OK lets wrap this one up:

After again taking the OVP socket out of the bracket which it sits in- and found one of the wires going into the socket (large black) had worked loose. This wire was still in its connector (which then slides into the socket or base) but the solder was gone. It looked fine the naked eye and even measured fine with voltage (pin 30 I believe but don't quote me) however once running it was wiggling around causing all sorts of problems with ABS/ICV and who knows what else.

Once this bad wire was properly secured and reconnected- the now reconnected ICV functioned properly allowing me to lean the idle mixture from stupid rich- lowering the idle speed (600-750), then allowing me to measure and fine tune the idle pot.

Although I can only get the idle pot to read 0.81v, and still want to fine tune the idle mixture- everything on the engine is connected and functioning.

Bottom line:
Don't chase one problem with another, go slow and try to diagnose problems one at a time. And listen to others here on the board!

Thanks all for your help (especially simmo300E and Bruno_300TE)

Phil

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Phil Nelles
Markham, Ontario, Canada
1988 300E