2002 Lancer OZ
134K miles
K&N Typhoon Intake
Exhaust System (Unknown)

So, I just drove my car from Dallas, Texas to New York, 1,700 miles. About 1,000 miles into the trip my girlfriend and I pull over to sleep and she leves the lights on. I wake up to find the battery dead, I bump start the car and everythings great. We make it to New York and park the car in her parent's driveway. I go out the next day and the car is totally dead, no signs of anything being left on but I can't be 100% sure. I get a jump start and drive the car around the block trying to charge the battery. I notice that the battery seems really low and when I shift or put the car in neutral the car tries to die and I have to stay on the accelerator a little bit. I park the car and the next morning went and bought a brand new battery. I installed the battery and the car still tries to die. I've driven the car about 40 miles like this, whenever I shift into neutral or shift really slow I have to hold onto the gas to keep the car alive. I noticed today that when I turn the AC on and the AC makes the audible "click" and is actually powered and running the idle is completely fine. If the AC is turned off then the idle drops and the car cuts out.

What could be causing this?

A little background info:
Before the trip I suddenly blew my clock and radio fuses and replaced the two 10A fuses in the yellow clip with a 10A and a 15A and just tossed the yellow clip.

Thanks for any help

 

After the new battery do you still have to jump it after its been sitting for a while? If so, I would check if the alternator is charging the battery. If thats not the case I would start looking at the simple things first like gap and condition of the spark plugs and spark plug wires. Hope this helps.

 

Also, I just had the CEL codes pulled and found the following

P0421 is Warm up catalytic converter efficencey below threshold cylinders 1-4

P0135 is Heated oxygen sensor - bank 1 sensor 1 (H02s11) heter performance

Both of which seem to be an unrelated problem with a catalytic converter recall

 

Did you do the cat converter recall? The two codes together make sense. Whats really wierd is that it happened after your battery died.

 

No, I do not have to jump the battery to start the car.

The car has ran fine for the past 30k miles and runs fine in gear, I don't think it would be a sparkplug issue but I guess they are due for a change anyways.

 

I havent done the cat converter recall yet. I just found out about it actually. The CEL came on when I bought the car about 30k miles ago. I pulled the codes to see if there might be anything new but the cat recall ones were the only ones.

 

Man it sounds like your cat is trash and making your car run like crap.
I'd try that.

Also when I threw the P0135 code, I had to replace my O2 sensor in the engin bay and it fixed it right up.

If you continue to drive it like this you will find that it doesn't take long for your plugs and sensors to get carbon build-up becuase your car will be running very rich and cuase this.
I'm sure your exhaust smells like crap too.

Get the cat dealt with and reset your ecu to see if the P0135 code comes back, if it does replace the O2 sensor as well.

 

I suggest you do this as well. If your cat is clogged it could very easily be causing your car do want to die.

 

Agreed. The cat can definitely create this issue.

 

This is common when the battery has gone dead. For some reason the car is unable to relearn the IAC position required to achieve target idle speed. Disconnect the negative battery cable again for ten minutes, restart the car, and give it another try with a few miles of around-town driving, with some idling mixed in.

 

Thanks guys for all of the tips! I drove the car back from New York 2,000 miles and it seemed to fix the problem. I guess it just needed to relearn the idle speed after the battery was disconnected!

 

Wow was I off!
Glad you got it figured out though.

 

Oh ok I wasnt understanding you correctly. Yes everytime you unhook the battery you should let the car idle for at least 15-20 mins so you dont have the stalling problem

 

Im having the exact same problem, I was doing some lighting work with the battery and then then engine had trouble turning over. Then it started idling really low and kept stalling when i was driving like whenever i pushed the clutch in and the rpms dropped I found out that it was actually a computer thing where the car "forgets" its idle point when the battery is disconnected and can be fixed by driving around and or leaving the car idl and giving it a little help with the gas, my car still idles a bit low but is not turning over at all and its at a steady 700rpms which isnt great but better than going below 500rpms and turning over. It happened more than once because my battery kept disconnecting because of bad cables so it had to ""relearn" how to idle another time but by letting it sit on for 15 minutes it fixed itself.

 

exactly right because i drove after i disconnected the battery and i kept stalling but next time i let it sit and idle everything worked perfectly