Gen 2 Throttle Body: Safety of manual movement during cleaning?

That's all I've ever done, without worrying about it. Now I'll probably worry next time. See what you've done?

It may come down to this: make sure the car is OFF for sure. When powered, the motor will resist you and try to maintain the throttle position; in those conditions, you might apply enough force to skip or break gear teeth.

Then, with the car definitely off, apply just gentle force to the butterfly. Moving it slowly is good enough. Applying more force to move it more quickly would have a greater risk of skipping or damaging gears.

Pay attention to whether it feels like it is moving easily and smoothly. If it feels at all as if you would have to force it, perhaps reconsider.

There is one kind of gear train that notoriously doesn't cooperate when you try to 'drive' it from the 'driven' end: that's a worm gear train, where the electric motor spins a long spiral-threaded 'worm' against the side of a conventional gear. I don't think that type of gear train is used here. You can often tell pretty easily just by looking at the shape of the motor/gear assembly, which for a worm drive will look like the motor axis is perpendicular to the driven-gear axis and lying tangent to the gear. If the assembly has that sort of look, don't count on being able to move the butterfly by hand.

But I think the shape will suggest more of a conventional gear train with the motor axis parallel to the butterfly shaft. In that case I don't foresee trouble gently moving the butterfly.

I am not, however, offering to buy you a throttle body if I'm wrong.

Is that even a way of doing that? I'm not sure I've ever heard that would have that effect.

I don't have even the beginnings of speculation on that one ....

 

I always did my gen2s manually. Gasoline is a solvent as well. Use specific throttle body cleaner and don't drop your brush inside the manifold.

 

No don't use gasoline. Buy a spray can of throttle body cleaner, a can of maf cleaner and some small brushes. Those cans are safer for everything including you. They will last many years.

If the throttle body opens with ignition on, it would be easier. Easier is good. Don't run the battery down by leaving the ignition on for a long time especially if the 12v battery is old.

Don't use a brush on the maf. Its expensive and the aftermarket versions are junk.

 

Of course it's electronically controlled, but that doesn't conflict in any way with your ability to move it by hand while the power is off. Just be reasonable in how much force you apply.

I've never observed that to be the case. I seem to recall that the car just targets the idle position when IG ON. If you then try to move the butterfly from that position, the motor will be trying to move it back, and that would be when you'd risk breaking something, or at least setting a trouble code about the ETCS not holding its target position.


(I suppose, but don't know for a fact, that there might be people who have tried that, and triggered such a trouble code, and then been panicked by that into thinking they actually broke something.)

 

Should be ok. I just cleaned the throttle body on my gen 3 a couple of days back, with coolant hoses attached. Spritz of carb cleaner on a shop towel, push open the blade. Would help to have 3 hands:



Haven't started it up since. Will likely leave it till we have a do-or-die run...

 

Gasoline will work, but carburetor cleaner in a spray can is the most efficient method. Best tool I found for this is some extra long needle nose pliers and a really long screwdriver that both reach to bottom of intake manifold. Then stuff some rags down the throttle body into the intake manifold and soak them with cleaner and use the mentioned tools to move the rags around to clean the inside of everything and pull them out.