My wife "informed" me of this problem starting/stalling problem only a couple of days ago. I'm sure she's been telling me about it in her own way for at least a month, but being the guy that I am, I probably dismissed it more to operator error than anything else. No big deal. Then she grabbed me before going to work and told me it was doing the starting/stalling thing, so I got in the car, started it up, it starts, then it stalls, did this like 10 times and the smell of either heavy fuel laden exhaust or actual flooding hit my nose and I thought it was the strangest thing. I was finally able to get it to start, hit the accelerator to at least get it past idle and see what it did. I'd let go and it would die. She had to get to work, so I tried a trick I've used before just to make it happen.
I started it, hit the gas, held it there, hit the brake at the same time, stuck it in reverse, got it out into the street, put it in drive and drove it around the block a couple of times, pull over in front of my house, put it in park, let go of the gas and viola, it ran without stalling. I knew something was wrong, but didn't know exactly what. I thought it was either a faulty fuel pump, maf, or the IACV, but leaning more towards the maf. Then I thought, hey, let me come to the forum and see if any threads addressed this issue. Lo and Behold, I am now here and I will attempt this fix tonight. I've got the tools, just need the cleaner and I'll give it a go and I'll let you guys know what happens. I lurk here way more than post as you can see, but after the transmission problems with the sun gear/shaft spline walking problem that we had on our 2000 rx3000 right after the warranty went bad and $5000 in a new tranny and labor, this site has been invaluable. I'm still *BLEEP*ed at Toyota/Lexus for allowing the transmission designs of this generation car to be on the road without a recall. Plain old BS and they know about it too. Anyway, enough venting
Big thanks to GSSS for the instructions. Just a minor question to you my online IACV guru. Is there a way you could position the pictures in an orderly step-by-step on your original post? I'm going to use the pictures as my guide along with your instructions, but some of the pictures and what steps they belong with are slightly confusing me. No biggie, I can figure them out eventually, i'm just trying to work around the way my brain works. thanks again and I'll let you know how it goes.
edit: I took everything apart as shown. It's nice to be able to bring the laptop down and look at the instructions while i'm under the hood. got the throttle body off (damn those screws were tight). got everything cleaned and put back. turned on the ignition and viola seems to be working... taking a test drive now, will report back in a jiffy.
edit #2: test drive went well, but noticed that water was slightly leaking. I think one of the hoses or clamps is loose. checking now....
edit #3: yup. the squeeze clamp was loose and it wasn't fitting over the hose properly, so I used a worm screw clamp. all fixed. The next time I do this i'm going to replace all of the screws with hex head bolts instead. will make everything easier. Oh, I also replaced the o-ring around the coolant port from the throttle body to the intake manifold. I'm also making gasket patterns for the throttle body to intake from high temp plastic sheet stock just in case.
edit #4: hmmm. i'm wondering what the proper idle speed should be for the rx300. right now it's idling at around 900 - 1000 rpm. I could have sworn it was supposed to be around 750. can anyone confirm this?
