Comin' Thunder

iTrader: (5)

Okay, so winter is killing me here in Ohio....and I know it's only almost mid January. My hawk was sitting in the garage, washed, waxed and under the car cover. It's been sitting for about 1 and a half months (I don't do fluid draining, because I do drive it on occaission during these months). It's not a daily driver. I wanted to hear my car so I reconnected the battery and heard the power coming through, so I thought, "cool". I went to start it and just heard "click" once. I let the clutch out and tried again and this time nothing. I knew it was the battery because it had been acting wierd this past fall. I ran to Advance and got a new Optima Red Top (which I had been wanting anyway). I get home, crank up the hawk and it cranked up nicely. It did fire up quickly, then the rpms dropped to like 400-500, and then slowly but steadily climbed up to proper warm up rpm (took about 15-20 sec though). I thought nothing of it. Today, it's about 30 degrees, so I let the car warm up for 15-20 minutes to normal running temperature with the 160 degree themostat, which is about 180 degrees for my car. Here's where my problems start. As I come outside to get in the car, I hear it drop the rpms pretty low (like 400-500) again, then briskly recover (2-3 sec recovery). I get in and back out to the street and notice the rpm's hovering at 500 steadily....so now I'm like WTF! I just paid for this expensive *** battery. Anyway I go for a nice 8-10 mile ride, car drove fine, but about half the times that I stopped at red light's or stop signs the rpm's dropped to 500 or so again. I couldn't get into the throttle at all due to the temp, and my car kills it's tires anyway in the hot summertime...I was being extremely carful because it was lightly sprinkling. The car is idling smoothly, no codes or misfires. It accelerates under normal driving conditions just fine. It does need to get tuned because me and my boy installed headers in Oct, with plugs/wires/lid and filter. I know I'm running a little rich due to the smell, but it's not rediculously rich. The car is back home now and it's idling at 750-800 rpm. Fires right up, but does still dip in the rpm's from time to time...it occurs completely randomly. What do you all think is up with my car? Could it possibly still be trying to relearn it's idle since it was disconnected for a while? Do you think it's an alternator issue? It's never behaved this way before and I don't know what's up. I've got 66,241 on the clock and the car is meticulously maintained. You would think that it has 12K on the odometer to see it. Please give me your opinions....I'm not sure what's up? Sorry this is so long, I was just trying to give as much background as possible on my current situation. Thanks.