my friend has a 2001 Maxima and for the past few months and she's been having some major stalling issues. first, it would start doing it here and there if she's been driving around and then put it in park. a few seconds after that it would stall out. that started happening more often in addition to it stalling out on her while actually driving. not a high speeds, usually in stop and go traffic situations. now, in addition to those 2 happening more often, it now stalls out sometimes immediately after she first starts it up. so it's getting progressively worse and pretty much stalling at least once every time she uses the car. i've been looking around a bit and read things about cleaning the IACV and stuff but i was wondering if anybody had the same problem and could point me in the right direction a little more quickly because it's her daily driver but she doesn't wanna put money into it because she plans on getting a new car very soon.

Since she doesn't want to put any money into the car, I would start with the IACV cleaning and see where that gets you. It's only $5 and an hour or so of time, so definitely the cheap way to start.

+1 on cleaning the IACV. You also might want to try seafoaming the car, although you typically want to replace the spark plugs and O2 sensors after doing so.

ok thanks guys. i'm gonna check it out tomorrow and hopefully that solves her issue. will post back with results.

well, i Seafoamed her car and to her it helped a little bit but the problem is still there.

i haven't gotten a chance to clean the IACV yet. i was hoping i could get to it without removing the upper intake but i don't see how that's possible. it's just way to congested to get anything under the throttle body to unbolt the IACV. so when i have more time, i'll tackle that.

while attempting the IACV, i noticed a lot of her plastic air intake housing was just completely disconnected. she had a new starter put in a little while back, which is right under the intake housings so i'm guessing they broke the seals on the housing parts and just didn't bother resealing them. all of this is before the mass air flow sensor though so would that really matter?

she mentioned something interesting to me though. she said oil changes seem to REALLY aggravate her car. she felt like it did the last time i changed her oil but over time it gets a little better. i changed her oil yesterday and she said it's really acting up again compared to past few weeks. what would cause an oil change to do that to her car? i put in 5w-30 with a Fram extra guard filter.

ok i was able to get the IACV off. i didn't have to take the intake off, i dunno why i thought that. i just unbolted the throttle body and then the IACV from there. i took it apart, cleaned it out real good with throttle body cleaner. after starting the car up, it idled at around 1,000rpm, which is high, no? shouldn't it be like 700? but she's driven it a few times and has had no issues whatsoever will the car stalling, it doesn't even try to bog out on her, drives nice. but today, we ran into more problems. now, only at idle in park, she's getting a surging idle, usually between 1,000-2,000rpm. sometimes it just raises to like 3,000-4,000rpm and hangs there. then on the way home, the car threw a P0505 code which is for the Idle Air Control system. what could be causing that now?

Maybe it is sticking open or something? Have you tried disconnecting the battery for a period of time to reset the ECU? It might be sending tons of voltage to the IACV based on historic data of the thing stalling... who knows though.

no i have not, i will have her try that battery thing to see if that helps at all. i'll also check to see if it's sticking by any chance.