02 tl stalling after startup
 

I’m new to this forum stuff so bear with me...

my 02 tl starts perfectly, idles a little high (1100 rpm), but when you try to accelerate it starts to stumble and attempts to die. But it never dies or throws a check engine code. I’d relate it to being like a carburetor with a bad accelerator pump. I can pump the gas pedal and get it to move in a jerky fashion or If I just hold the pedal in one spot it tries to die, then accelerates then tries to die. However 30 to 45 seconds of this and it runs perfectly. It does it with the engine hot or cold, and weather appears to have no affect. Ive cleaned idle air control, no change. I’ve tested the tps with my code scanner and it appears to be fine. I’m baffled. It seems to be something in the initial startup phase but I don’t know a lot about these cars. This thing has given me 255k of reliable miles and been a great car and I can’t let it beat me on the first difficult issue it throws me.

Thanks ahead of time for any help!!

I've been away from my TL for over a month now so I can't recall the exact name of the thing, but there's a little hole on the lower intake manifold that can get clogged up over time. There's a DIY on this forum about cleaning it out - it's a quick job so see if that does the trick.

Maybe it's an o2 sensor? I remember having the same problem. I switched it out and the car ran fine afterwards.

Sounds a lot like a cylinder misfire. They usually throw a code for the ignition could but I have had imports that have not.
I would scan for stored codes but I’d bet money it’s bad ignition coil.

How does the car behave when in park or neutral? if you hold steady on the gas pedal, can you keep it to hold steady at 2000 or even 3000 RPM?

The port that Arkady was referring to is the EGR. it does get clogged very often (especially if you travel short distances daily) and is hard to detect without actually taking the intake manifold cover off and taking a look.