Cleaning You Throttle Body Help 101

[Ted]

Ok guys I need your help really really bad. Moderators please don't close this topic like you did to the last one. Out my whole time on the board I never needed everyone's help more than now. Because I need to drive my car. Everyone needs a car right? So anyway... last saturday I decided to clean out my tb and after reading some other posts a few members prefered and said it would easier taking the whole throttle body off. So I did. I cleaned everything but when I was ready to put it on I couldn't find a gasket. So I made my own and waited until tuesday for one to get in. In the mean time I started it up and the car was idling really fast and so much white smoke came out that my whole block was filled with it. It also backfired rapidly. I let it alone for an hour and decided to push it all the way into the garage but now it won't even start up. So I waited to get the gasket because I saw antifreeze leaking out of the intake. I finally got the gasket yesterday and put it on this morning. I got everything back together. It still won't start up. After about 20 times trying to start it in an hour we didn't get it. It's turning and everything but it just won't kick in at all. We got it to once and then something exploded and all this antifreeze came out everywhere. We took everything apart and I think it was just this stupid bolt that was on the bottom of the TB it's different from the rest so we just put it on the top and got it really tight. But we still can't get it to run at all. Is there anything that might not cause it to run. All I did was take off the TB the sensors and the accelerator, change the gasket and put it all back on. Now I feel like running the car off a cliff. I have suspicions that it could the the Throttle Position sensor. If that is taken off and put back on is it possible that thats not causing it to start? Or how about the MAF or any other sensor? Guys help would be greatly appreciated. I've been without a car now for 5 days. And I really need to get where im going and back.

[DEE97GTP]

You probably sucked in alot of coolant by not using a TB gasket.

First, I would take out all the spark plug and crank it over, maybe it will help get some of the coolant out. It might be a good idea to pull out the fuse to your fuel pump while doing this and running a compression check. You don't want fuel being injected right now.

Next, I would run a compression check to make sure you didn't hydrolock the engine and bend a valve or pushrod.

Change the oil. You might have alot of coolant in your oil.

Replace the spark plugs, they are probably soaked in coolant.


DEE

[hockeyman]

Do what DEE said, then check your TPS Sensor. There are two ways on the 3.8 that you could re-install the sensor (right and wrong way). Try and picture this: I put the sensor back on and the plug side was facing slightly upwards (about 2 O'Clock position) and then I turned it down against springload to put the bolts back in, but tht was wrong! It idled around 3k!! I reinstalled the TPS with the plug side facing down (about 4 O'Clock position) and turned it slightly cuonterclockwise against the springload to install the bolts. Believe it or not, you can infact install it wrong and it'll idle way high!

Marc

[OneQuickV6]

Yea, been there man. Take off the TB...Look into your intake to see if you still have coolant puddled in there, if so, use rags to soak it up. You pobably did foul your plugs if it billowed smoke (from the antifreeze) for long. So pull the plugs, while they are out, turn over the engine to get some liquid out of the cylinders. Replace the plugs! try again, if still won't quiet turn over, you might get a can of starting fluid...Spray some into your intake, don'y spray the MAF or sensors..With plugs in and wires on, crank it up. Starting fluid usually will do the trick. Make sure you are outside the garge, it will smoke a while to burn up the coolany remaining in there. Good luck!

[FirebirdGT]

It wasn't closed it was MOVED to Intake .... just like this one.

[Ted]

Thanks a lot for your help guys. I didn't get a chance to read all that but me and john figured that all out before hand. We ran out of good ideas so we checked the spark plugs. All were covered in oil and looked horrible. We changed them all. Man i'll tell ya. 4 and 6 are about the hardest ones to get, it took about 5 maybee more hours just to change the spark plugs. We finally got the TPS sensor right, it was exactly like you said hockeyman, with it on wrong it was idling at 3k rpm. The car seems to run a lot better. The top end pulls great now [img]smile.gif[/img] im also left the MAF screen out but i don't know how it's doing it seems to be a lot faster but it could be the new sparkplugs or the clean TB. It definatley seems a lot faster though. WOw I went through all this just to clean the TB out. 5 days w/o a car, 2 full days trying to get it to work properly again. So everyone!!! Please when you want to clean out your TB do not take it off just take off the MAF and spray it in there. Man i'll never make that mistake again.

Ted

[toast]

Oh yea! What fun me and ted had with his car. I am gonna kick the crap out of the guy that designed these crapy wrap-around exhaust manaifolds. Man do they suck, and i thought changing the plugs in my dad's old chevy astro was bad. 96-98 3.8s are rediculous! :mad:

[ October 10, 2002: Message edited by: toast ]</p>