One of the problems with an 18 year-old 3-cylinder car with 215k kms on it is it's sometimes hard to tell if it's idling poorly or if "nah, that's normal!"
But the
Firefly's winter stunt double started idling low and randomly stalling last week.
OK, that's not normal!
When I opened the air cleaner, I could tell there was an EGR problem. It looked like a bit of oily goop had been dripping from the vent outlet onto the throttle body.
Carb cleaner to the rescue!
I gave the whole TB a once-over spray, then for some reason squirted a liberal amount INTO the PCV passage (illustrated by the green arrow, below) as well. Upon starting & revving up the engine, I heard a bit of a "pop!", saw a puff of something, and this is what greeted me on my return to the engine bay:
The PCV puked its guts out! GOOP! Lookaddit!
Moral of the story: don't neglect inspecting your PCV system. Mine was effectivey plugged up. The valve was also mostly stuck (open, I think) as well. Though I was able to clean it out with carb cleaner.
For some reason, I have never made checking the PCV valve part of my routine maintenance. Oops!
Always learning.