throttle sticking but cable slack. help?

[info4all]

I have an 88 carburetted ford festiva L that occasionally idles at extremely high rpms when the clutch is pushed in. I don't have a tach so I have no idea how high it is idling but I am guessing that it is close to the equivalent of pressing the accelerator half way to the floor. In other words high enough to have everybody stare at you at stop lights, drive thru's, and of course when you turn the car off and try to convince it to stop dieseling.

This car seems to be very emotional :lol: If you push the car a little hard it does this revving thing for several days. In all seriousness you can tell when the car is going to start doing it because you can almost feel your foot catching or rubbing on something when you push it towards the floor. (Though one time I accidentally through the car into 2nd when I meant to go into 4th and it rev'd for days after that as well)

In a last ditch attempt to fix the high idle (outside my place of work) I tried to physically turn the throttle backwards. I was able to turn it about 1 degree and it did drop the rev a little bit. I also noticed that there is quite a bit of slack on the throttle cable so the pedal itself is not sticking.

I do have a feeling that something is sticking or grabbing because what I feel in my foot but what ever is going on I cannot man handle it back to a normal throttle position. Since I have a carb I am doing just about everything in the blind because I have not yet pulled off the top part of the carb.

In the past the car just seems to fix itself. I don't know if it just vibrates enough to slide back or what but I would like to have a more controlled and permanent fix to this issue.

Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks

[Damkid]

i don't have much experience with carb's, but it does sound like something in the carb, what i would do first is disconnect the throttle cable and slide the cable back and forth in the sleeve to see if it feels stiff or not (basically try to norrow down where the problem is) if the cable feels fine try moving the part that the cable hooks onto

[WmWatt]

Nor sure what you mean by "slack" cable but sort of assume the cable is not sticking inside it's casing. You should be able to grab the cable where it leaves the casing and pull on that to rev an idling engine. I do it on my carb'd Festiva when I want to rev the engine. You can take off the air cleaner and look down into the throttle body without removing the top of the carburettor itself. Have you tried cleaning out the carburettor with some spray solvent (carb cleaner)? Should also spray the linkages on the outside of the carb.

[Tom]

The breather causes this a lot of the time, the 88 I just bought was doing this almost all the time and the guy I bought it from drove it that way back and forth to work, I told him on the phone to take the breather off and by hand just move the throttle linkage and rev it a little, you could WD 40 if you wanted too, anyway he wouldn't do it and offered it to me for $150 I took the breather off and pushed the throttle on the carb by hand a few times and it's never done it since. The breather itself if just slightly out of place rubs some of the linkage and causes this.

[info4all]

Well, I am going to start by taking the breather off and moving the linkage by hand and see if I can find the rubbing point and then I'll get some carb cleaner because I am sure that won't hurt anything. I'll keep you all posted.

Thanks.

[whozit110]

MY 1988 Festiva had recently been doing this also! It was also made worse by turning ON the headlights! What I FINALLY figured out was that the danged (aftermarket, installed by a previous owner and never worked since I've owned it) CRUISE CONTROL was somehow engaged and was trying to have its way with my little car. I recently had a lot of work done and somewhere in there some switch must've gotten jiggled or jangled or something. I don't know what this little 5 speed was doing with a cruise control in it anyway. We went under the hood just last night and disconnected the thing from the throttle and it's been running pretty good today... except for some inappropriate bucking here and there, like it's got old gas and a clot somewhere in the fuel line (new fuel filter pending).

So my question to you, info4all, is do YOU have a cruise control installed in your Festiva?

[info4all]

Thanks for the extra question but I do not have cruise control but (drum roll please) I was able to fix the problem (Hurray). I will try to be as specific as possible in case other people are having issues. I am limited in my auto vocabulary so bear with me :lol:

What I did was move the breather out of the way so I could see everything under it. This involved removing 2 screws and three hoses. I then started the car and tried moving the throttle back by hand. I know, I know, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results but I learned something. On the left side of the motor (left as in looking at the motor while standing in front of the car) there was something that moved along with the throttle. I knew the idle control was over there so I started man handling that and it started to ease off the RPMs a bit. By this point the motor was starting to heat up and there was a good bit of smoke/exhaust (I think it was from running the car without a breather) so I shut the car off (and through it in gear to stop the deiseling beast heh heh).

I think the reason I was not making any progress on the side with the throttle cable is because I kept making contact on the idle side. The idle was not set too high but something was preventing the throttle from going back all the way. I backed the idle off, tapped a few things with a wrench, saw it move back, and started the car. The idle was much lower but not perfect. I decided it was low enough for a test drive. I put the breather back togther and went for a drive. After one good rev the RPM's came right down to where the needed to be and then a little lower :roll: Yeah the idle was too low. I got out of the car, brought the idle back up and away I went. Now the car is acting like a champ.

I can't say that what I did will permanantly fix the issue since tapping on things until they move isn't really a science but I think I may have narrowed down the issue if I come accross it again. I am no longer feeling the rubbing that I once was and I made sure to pushed the car a little bit. I do feel like the car has a better response now but that may just be wishful thinking. lol The only thing that I really noticed that was really different was that the following 3 times that I started the car, after the test drive, the car was harder to start (acting like it was flooded) but the 4th and 5th times it started just fine.

Thank you all for your advice and I hope this may help someone else out in the future. If anyone has other advice or may know the terms for the stuff I was tapping on, feel free to chime in with the info.

[WmWatt]

I'd spray those outside linkages with something. On the can of carb cleaner is says to spray them with that, but WD40, light oil or similar would do fine.

[info4all]

I'll take your advice and hit it with some WD40 before I take the car out.

Thanks