Getting set to clean the throttle body tomorrow... this truck has a LOT of carbon buildup and I am anticipating quite a chore tomorrow.

What's the worst you guys have ever seen?

Is it possible to have it black and sludgy?

What are the dangers to the engine with loose sediment and/or black sticky sludge?

 

Black and sludged is very common. Just stick to the carb cleaner and a bottle brush to clean the walls. The engine will chew up and spit out any chunks of carbon and make quite a smoke show doing it.

 

Ah interesting...

That's a comfort knowing. If I see it tomorrow I won't be too alarmed then.

I would take off the entire throttle body but I'm not sure I feel up to the task of going out of the way to get a replacement gasket.
Yeah, I'm lazy

 

You better port that puppy while it's out Peter!

 

You should have seen the one on the old '89 Mustang I use to have when I first got it. Didn't know it was possible for the intake system of a car to be that nasty.

 

I took these before and after pics back in May.

 

i'm no expert on fuel injection, but isn't that just about the outermost component on the engine, and only air goes through it? how could it possibly get that nasty??

 

Blowback, and about 20 million cubic feet of air for every 100k on the road.

 

I cleaned the one on my family's 1990 4Runner for the first time at 185,XXX+ miles and it was pretty bad. Not as bad as the one in the picture above but nasty nonetheless.

 

Mine today:

 

Mine was pretty nasty - sludgy crap coming out - I know I barely touched that stuff. I'll have to go to NAPA over the week and get the necessary replacement parts to take the TB off.

 

When the original motor blew on my work truck, that one was pretty bad. I'm glad I wasn't cleaning it.

 

Good luck locating the TB gasket, I had no luck when I cleaned my TB a while ago. The stealership didn't even have one.

 

URD has em for like $5 or so and they are the "O" shaped ones..

 

You mean "blow by". Combustion gasses leak by the rings into the crankcase. The PCV system recirculates this "blow by" into the intake where it is reburned. This is what craps up your throttle body.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCV_valve