What can cause a car to stall while Idling?

Question

What can cause a car to start stalling when It's idling?

My car has started stalling after I stop at a stoplight. The car runs fine while I'm driving down the road and my foot is on the gas pedal but after I stop at a stoplight or stop anywhere and let it idle the car stalls.

Answer 1

Car stalling while idling could be an actuator failing that sends a signal to the throttle body to make it idle.

Could also be an EGR valve clogged, an EGR valve hat is clogged can cause a car to sputter, idle erratically.

Also check your idle set screw on the throttle body to make sure it hasn't been moved to where the throttle body butterfly is closing too much. It should be open a little bit at idle.

I'd recommend taking the car to a shop to have them personally look it over as they can tell a lot better than someone over the internet.

All we can do is guess unless we see the car.

Answer 2

Mechanic gave some good advice already. But I want to mention another thing you might check. Check the grounding to your fuel pump as well as your positive wire to the fuel pump.

My dad had a 1998 dodge that had suddenly started stalling when your let your foot off the pedal. We changed the fuel filter, ignition module etc and it still stalled.

Turns out he had a loose ground wire on the battery that was causing the fuel pump to not get enough voltage and it would die when we let off the gas pedal.

Whenever my dad or I drove the truck we'd have to keep a foot on the gas pedal and the brake pedal at the same time while stopped.

We had to keep the truck just above idling or it would stall.

We decided to check the battery cables again after a guy suggested it and when we fixed that ground connection it ran fine after that.

So that could be a problem as weird as it sounds. I guess when the truck was moving it had a good connection but as soon as we stopped it started losing connection.

I don't know if it was a problem with the connection leading to the fuel pump or the grounding was causing the computer to act up.

But that fixed the problem. It's worth a try.