94 high idle and surging
Update... New throttle body, new tps.. Checked all grounds on the car. (as best I could) I cleaned up a few of them. No luck. Tps still likes to dance around 0 to 2 when the engine is running. Perfect with just key on. So, heres a guy that seems to know what hes talking about in regards to tps. Do you know if I can use the eehack flash program and do what this guy is talking about as far as raising the tps threshold?
As always, much appreciated..
Regardless, sometimes there is nothing to be done about it short of rewiring the whole car. Especially in the professional environment when you have limited amount of time to tune a car. The only solution to the problem tune wise is to raise the max tps % the pcm will qualify as "zero". This is done in the throttle follower airflow table. Basically if the follower is not active, the ecm treats the throttle as closed and all idle air flow pid controller and timing routines are allowed to operate. If look at the table you will see the first few cells are zero. If you have a tps problem, take the highest tps youve seen with the throttle closed, lets say 2.1%, and make the table zero past that point, say all the way to the 2.5% cell. This will let the car control the idle properly again. But this can create other problems, especially if youre not actually fighting a ground plane issue, so do this as a last resort."
Except I won't, because the problem isn't the PCM's interpretation, the problem is that your sensor value is dancing around. If you want to ignore it for now and hunt down the surging issues instead, by all means, shelve it. But as an experiment sometime, I'd run temporary wires directly from the TPS to the PCM and see what happens. For reference, the pins are:
PCM B(Black) 28 (5V Reference Voltage) -> TPS Pin A
PCM B(Black) 6 (Sensor Ground) -> TPS Pin B
PCM C(Grey) 22 (TPS Output) -> TPS Pin C
Additionally, please see this excerpt from the FSM regarding the TPS on our cars:
Except I won't, because the problem isn't the PCM's interpretation, the problem is that your sensor value is dancing around. If you want to ignore it for now and hunt down the surging issues instead, by all means, shelve it. But as an experiment sometime, I'd run temporary wires directly from the TPS to the PCM and see what happens. For reference, the pins are:
PCM B(Black) 28 (5V Reference Voltage) -> TPS Pin A
PCM B(Black) 6 (Sensor Ground) -> TPS Pin B
PCM C(Grey) 22 (TPS Output) -> TPS Pin C
Additionally, please see this excerpt from the FSM regarding the TPS on our cars:
Anyway, I think I'm going to move on a bit from this. I'm thinking that their may be a problem with one of the 02 sensors. The left bank seems to take awhile to go up in voltage and then seems to drop sporiadicly to the 50's. Is the left bank the drivers side? There are 2 on each side. Is their a way to determine which one might be faulty? I'm attaching a new EE file. Its basically just the car idling. Could you take a look when you get some time? thanks...
Last edited by BillyVette94; Feb 9, 2021 at 04:36 PM.
O2 sensors for our cars are cheap and very easy to install. I would say if you suspect them, go ahead and give them a swap anyway. Do be careful about the wire routing, however; note that the connectors have clips on them that go into mounting holes near the exhaust. This is critically important in order to keep the wires away from the very hot exhaust pipes and engine block.
I'll check out your EEData file in a few hours, I have to take care of some things here. Apologies for the delay.
EDIT: The ZIP you uploaded contains a shortcut to a file--not an EEDATA file. I should've known just by seeing it was only 856 bytes. Please attach a ZIP with the actual c46.eedata file.
Last edited by Nomake Wan; Feb 9, 2021 at 09:35 PM.
Your car should only have 2 on the right side. The driver's side (left bank) should not have a rear O2. This was only present on the '96 (for OBD2 compliance). The rear O2 on a 94-95 is used for OBD2 dealer diagnostics, but does not actually affect how the car runs in any way. In fact, a failure of the rear O2 on a 94-95 won't even light the SES light, as the OBD2 codes are hidden from the driver.
O2 sensors for our cars are cheap and very easy to install. I would say if you suspect them, go ahead and give them a swap anyway. Do be careful about the wire routing, however; note that the connectors have clips on them that go into mounting holes near the exhaust. This is critically important in order to keep the wires away from the very hot exhaust pipes and engine block.
I'll check out your EEData file in a few hours, I have to take care of some things here. Apologies for the delay.
EDIT: The ZIP you uploaded contains a shortcut to a file--not an EEDATA file. I should've known just by seeing it was only 856 bytes. Please attach a ZIP with the actual c46.eedata file.
This should be the correct file.
Last edited by BillyVette94; Feb 10, 2021 at 12:47 PM.
The TPS voltage fluctuates quite a bit even when the car isn't running. It's not much, but it's there. From a low point of 0.53V to a high point of 0.71V. Again, still within the calibration range, but it shouldn't just be wandering around like that. My guess as to why the TPS reads 0.0% when the car isn't running and then wanders around when it is is because the PCM doesn't actually update the '0.0%' calibration voltage until the car is running, so as long as the TPS reads within the acceptable range with the car off, it'll return 0.0%. Similar to how the PCM doesn't bother loading BLM cells until the engine is actually running. I did check an old log on my '94 from before I changed the logging parameters that still included TPS Voltage, and the TPS voltage at 0 throttle was rock-solid at 0.55V at all times.
Your right side O2 is just bizzare. It doesn't match up to the left at all, while the post-cat O2 on the right seems to agree with the left. While you can't trust a heated O2 sensor's readings until it's actually heated, the readings should at least match up, and they don't. I went back and checked an old log from my automatic '94 and the O2 readings pre-start are within 20 mV of each other, and once started they line up exactly as expected. Yours are off by a massive margin (driver's side reads 160 mV, passenger side reads 431 mV) pre-start, and are way, way off while the car is running. These sensors are cheap; even OEM GM ones are like $30 on Amazon. Just replace them both.
As an additional observation, once warmed up your car is commanding a 625 RPM idle, indicates an IAC position of 60, and is idling up around 1000 RPM. On my 94 auto warmed up it commands a 625 RPM idle, indicates an IAC position of 27, and idles around 625 RPM.
Just really weird stuff. If replacing the O2 sensors doesn't correct that voltage imbalance, it makes me wonder if you have a major wiring or ground problem somewhere that's just completely throwing off every output and making the engine barely controllable.
Last edited by Nomake Wan; Feb 10, 2021 at 04:27 PM.
The TPS voltage fluctuates quite a bit even when the car isn't running. It's not much, but it's there. From a low point of 0.53V to a high point of 0.71V. Again, still within the calibration range, but it shouldn't just be wandering around like that. My guess as to why the TPS reads 0.0% when the car isn't running and then wanders around when it is is because the PCM doesn't actually update the '0.0%' calibration voltage until the car is running, so as long as the TPS reads within the acceptable range with the car off, it'll return 0.0%. Similar to how the PCM doesn't bother loading BLM cells until the engine is actually running. I did check an old log on my '94 from before I changed the logging parameters that still included TPS Voltage, and the TPS voltage at 0 throttle was rock-solid at 0.55V at all times.
Your right side O2 is just bizzare. It doesn't match up to the left at all, while the post-cat O2 on the right seems to agree with the left. While you can't trust a heated O2 sensor's readings until it's actually heated, the readings should at least match up, and they don't. I went back and checked an old log from my automatic '94 and the O2 readings pre-start are within 20 mV of each other, and once started they line up exactly as expected. Yours are off by a massive margin (driver's side reads 160 mV, passenger side reads 431 mV) pre-start, and are way, way off while the car is running. These sensors are cheap; even OEM GM ones are like $30 on Amazon. Just replace them both.
As an additional observation, once warmed up your car is commanding a 625 RPM idle, indicates an IAC position of 60, and is idling up around 1000 RPM. On my 94 auto warmed up it commands a 625 RPM idle, indicates an IAC position of 27, and idles around 625 RPM.
Just really weird stuff. If replacing the O2 sensors doesn't correct that voltage imbalance, it makes me wonder if you have a major wiring or ground problem somewhere that's just completely throwing off every output and making the engine barely controllable.
You gave lots of good feedback and I appreciate that. I'm now inclined to recheck all of the grounds on the vehicle again. Working under the car is a huge pain tho and I kinked my neck out so I have to rest it a bit before I go under again. What I noticed was that on a diagram I found that off the harness on top of the bellhousing their is supposed to be a few wires that connect to a bracket on the back of the cat. Its a g107 location. Their is no branch off the harness that I can find and nothing connected to that g107 location. I also havent checked the ground above the engine temp switch(g106) yet. I've yet to even be able to see it. The trans was rebuilt so their is a chance the g107 ground wasn't hooked back up but I cant find any wires for it. I've seen a couple of diagrams and they are not all the same as far as ground points go on a 94. Anyway, that will all wait for another day. Today I rebuilt the headlight gear plugs. They work great now. No more clunking around.
Changing those 02 sensors do not look easy to me. The DS has a rivoted heat shield around it. Thats just for starters..lol..
Thanks again...
You gave lots of good feedback and I appreciate that. I'm now inclined to recheck all of the grounds on the vehicle again. Working under the car is a huge pain tho and I kinked my neck out so I have to rest it a bit before I go under again. What I noticed was that on a diagram I found that off the harness on top of the bellhousing their is supposed to be a few wires that connect to a bracket on the back of the cat. Its a g107 location. Their is no branch off the harness that I can find and nothing connected to that g107 location. I also havent checked the ground above the engine temp switch(g106) yet. I've yet to even be able to see it. The trans was rebuilt so their is a chance the g107 ground wasn't hooked back up but I cant find any wires for it. I've seen a couple of diagrams and they are not all the same as far as ground points go on a 94. Anyway, that will all wait for another day. Today I rebuilt the headlight gear plugs. They work great now. No more clunking around.
Changing those 02 sensors do not look easy to me. The DS has a rivoted heat shield around it. Thats just for starters..lol..
Thanks again...
When I said that the rear O2 isn't exposed to the driver, I meant that it's not exposed to the driver. A scantool is not the driver. By "the driver" I mean that there's no way to access it from the dash, nor does a failure of the rear O2 trip the SES light or throw a code that can be accessed from the dash. However, if you connect EEHack, you can absolutely pull the OBD2-specific codes as well as query the rear O2 sensor reading.
I've done the O2 sensors on my 94 and my 95--it was a piece of cake, with the only "tricky" part being making sure the wiring is routed correctly and the harnesses are clipped in place. I messed one up by just plugging it in and then trying to route it--didn't notice until after that it was hanging on the exhaust that way due to the knock sensor placement. Had to unplug it, unclip it, reroute the wiring, then plug it back in and clip it in place. You'll see once you're under there. As long as the front of the car is raised enough to scoot yourself under, it's really not hard at all to swap the O2 sensors. Just make sure you have a proper O2 sensor wrench and you'll be good to go.
I'll laugh if all your problems are because some trans shop didn't reconnect all your grounds. Definitely check that out. And I mean, you have to lift the front of the car up to get under it to do the O2 sensors anyway, so hey, good time to check under there at the bellhousing!




