My wife's 06 stratus with a 2.4 in it is having issues starting on cold mornings. It will crank over and die right off. If you pump the gas and rev it up for a about 10 seconds then its fine and will not have an issue the rest of the day.

Tonight I was testing the coolant temp sensor and the air intake/charge sensor and I didn't pay attention to the orientation of it. I looked in service manual I found on the forum and its very vague. Anyway the air intake has an arrow on it. I need to know does the little Mark like a line on the senor line up with that or the cutout on the bottom of the the sensor.

That said I checked both sensors and they both appear good. I also have a bluetooth obd2 scanner and was using torque and it showed my coolant temps and my air temps to be valid as the vehicle was warming up. Any ideas?

 

sounds like a fuel issue, is there something called a cold start injector on these engines?

 

No there isn't. I wondered about a possible fuel issue maybe a clogged filter. There is no serviceable filter on this car. And since it ran fan once it was given a little gas I didn't think it was staving for fuel.

So I decided to pull the idle air control valve as this was really the only other option if it wasn't a fuel issue. It looked fine but I went ahead and cleaned it with some carb cleaner. REinstalled it and tested it this morning. With my code reader it showed both temp sensors at 18 degrees Fahrenheit so they were working. I turned the ignition and it fired right up and went strait to 1200 rpm without issue or stumbling. So that was it. Something must have been causing an issue with the idle air control valve. Ran great today and started right off every time.

 

That's good to hear. I'm currently dealing with an idle issue, idle stumbles a little once and a while but then under electrical load (headlamps, front and rear defrost etc) and in gear it gets really kind of bad.

I had the throttle body off and cleaned everything including the IAC valve, but still an issue.

I actually ordered a new IAC valve last night and will try that.