I'm sure you folks have chatted about this endlessly (I'm a new guy on this wonderful forum) but I'm doing my first 120k maintenance on my '93 SDV and want to make sure I'm doing the throttle body cleaning right.
I pulled off the plastic air ducts to expose the throttle body and while it looked clean enough (certainly compared to some of the scummy looking carbs on my other cars), I sprayed some generic carb and choke cleaner around the exterior and down the two throats. Some gluck was dislodged on the throats but there remains a slight ring of dark material right where the plates touch the throat at the rest\off position. The only way I imagine that I could get that last little bit off would be to push the plates out of the way and then wipe off the ring. But when I gingerly push a little bit on one of the plates, it didn't move at all (I didn't press the matter) and so I did the best job I could without actually moving the plate. Here are my questions.
1) Is it possible to move the plate by hand in order to better access the tiny ring of dark residue? If so, how? Is removing that ring all I need to do or should I also be concerned about any residue below the plates?
2) Should I run the car and spray the cleaner down the two throats of the throttle body as suggested by the instructions? If so, should I gun the engine while doing so? Anything I shouldn't do?
3) The shop manual suggests that any throttle body cleaning should be followed up with a complicated resetting process to zero out the at-rest position of the throttle plate (at least that's my interpretation). Do you folks usually do the same thing?
4) Are there other things I need to do to the throttle body unit? At the moment, the car is running fine (about 19 MPG avg in the city) but I'd like to scratch this off the list.
Thanks, as always...
Nick
I pulled off the plastic air ducts to expose the throttle body and while it looked clean enough (certainly compared to some of the scummy looking carbs on my other cars), I sprayed some generic carb and choke cleaner around the exterior and down the two throats. Some gluck was dislodged on the throats but there remains a slight ring of dark material right where the plates touch the throat at the rest\off position. The only way I imagine that I could get that last little bit off would be to push the plates out of the way and then wipe off the ring. But when I gingerly push a little bit on one of the plates, it didn't move at all (I didn't press the matter) and so I did the best job I could without actually moving the plate. Here are my questions.
1) Is it possible to move the plate by hand in order to better access the tiny ring of dark residue? If so, how? Is removing that ring all I need to do or should I also be concerned about any residue below the plates?
2) Should I run the car and spray the cleaner down the two throats of the throttle body as suggested by the instructions? If so, should I gun the engine while doing so? Anything I shouldn't do?
3) The shop manual suggests that any throttle body cleaning should be followed up with a complicated resetting process to zero out the at-rest position of the throttle plate (at least that's my interpretation). Do you folks usually do the same thing?
4) Are there other things I need to do to the throttle body unit? At the moment, the car is running fine (about 19 MPG avg in the city) but I'd like to scratch this off the list.
Thanks, as always...
Nick