a major transmission replacement. The symptom was a surging/high idle speed, missfire/cutout when driving. The AC was inoperative, the clutch would not engage. The customer had already tried adding refrigerant with sealer himself, without gages. Plus the 4WD display was blank. The soultion was the computer had failed, but before the computer could be replaced, every possible reason that something on the car could be causing the computers microprocessor to continually reset had to be explored, and proven to NOT exist. Plus I also had to be sure that something else on the data bus on the car was not causing the reset to occur. There are no training manuals anywhere, nor is there service information/repair manuals written at this level. Guys like me are totally on our own with this stuff, and we often spend two times as much time studying the system at home to make each diagnostic move faster, and in analyzing the results to make sure we haven't overlooked something which would result in a customer potentially buying a part they do not need. I had well over eight hours time in this car, and ultimately billed three. The result had everything working, and I did notice some belt squeal, it was a newer, and properly tightened (within tension specs) serpentine belt. Now do you think this guy appreciated what I did? I did not sell any unneeded parts or service and I even cut him a significant break on the real amount of time required to do that. For my trouble I can tell you that I have 80% of the fuel injection wiring diagram memorized for a 97 Jeep Grand Cherokee. That's how close I had to study this system to be positive I was making the correct call. He went out to the Jeep after paying his bill, five minutes later he came back in and wanted me to go outside and hear something. He was concerned about the belt "chirping" when the AC was turned on. He was complaining that it did not do it before, well of course it didn't, the AC had not worked in the month and a half they had been fighting this. I told him shut the engine off, and went inside and got my laptop, and my belt tension gage. I showed him the spec, then I measured the tension on the belt and showed him it was in spec. The I showed him how the belt that was on the Jeep was one of the discount aftermarket replacement ones, that does not actually fit the pulleys correctly. He still insisted that I do something, and at that point I said fine, I'll take it to the maximum tension allowed on the spec, for a fee. At that point he balked, and said it's not adjustable, it has a spring tensioner, which I really got a laugh out of, because I asked him to show it to me. Then I showed him how the belt adjusted with the idler that is just below and inside of the power steering pump. I then asked him, who put this belt on? He said it was another shop he had dealt with recently, and I asked him why not go back to them and have them deal with it? His reply? Because he didn't pay them for it. I didn't press him for details at this point, but one way or another he managed to coerce them into doing it for free, or flat out managed to rip them off somehow. In the end, he paid me to adjust the belt. I refused to touch the rest of the AC system at all, because the sealers that he added have the potential of damaging my AC recovery/recharge equipment, and I'm not ready to have to spend another $4,000 on a new one. I also told him to the best that I could be sure, the transmission shop had nothing to do with the failure of the computer. Three days later the transmission shop involved called me up. He had not seen this guy and was glad that I had straightened his Jeep out. He was having trouble with a Ford tranny he had rebuilt and needed me to help him figure out what was wrong. He had one dissapointing thing to say. No matter what the outcome was, this guy with the Jeep would bad mouth me about fixing his car. It's just the way the guy is..........

Last year my daughter was driving a 2012 Nissan Pathfinder, transporting her 2 children ages 1 and 3. This was the only vehicle that she owned and drove it for almost 2 years before the incident happened. My daughter totally lost all control of her steering after taking a left from a stop sign on to a main Hwy. She was almost involved in a serious if not fatal collision. Her husband had it towed to the dealership where they could find nothing wrong. They tried re-enacting what happened but still said they found nothing. My daughter refused to set foot in the vehicle with her children and got rid of it. This brings me to this web site today. Last night My mother was driving her 2009 Dodge Caliber to my house to visit me. She had bought the car new off of the lot and had been driving it since. She was waiting at a red light when she noticed an emergency vehicle approaching. Her light turned green and she waited to let the emergency vehicle pass. She said that she tried to give the car gas but it wouldn't move at first. She said that when it finally moved it acted like it wanted to fishtail but yet she hadn't given it too much gas. She was turning left at a major intersection and said the car was uncontrollably steering all over the road. She said it didn't matter which way she turned the wheel it went where it wanted to go. She described it as driving on ice. My mom made it to the median, turned the car off, with hazards on, trying to catch her breath. She was almost at the turn to my neighborhood so she decided to go very slow. She said that it could have been really bad. I believe that something serious is being missed mechanically. The reason that I'm searching for answers now is because it happened to 2 of my family members at different times and in different vehicles. How many more has this happened to or will this happen to? If anyone out there has any information that would help me find out what's causing this please let me know. Thanks