QuestionHello, my 1994, 232,000 mile 4cyl camry seems to run fine during the winter. When warmer weather sets in, I'll start the car, a minute or two later, the engine light will come on and it will lose power, rough idle and won't go past 3,000 rpm. Also the a/c won't blow cold during the engine light on. And the auto trans is affected as well. A year or so ago, a mechanic replaced the whole distributor assembly thinking that was the cause, it wasn't.
Reading some of your past articles, I was thinking it might be the iac valve ...So I cleaned it. Didn't work.
Anyways, I tried the paperclip method at the terminal yesterday and got three flashes pause one flash, which Haynes says its a 31 code, the map sensor.
None of my sensors have ever been replaced on this car.
I'm wondering if replacing the 250.00 map sensor would fix this or is this just signaling that something else is wrong within the emissions system of the car?
AnswerThe 4 cylinder engine has a MAP (manifold absolute pressure) mounted on the firewall, check the wires connected to it and make sure none of the wires can be pulled out of the connector and that the pin connectors are good, if so then the map sensor itself is the most common cause for this code.
