Irratic Idling... what to do?

[Shades]

Alright this is hard to explain...<p>First off, my car is stick shift.<p>Ok, so sometimes when I pull off my revs drastically drop when I'm engaging 1st gear. That maybe user idiocy... me!<p>For the real problem, anyone had this and how did you fix it? I am in first, foot off the clutch and foot on the gas... the motor is making noise and my car is crawling... and then like the gears finally make contact it lurches foreward, and goes like it should... now I am just holding the gas pedal at one position...<p>I watched the revs as it does this... I'll step on the gas and it'll hold out at about 2000-3000rpms... and then radically jumps to 5000-6000rpms. I had a new clutch put in about a year ago... how long are they suppose to last?... or is that not the problem... <p>This is pissing me off as I almost got into an accident... I was turning left and my car did this... almost got hit...

[sapper]

Well, if you are REALY bad at driving stick, you could be making your clutch slip by releasing it a little TOO slow when going into first.

[mx3optidrive]

My Protege had a problem like that and this is what I did. Check the water thermo switch. This causes the car to idle up and down, stall out a couple of times and make the car run rich or lean depending on how the switch goes bad. This switch is part of the "choke system" for the car. It is one of the sensors that tell the computer that the engine is cold or warmed up. The check engine light didn't even come on so the guys at mazda thought I was crazy because it wouldn't act up for them and they couldn't get a code from the car, but I lucked out because there was another car around here that had the same problem and its engine light was on and they got a code for this switch and it fixed both of our cars. It only cost me $46 CND to fix so you can try this if you want, I hope this helps.