I recently went to take my 89 out for a drive after it was sitting for a few months. Upon starting it, it began running rough ( never had this issue ever before). I rev'ed the engine a bit and it cleared up. Fast forward a few days now and upon start up it struggles to keep running. It will start but it sounds and smells like it is flooding, I can rev. the engine a bit and it will miss, buck and smoke will come out the tail pipe, not blue smoke just very fuel rich smoke. sometimes it will start to run good after a few minutes but as soon as a give it a rev the rpms will just tank out and die. I feel like it is starving for air I can remove one of the vacuum lines running to the manifold and it will run just a little bit better but not much. I am kind of leaning to a faulty idle air control valve. I feel like its not opening up on start up and idle. The situation has progressively gotten worse so much so it will not even really run. I know other cars are programmed to run open loop (meaning that it will just fire the injectors, without looking at the sensor feedback) until it warms up then switch to closed loop and use the sensor feed back to regulate the air fuel ratio. Knowing this information and knowing that its happening both cold and hot running conditions is pointing to the Idle air valve. Any input before I go and but a new valve would be great. Thank you!!!


87 Dodge Raider 4.3 Vortec work in progress
89 Dodge Raider 3.0 V6 Fully Restored
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