I have a 2002 Stratus R/T. My battery was dead I took it to Auto Zone and they confirmed that it was bad. After replacing the battery now my car will not idle, it dies when it goes to idle. The car starts fine and runs fine as long as I have my foot on the gas. It did not have this problem before I replaced the battery. I have disconnected the battery and few times thinking this would reset the ECU. I am thinking that the ECU just lost it settings. Any ideas on how to fix it?

 

Is your check engine light on? Get a code reader on it. Maybe your throttle position sensor is unplugged or was damaged accidentally during battery removal or install?

 

Nope, the check engine light is not on.

 

On thing that I have noticed is when I started the car in the morning or it has been sitting all day while I am at work it will start and idle with no problem. I just went out and started it this morning and it idled for 5 minutes with no problem. I drove it around for a bit and it went back to its old tricks of dying when it went to idle. And now that it is "warm" when I started it and let it sit and idle it dies instantly.

 

Its normal for it to idle poorly after the battery has been removed since it resets the ECU, but it should be back to normal after driving 15 minutes or so.

 

I have driven the car to and from work which is 25 miles one way.

 

this works for trucks, not sure about your car.
to reset pcm, disconnect neg battery cable and turn on headlights for 30 seconds to drain the memory.

 

I cleaned the throttle body and that seems to have fixed the problem. I am not sure how the ECU is programed but maybe when I took the battery out and put the new one in the ECU went back to it's original settings which were set for nice clean throttle body. As time goes maybe the ECU makes slight adjustments to compensate for a dirty throttle body? The true test will be tomorrow to see if that has fixed it completely.

 

When changing the battery the just anbout all control modules are cleared. It then has to go through a learning period (about 15 minutes of running)where all strange problems can happen. I have seen the transmission bang shift during this learning period. Disconnecting the neg battery cable, and holding the ignition is the start position for 30 secs seems to work to clear memory.