Seriously though, in Vegas our lowest overnight temps are at worst hovering in the 20%-30% range this time of year.
Axe must be pounding his desk right now. (I'm sorry, Axe; I don't have a gloating bone in my body, but right now all I want to do is "throw a party" over what I've discovered today. If nothing else, I finally DID get rid of that incessent RPM hold)

So, "here", let's see if we can't give the newer Sporties the same benefit. Whatever that "idle pacifyer" thing is, it would seem to be something we can live without. Surely the newer models have a similar mod . . .

Yeah, that was a long (but sensible) sentence. Actually I couldn't hear a buzz -I felt it, so I don't know how long that had been going on, but you could be right about the comparisons. But the engine is sooooo much quieter and quicker to respond. Anyway, I'll be back at Kia Saturday and I'll ask Bong (yep that's his name) if this mod has been done on any setups other than those configured like mine.

Glad I stumbled onto something useful to you guys!

"But the engine is sooooo much quieter and quicker to respond."


Yes. There is no kidding about it. You've opened up a can of worms, for sure.
No doubt the CEL will become an issue worth talking about for months to come, but I am not shi**ing anyone here. I definitely have a different engine now, and me and my state's smog check is as easy as plugging that thing back in again if I feel I need to. (I'll unplug and reconnect the battery minutes before I go in again next year, which is what I've always done for any unseen reasons, even before I had my Sportage, and I've always got a "5 star" rating).

You "felt" the buzzing? That can't be good. Maybe I wasn't too far off the mark.
Axe? Do you know what this is?

[You "felt" the buzzing?]

Yes, I mean when I put my hand on it, which meant the solenoid was perhaps no longer functioning properly. As I said earlier, later the kia guy told me they got tired of replacing these things and decided they weren't necessary in this climate.

So, its almost like a recall part? That takes the cake.
By the way, just how warm is your climate? Mine isn't as warm as most think. Its high desert, yes, but we recently had some pretty nasty and serious snow fall.
We're in our normal "seasonable highs" right now, which would make your average kanook propably self-ignite, but all the same it's pretty cold. It is January for hell sakes.

That's the difference between OBD-I and OBD-II. You won't get a CEL with the OBD-I vehicles if you pull the IAC connector but you WILL with OBD-II vehicles.

Why? Because OBD-I does a "command" but no "confirm". The ECM simply sends instructions to the IAC but doesn't have the capability to confirm it actually happen. OBD-II does the "confirm" hence will set a CEL if it doesn't get the proper response.

That's why on 1996 and 1997 U.S. Sportages with OBD-II and all Sportages after 1998 it's gonna be hard to fake out the ECM and prevent a CEL.

Well, I have unplugged the dam thing today morning. But my problem is that before I go into serious testing I need to replace my MAF. Anyhow, I turn the engine on, the idle was at 1000, then I unplugged the IAC, and it went down to 800 immediatelly. Then once I started shifting between R, N and D the car stalls. But I'm pretty sure that the problem was the MAF. Then I decided to go Natural Gas (but this is for another thread!) until it gets warmer and even there (NG) the car was smoother, with the idle in 500. I guess that once you disconnect the plug the IAC won't close or open totally.
Well, the car is warm now and I switch into Gasoline again.
I hope this is not psicological, but the car seems to be LIGHTER and I definitivelly have smaller tires!
One thing that just came to my mind, why don't we add a switch to the thing, on off type? No hard cold start, no problems with emission controls, and also, give us the ability to do a real comparision on the highway.
I cannot voluntier right now, because I will only go further with this after I replace the F#*&^ing MAF sensor (maybe next week I hope). <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

I did some additional checking and yep, OBD-II does monitor to the IAC. From the 1998 shop manual:

Diagnostic trouble code P0506, defined as "Idle control system RPM lower than expected". And one of the causes of this code to be set is high resistance from the IAC to the ECM. Which is what you will get if you disconnect the electrical connector.

But it does give the nominal resistance of the IAC assembly. Between pins 1 and 2 should be 14-18 ohms. Between pins 2 and 3 should also be 14-18 ohms.

So...is there a way around this with OBD-II? There might be. If you can take the IAC apart it might be possible to separate the IAC motor from the pintle. It seems that this can be done with the older IAC but I don't know about the newer one. If you separate the pintle from the motor then the pintle will remain fixed, as will happen when you pull the electrical connector. But...with this method the pintle doesn't physically move but the ECM gets data from the IAC saying that it DID move. The perfect fake out. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />

This time of year it drops way down to about 23C (75F) at night <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/lol.gif" alt="" />, and up to about 85F or so daytime. The rest of the year about 10 to 15F higher. So my sport really has no cold weather to deal with at all.

Therein lies the problem , methinks.

The ECU will use the tachometer to measure the engine revs. If it detects no change in engine revs for a given change in IAC servo setting it will set a CEL as it gets to the end of its range of output to the IAC -"maxes out" (failure of the "closed loop" system)

My guess is there would be a predetermined idle revs for hot/cold/aircon/etc type situations programmed in to the ECU, and that the IAC is used to achieve this by increasing the revs from a baseline figure.