Sunday, November 28, 2010

Camry idling too low after battery change

As all too often seems to happen, my car started having issues right before a trip.

In this case, it seemed like the battery on my 2002 Toyota Camry had finally died. Thankfully I was able to jump it to make the trip home for Thanksgiving.

Replacing the battery was easy enough thanks to the local Wal*Mart, but from that point on, the car would idle too low and the engine would just shut off! This was most concerning when I put in the clutch (manual transmission) on a highway off-ramp, the car shut off, and there I was without power steering. Yikes!

I figured it was some kind of computer configuration reset due to the dead battery, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. After a bunch of Googling, I discovered this page. There were only instructions for an automatic transmission, but after a little trial-and-error, I got it working (and added the comment about manual transmission instructions.)

I don't really understand cars... but once you throw a computer in 'em, I can at least relate =)