New Idle Control Valve has made things worse!

After a bit of research I thought I would see if swapping the Idle Control Valve on my '94 Softdash V8 auto would solve some of my starting, stalling and unstable revs issues. Instead, the new part provides no idle control at all (!!) and as soon as I take my foot off the throttle the revs just drop down and stall. It did start up better than usual though and had no problem starting up again each time it stalled.

It was a brand new part and I am now stumped as to what to do next. Any suggestions as to what the problem might be would be most welcome as at the moment I cannot go anywhere, even to the local landy specialist to get it looked over. Thoroughly fed up that even this straight forward part swap seems to have gone t1ts up.

Was it a cheap valve because these often dont work correctly

Check your throttle pot, if the base voltage is too low the ecu doesn't activate idle stabilisation which means the idle control valve doesn't activate and the symptoms you describe sound very much like this.

As well as setting base voltage you should check the scaling of the throttle pot - it should be smooth and linear, any spikes or dead spots would suggest you need a new throttle potentiometer.

If you go in to the V8 section and do a couple of searches you should find the info you need. HTH

Thanks for the replies. I have ended up having to put the old ICV back in and it works OK, but it still stalls from time to time. I will have to get it looked at by the experts.

Have you checked the throttle potentiometer?