I've got a '91 318i. Up until recently, everything had been running just fine. The idle hung around 850rpm and stayed put. In the month or so I've owned it, I've been pretty easy on it, never taking it above 65mph, and never getting the revs above 4k.
Then the other day at work, it stalled out as I was backing out of the parking space I was in. I tried to start it again and it fired up, but quickly bogged down and died again. After that it wouldn't start. The starter would crank and everything, but the engine wouldn't start. I did some other stuff for about 20 minutes, came back, and it started up like normal. I noticed after I got home, though, that the idle would rise up to about 1k for a second, and then dip to around 600 for another second before rising back up to 1k. It only seems to do this when the engine is hot. That was a few days ago, and I've been deliberating about what I should do about it. It wasn't too big of a problem, though, so I've been putting it off. Today, though, as I was sitting at a light, I noticed the rpms dipping even lower than normal, to the point where the car would shudder and want to stall out (about 400 to 500rpm).
This kind of makes me worried. At first I had suspected the not-starting issue was because something had just floated up in front of the fuel filter and blocked it from going anywhere, but now that the car wants to stall out, I think it might be something more. I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to engines and mechanics, but I'm fairly mechanically inclined. Any advice as to where I should start?
Sorry about the long post
Topic: idle rises and falls, and wants to stall in neutral (Read 2759 times)