I gotta' throttle body!

delurker said:

OK, pics will have to wait until morning (actually tomorrow afternoon). When I got home tonight, I got busy installing, and I haven't had time to get pics because I ran into an issue.

First off, I'd like to bitchslap the moron at Ford who thought it would be a good idea to use locktite on all 7 of the tiny little torx head (T20) bolts that hold the TPS and throttle motor to the TB. No way they were coming off until I pulled out the vise grips and used kung fu grip with them. It's a wonder I didn't break any of them off (and a good thing I have both large and small vise grips), because I had to put some serious torque on those little mofos to get them unscrewed. They've got an inch of threads and it was slow all the way.

Install was pretty straightforward once I got everything apart, but the instructions don't bother to say what size anything is - they also don't mention the need for the torx driver, so I'm glad I already had one. They are very vague with instructions on how to put spring tension on the throttle return spring. This ended up being a contributing cause of my issue.

Towards the end of my test drive, the car went into failsafe mode and would run, but only at idle. That turned a big smile upside down. I idled into a parking lot and walked home for tools after pulling the codes with my Predator and finding, as I suspected, TPS faults that would not stay gone when cleared. Unable to get the car out of limp mode, I drove home at 5 mph in 2nd gear (1st would only give me 4 mph) because that's as fast as I could get her to go.

After an almost complete reinstall of the stocker, I found I still couldn't get the butterflies to close on their own, which is bad, because I need to be in Pasadena 8 hours from now to meet up with a friend who's going to follow me to Anaheim and give me a ride home after I drop off the car to have other stuff done.

Turns out that a torx driver works better at getting some spring tension on the throttle return spring than the snazzy little cylindrical tool the vendor provided. Without enough preload on the spring, the throttle won't close completely and you go limp (I hate it when that happens). Having figured this out, I put the new TB back in with proper spring tension and cleared the codes, which have not recurred.

I am really happy with the way the car responds now - the delay in throttle response is totally gone, which is very, very nice. Butt dyno says there is more power, but we all know we can't trust the butt dyno and I'm sure most of that is just due to the car feeling more lively with the better throttle response. Either way, I'm quite satisfied with my purchase, and with the fast, friendly service I received from Central Coast Motorsports.

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FCBRENT said:

thats cool, when will your car be done?

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