I am looking for some help with what i believe to be idleing problems. My car is a 97 accord with 265,000 miles on her. i love her to death and will keep it till it dies, but i need to see if i can fix this before it gets any worse. the problem comes up every once and a while. love those kind!! but if my car is idleing and the ac is on or off (does not matter) it will have this studder for about 15 seconds then it goes away. causeing the idle to drop to low. i though it could be the fan comming on to cool the engine or the a/c commpressor kicking on but it does it when its on or off. but it might be the IAC valve (if it has one, how do you check it?) and also i have noticed that when i am on the highway, the car will seem to loos power for about 5 seconds, then the engine picks back up and keeps going. it has only done that about 5 times in the last 2 moths. but the ideling thig has been going on for 4 months now. thanks for reading guys, and i hope you can help me.

 

4-cyl or V-6? They are so different that they may as well be separate cars.
It DOES have an IACV. The 4-cyl does not have an FITV (probably V6 also). You may have seen FITV mentioned in threads about surging idle or setting BASE idle. Search for "BASE idle" for some instructions.

I suspect it may be something different, since it stumbles while driving, too. How are your normal tune-up things? Age & miles on sparkplugs?

Check for bad insulation on sparkplug wires, or bad distributor cap, by looking for arcing in the dark?

 

soory, its a 4-cyl. but now that you mention it i just replaced my plugs, wires, car and rotors. so i will look for the arc and see if that changes it. thanks man.

 

Well, since they're new, they probably won't arc. Blue glow in the dark would indicate that their insulation has deteriorated with age & heat. It was just something for you to check & rule out.

 

Jim, are you sure that the 97 doesn't have a FITV? My 95 has one.

 

Oops, you're right. It's #14.

My 95 Integra was the last year for the Integra to have one.
My 98 Accord didn't have one.
The newer IACV includes the function for fast-idle when the engine is cold. I assumed(!) that happened across all Hondas when they went to OBD-2.