'93 Hard starting/high idle/no power when cold

[nellswor]

Can you believe I just found a '93 Camry LE V6 Wagon with 3rd-row seating with only 66,700 miles? That's less than 6000 miles per year. We are the second owners and it came with most of the maintenance paperwork. We love the third row seat for hauling kids and friends.

This car is practically new, looks like it and drives like it, except for one thing: the engine acts strange when cold (40-50 degrees at night here in MI). It usually will not start on the first crank. On the second crank, it will sputter and start, idle roughly for a few seconds, then idle a little smoother, but at almost 2000 RPM. If I drive it at this point it will have NO power whatsoever. I can floor and it will take 5 seconds or so just to get up to 30 MPH. (Very dangerous merging into traffic this way!)

After 5-10 minutes, once the engine is warm, it acts normal. It idles at ~800 RPM and seems to have all the power this V6 should.

Plugs and timing belt have been newly replaced by the dealer we got the car from. When I called them about this idle problem they said they didn't check the idle settings at all.

Air filter looks clean.

I have made a visual inspection of all the vacuum hoses and none were disconnected. The only thing unusual I saw was an uncovered white two- or three-pronged connector dangling from about one inch of wire from a wiring harness right behind the alternator. There were no obvious open connectors or wires nearby for this to connect to. Some sort of test port?

Do you have any idea what could be causing my cold start problems?

Thanks, Nathan

PS: One other weird thing, even with the dome light switch in the "On" position, the dome light will only come on when one of the doors is open. Anyone heard of a dome light switch going bad?

[hypeman]

my car starts at high rpm too maybe 2k+ then it takes like 3-4 minutes for it to come down to 1k rpm idle when its cold. I thought that was normal camrys...

[karazy]

It could be related to the cold start injectors or the switch.

[Luckynumber5]

sounds like a bad cold start injector i accidentally left mine unplugged and it did exactly what you are describing

also always let your car warm up when its cold, its very bad for the engine to have any load on it when its cold, you wouldnt jump out of bed and start sprinting would you

[nellswor]

Cold start injector is plugged in. And the cold start injector shows 3 ohms across it when unplugged.

I can't actually find the Cold Start Time Switch. My Haynes manual says it is next to the Coolant Temperature Sensor but on my 3VZ-FE it is not there. Any ideas where this is?

Also, any ideas what this unplugged connector is behine my AC compressor? I'll post a picture of it if necessary.

Thanks.