'96 maxima dies when comming to a stop

[96stillen_max]

so I am driving down the street and come to a stop sign or red light, when I put the clutch in and slide it into neutral the RPM drops down to 0 and the car dies. When i start it up again it stays on, (but the idle is never right, sometimes its at 900, sometimes 600, ect.) but once i start driving and then stop again, it will die.

I have no CEL and no codes, I checked all my hoses, my IAC is clean, PCV was replaced about 10k miles ago.

My two guesses is that the problem is either with the TPS or EGR. I checked the TPS, and it has the proper ohms of resistance, but I am not getting a voltage, leading me to think that it is not recieving the signal from the ECU. The problems I am having are all the syptoms of a bad TPS

As for the EGR, I put my finger under it and pushed ont he diaphram like part and it moved, but felt kind of sticky. A bad EGR would explain the occasional whistle I have at idle and could also explain the rough idle.

Could someone give me some insight on this? Could both the TPS and EGR be bad? what more should I look for? How do I test teh EGR properly? Thanks guys.
Modified by 96stillen_max at 11:53 PM 6/1/2005

[s13sr20chris]

easiest test for egr is to remove the valve and blow air through it. you should not be able to blow through it at all without applying vacuum.

for tps you can just unplug the darn thing and see if that changes stuff at all. your car will run funny so dont dog it.

try wiggling the engine harness around the pass rear corner of the engine bay. make sure to hit all the areas like around the power steering pump and where it goes through the firewall.

[NISTECH]

try wiggling the engine harness around the pass rear corner of the engine bay. make sure to hit all the areas like around the power steering pump and where it goes through the firewall.

My thoughts exactly Chris. Along with doing this pull the cover near the passengers left foot and make sure there is no moisture on or around the ecm connector. If there is clean up the moistiure form the area as well as in the ecm connector. Then clean out your A/C evap drain.

[96stillen_max]

thanks guys, ill try these out tomorrow morning. I have another question tho. I am also starting to believe that my coolant temp sensor is also bad. How can I tell for certain that it is bad? I am assuming that I can test it using my multimeter? how many volts should it read, and should it read any resistance?

[s13sr20chris]

shoot, i dont have the specs on me. i will say that the sensor is soooo cheap as is the pigtail harness that you may want to just get new ones. what you do is order the sensor for your car and get the pigtail harness from a z31(i think) as it has the same connector. then you splice that sucker into your existing harness.

[96stillen_max]

well i actually did go and get a new sensor today, but i didnt have ot get a pigtail harness fomr a z31, the sensor i ordered screwed right in and aonnected to my current harness.

BUT. my dumb *** decided to cheap out and get a sensor from kragen (they were also the only ones open today). so i put this sensor in and as i tighten it down, the head snaps off and the threaded part of the sensor got suck in the damn pipe. I had to spend 3 hours getting that thing off since i have never done it before, then another hour and a half trying to get the stub out, which i was unsuccesful at. luckly a local maxima guy has a couple of these tubes laying around from past parts cars and engine swaps so i got me a free one...just got to put everything back together tomorrow. i will also chek the EGR to see if anything is wrong with it.

[96stillen_max]

ok well I got the new pipe on, along with a new CTS. When I started the car, it idled normally for about 2-3 seconds, then the idle slowly falls, until it hits 0 when the car starts to shake violently and then dies. If I try to tap the gas to keep it from dieing I can get the RPM to stay up for a little bit, but then it starts to kind of bog, and if I try to rev past like 4k it sounds like its getting starved, or like when your maf isnt hooked up, but my MAF is working. any ideas?

edit: I just went out and tried something else. I unplugged the MAF and staryted the car. it idled normally, of course I couldnt rev past like 3k, but without touching the gas, it was just fine. I plugged the MAF back in, and my problem began again, idleing for like 3seconds then dropping down to 0, and stalling. so I guess my MAF is bad which is kinda wierd cus I dont have a CEL, and 2 days ago before i started this, the MAF seamed to run fine.

[NISTECH]

That is how they go and unless the maf sends 0 volts or 12 volts to the ecm ,it has no idea its bad.

[s13sr20chris]

well i actually did go and get a new sensor today, but i didnt have ot get a pigtail harness fomr a z31, the sensor i ordered screwed right in and aonnected to my current harness.

.

just to be clear...the point of the pigtail is to be replacing the connector without buying a whole harness.

[96stillen_max]

oh ok. I will try that out if I still have problems. Thanks