my camaro doesn't want to idle when it's in drive. it'll barely stay at 500rpm, but when i have it in neutral or park it idles fine. it started doing it when i got off the freeway on my way home tonight. i got on it some on the on ramp but the car was running and shifting fine. when i got off the freeway and hit a light is when i started doing it. it dropped down to about 500rpm and the headlights dimmed, i just gave it a little gas to keep the rpms up. it's shifting and driving fine, it's just when it's stopped. also when i went to pull it into my garage it made a little bit of a clunk noise and kept wanting to stall out.

i really hope it's something simple since i'm trying to sell it and don't really have the money to dump into it right now. i'm going to mess with it tomorrow and see if i can figure something out.

 

Get a voltmeter and check the batteries voltage at idle. It should be near 14 volts or higher. If it's lower, your alternater may be going bad since the battery does nothing after starting the car.

 

my buddies lt1 does that and its been doin it for about 3 months

and its fine

 

I wouldn't be too worried about it. In drive, my car idles around 500 rpms and around 800 in nuetral or park. My car has always done this since the day i got it. If I were you I wouldn't be too worried unless the car actually dies out.

 

maybe its been idling like that for a while and u just noticed

 

Maybe it's a problem with the cars. Probably a well known problem but since it's not causing any negative results GM doesn't have to recall anything. The rpms should not drop down just from going from neutral to drive. They don't in my girlfriends 99ls1.

 

IAC is supposed to keep your idle at 550RPM when
warmed up. You should see no variation between
drive and park.

My car does this thing when it's hot, 90+ degrees
with A/C on, if it idles too long the RPMs drop below
500 and the volts drop to 12V. I believe this is a
problem with the alternator, when it's turning slow
it needs a lot of field current to make voltage under
load, perhaps more than the stock regulator can
give for long (overtemp protection or something).
If you have added underdrive pulleys you can expect
this sort of possibility. When system voltage goes
out of regulation, it can mess with other things
(for some reason, the RPM drop and volts seem to
go together on mine, no telling who caused who).

So I would look at the charging voltage when this
stumbling goes on, and if it's under 13V, look to the
alternator. If volts are good, replacing the IAC servo
on a 5-year-old car isn't a bad bet.

 

just ask a dealership and see if theres a recall or something....

 

I don't know if mine has to do with the rpm level,but I go out and warm up the car in the morning and when my wife backs out of the driveway and sticks it in drive,the car dies.It doesn't do it all the time ,but it has concerned me somewhat.

 

The first thing I'd do is make sure your whisper lid is clamped down. You also might want to check around where the egr goes into the intake to see if you have a leak. A loose lid or a major leak around the egr will cause the car to die at idle. Just a suggestion to narrow things down.

 

that could be a possibility but not very likely