[sitiakab]

Futher up on this post thread you may see where I indicated that I had the same problem with an 02 Highlander early in 2007. Sometimes it would start, but would not idle unless you kept your foot on the accelerator. If you took your foot off, it would stall. It would easily re-start again, but would continue to stall unless you kept your foot on the gas until it warmed up. This problem would only occur once every few months. When I called two local dealers, and spoke with both service managers, they said they never heard of anything like this, and would have to hook my Highlander up to their anaylizer. When I told them the problem was intermittant, and did NOT result in a check engine light coming on, and asked if their analyzer would tell them what was wrong, they admitted it probably would not. I therefore did more research and reading on my own, on line and via repair manuals, and I concluded it was likely that my Idle Air Control Valve was not acting properly. I did in fact decide to check out the Idle Air Control Valve, which I have seen sometimes refered to also as an Idle Control Motor. This Valve was a bit challenging to get to, and it did require removing the entire throttle body assembly, connecting air hoses, fuel line, etc. You can't gain access to the Idle Air Control Valve without removing the throttle body assembly. As I recall some of the hoses were color coded and I made notes so I would reinstall the air hoses correctly. Some of the nuts and connections are tough to get to as they are underneath or behind the throtle body assembly, and if your level of experience with tools or engines is limited to just basic oil changes and air filters only, or you don't have a decent selection of sockets, wrenches, etc. you may not want to attempt this on your own. Also, if you don't already own a repair manual, get the Haynes 92095 for the Highlander. It has a section with photos on the Idle Air Control Valve, so you can see exactly where the IAC is located. After removing the throttle body you can remove the valve - mine was attached with four small screws. When I got the valve off I could quickly see it was dirty - just normal dark colored film. As I recall it appeared to have an open sliding valve / port type of set up. I used normal generic carburator spray cleaner and an old tooth brush, etc. to get it cleaned up. I considered actually disasembling the valve unit to get inside it for a 100% cleaning, but decided against that and just cleaned as much as I could get to from the outside without taking the actual valve apart. That was over six months ago and the problem has never appeared again. My 2002 Highlander has 150,000 miles on it, so my guess is that as more and more 01's and 02's start to get up there in miles, this is going to become a very common problem and dealers will become familiar with it. The fix me took a couple of hours of my time, and saved me at least $200 over what any dealer would charge in labor to clean it. I doubt that any dealer would actually agree to "clean" the valve, but instead would sell you a new one and with an hour or two of labor - probably closer to $500 total repair cost.