I noticed my dashpot on my 22re doesnt really do aything. The throttle pulley and stop thingy doesnt touch the button on the dashpot. Is it supposed to be this way?

Maybe a picture would help things. I'll get one tomorrow. The camera is at a football game right now.

 

the dashpot testing is in the FSM for the 93, and should be mostly the same for the 89

 

do I need to test it if it doesnt even touch anything else? From the looks of it, it's just bolted onto the side of the throttle body. It's not connecting to anything else, so I'm guessing it's not serving its purpose.

 

IIRC, the dashpot just provides a "cushion" to prevent immediate snapback of the butterfly valve inside the throttle body. If your isn't doing anything, you should try to clean it off or find another one from a junkyard. The little rod should ride against the linkage.

 

That's the thing. It doesnt rest against anything. So I tried pulling it out more because I thought maybe it was stuck. It won't come out any more.

 

Mine is a '94, but I suspect that an '89 has a similar setup.

There are at least 5 different adjustments which will affect whether the throttle sits on the dashpot, and the chance that yours are all still correct after 20 years is not high.

First, if you have a "throttle lifter", then you need to check the dashpot at idle, not engine off (the throttle lifter opens the throttle a bit when vacuum is gone, to ease starting, and will lift it off the dash pot).

BigBluePile describes the operation correctly; that tiny delay makes a big difference on emissions when you jump off the throttle.

You can follow the FSM (I did) and reset all of the adjustments one by one (you will be checking the TPS in the process). But don't just "fiddle with it," do it systematically. Over the years, people working on your truck may have mis-adjusted one thing in order to compensate for something else that was mis-adjusted. If you correctly fix just one thing, it may stop running correctly until you fix the others too.