cold start valve???

[318driver]

Every morning its usually about 40 degrees out. When i have to leave, i start my car, and usually if i dont give it gas right after it turnsover, it will stall. After abourt 2mins or so, of holding it at a bou 1000rpm, ill take my foot of the gas and it will come downt to about 300 and sounds like its about to stall. now, sometimes after about a minute the rpm will raise on its own and go up to about 1000. The normal on my car after its heated up is about 800. And sometimes it will just stay down and come up slowly as i warm up. My question is, is there somekind of coldstart valve, or something like that, that could be messing up. the cars a 318i 84. what should i look for??

[Bill 84 318i]

Yeah, but the cold start valve only fires for 7-8 seconds (or something like that) to get the engine started. FWIW, it's at the 'back' of the intake manifold, above the valve cover.

When's the last time you did a run-of-the-mill tuneup? Any vacuum leaks?

A (shot in the dark) possibility is that the temperature sensor isn't working properly. When cold, m10 318i's should stay at 1300 for a couple minutes and then drop down to 'normal' (about 900 for mine). There are three temperature sensors at the front of the engine. I forget which one affected my engine running, but I would just unplug them and see if anything changes (and you'll probably break them, they're brittle).

[318driver]

thanks, i gota check that out, i cant stand warming my car up, and then it still stall if i take my foot off the gas, i stalld 2 times trying to leave school today. haha. how embarrassing

thanks bill

[rward325]

God, I had this same problem with my 84 318i like 6 years ago. I think we ended up replacing the ICV and found some vaccum lines that needed replacing as well. If my memory serves me correctly(I'm old and suffer DRS) this was the fix.

[derek w]