# Stalls When I Put Her In Drive (Mornings only)



## ProTurbo (Sep 1, 2009)

What would cause a 1999 Nissan Altima to stall when I put her in Driver or Reverse when the car is cold? (In the morning)

After a few minutes, if I give her a little gas she may start going Forward or Reverse but it feels like she starts in second gear and sometime hops. Then after 5 or so minutes of running, the transmission will work fine and all the gears will change like it should. Weird.

It only does that in morning when you first start the car, when the car is warmed up, the transmission works fine.


I just bought the car for my daughter and when we saw the car, the seller made sure the car was running so when we try it we didn’t notice the transmission problem . 

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thank you for your time.

Pro


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## jdg (Aug 27, 2009)

Most likely nothing wrong with the transmission, but sounds like a fluid/filter change might be helpful. Incidentally, if an automatic transmission started out in 2nd gear, it would engage nice and smooth (i.e. that's how other high end cars shift so smoothly when going from Park to Drive, they go into 2nd or 3rd initially, then downshift to 1st as soon as the vehicle starts moving)....that is unless you're giving it a bunch of gas causing it to jerk into gear.
You might have a dirty/carboned up idle air control valve causing idle instability and hence the inability for the ECU to manage a smooth idle.
Could also have a bad coolant temperature sensor, not the one that runs the gauge or the needle, depending on your instrument cluster, I'm talking about the one that feeds coolant temperature data to the ECU.
I'd be betting on a $100 fix (cleaning IAC, tranny fluid change, coolant temp sensor) vs. a $1,000+ fix (rebuilding the transmission).


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## ProTurbo (Sep 1, 2009)

jdgrotte said:


> Most likely nothing wrong with the transmission, but sounds like a fluid/filter change might be helpful. You might have a dirty/carboned up idle air control valve causing idle instability and hence the inability for the ECU to manage a smooth idle.



Thank you for the reply, will start working on it, and post the result.

Thnks again


Pro


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## ProTurbo (Sep 1, 2009)

jdgrotte said:


> You might have a dirty/carboned up idle air control valve causing idle instability and hence the inability for the ECU to manage a smooth idle.
> .


I know this might be a stupid ?, but where is it located? If you have a diagram that would be great. and I guess what the best way to clean it.

Thx

ProTurbo

PS: Still at it.


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