Throttle Body Cleaning On JGC V-8

Let's see..... $3.99 for a can of sensor safe throttle body spray cleaner which leaves $116.01 for labor.......

To do it yourself you need the sensor safe spray cleaner an an old toothbrush and probably a half hour if it is your first time cleaning the throttle body.

It would probably be a good idea to dump a can of injector cleaner in to the gas. SeaFoam, BG44, or Techron Cleaner (not the diluted Cleaner with Techron which will be next to it in the shelf) are all good products.

If you want to make sure the injectors are really clean you can add a can of cleaner to a full tank of gasoline, run it until is is as close to empty as you dare, refill with plain gasoline and run that until as close to empty as you dare, and then repeat the cleaner a second time.

The service manager assured me that they remove the throttle body to clean it. They don't just dump a can of cleaner in it. I realize I could do that.

Dick

To remove (and reinstall) the throttle body for the cleaning process only adds a few minutes to the procedure as it is easier to clean on a bench than on the engine....

The cleaning process is more than dumping the cleaner in.... that is what the old toothbrush is for.

Throttle bodies are much much much easier to clean than carbs (If you are old enough to remember them)

My comment is aimed more toward the dealer charge of $120 for something almost anyone can do in their driveway for less than $10 on a Saturday morning.

The first time you clean a throttle body it might take a half hour.... after the first time probably 15 minutes, a professional mechanic would probably not take 10 minutes..... That would make the dealership's effective labor rate about $720/hr.

This (cleaning) isn't rocket science or master mechanic's work....... if it was I wouldn't have been able to do it....

Use of the link below tell you all you need to successfully clean a throttle body.

Thanks Billy Ray. That link was very helpful.

Dick

What would happen if you put that cleaner in a tank thats half full and run it to near empty, would it be too strong and burn something up?

There's a jiffy lube near where I work and I always see vehicles parked in the lot running and smoke coming out of the pipes. Are they running a cleaner through them?

Troy

I don't know what, if any, damage would be done by doubling the concentration. It could well be that the time factor is very important.

As for the exhaust cloud.... does it look like this?

When I bought my '88 with a 4.0L the throttle body was so gunked up that I wound up taking it off the manifold and putting it in a ultrasonic tank full of Carter's - for an hour.

You mention problems with overshoot with a fast on-off the throttle move. That was the last step in my saga - took a couple of months to get it running right. It took a new O2 sensor to get rid of the last little bit of the stumble. Remember that the O2 is primarily effective at idle and mine was apparently too tired to react fast enough on that sudden throttle movement to idle. Hell, it only had

125k > To remove (and reinstall) the throttle body for the cleaning process only

Doing it that way wouldn't clean the throttle body at all since only air flows through the throttle body. Any cleaner placed in the fuel tank would only be seen by the injectors and combustion chamber that is located well below the throttle body itself.

Jerry

Troy wrote:

nope. That cleaner is fairly weak and relies on time to dissolve the junk. But remember, that only cleans the fuel system through the injectors and won't do anything for the throttle body.

probably running the compressed fuel cleaner stuff.

Or just polluting.

I don't know about other places, but here in West Los Angeles, there ain't much but major brand gas. Exceptions are Costco (who makes their gas I don't know) and a single station called Super Petrol. Everything else is ARCO, Shell, Chevron, Unocal, Mobil and Exxon.

I usually buy Chevron because it is on the way to work. I quit buying my occasional tank of Costco when they stopped taking credit cards. (They still take their own, and AMEX, but my 13 years in banking taught me to steer clear of AMEX cards!)

Regards,

DAve

What was it that caused you to avoid AMEX? That's about all I use. I have MC and Visa in case someone doesn't take AMEX, but otherwise it's my main plastic.

Dick

First off, they were alway very slow in processing charge deposits. Second, two bank employees (as in they know the right questions to ask) had continuing problems with billing errors while I was there. Third and most important, could never make up their mind where to send payments for the traveler's checks. They would tell us to send them to their Pasadena facility, but they would ALWAYS claim we hadn't paid. If we sent them to Salt Lake City, they would get credited properly, but they would send a letter to management telling us to send to Pasadena. This went on for 5 years. Finally, we were reprimanded by management to send to Pasadena, so I would get the job each month of having to send them copies of each and every sale and our remittance so they could fix their mistakes. It got old in a hurry!

Back before ATMS were everywhere, the travelers checks were a great product. These days, they have kind of outlived their usefulness.

Regards,

DAve