Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General Was gonna clean intake...Uh Oh!

OK, so I needed to clean my intake, and change the oil. So I decide it would be a good idea to do the intake first in case any gunk gets dislodged into the oil. I did not want to tackle the whole remove the intake thing today, so I just got a can of spray intake cleaner and was going to spray into the throttle body.

When I pulled the accordian boot from the throttle body, I found a sticker on the flange that said...
Do not clean throttle body or adjust hard stop screw. Throttle plate and bore have a special coating.

Good thing I pulled that particular joint. I almost pulled it upstream of the boot in order to spray it too.

So is the only way to clean the intake is the big "remove it from the engine" job?

I did grab a flashlight and look inside the throttle body. Upstream of the throttle plate was shiny clean. Downstream, Holy Crap! I reached in a bit with a lint free wrapped around my finger and pulled chunks of loose oily dirt. Where the hell does all that crap come from?
And we worry about cleaning the plug holes prior to changing spark plugs. The inside of that intake was 100 times more dirty than any engine exterior I have ever had!!

Any thoughts?

Dave

Via the PCV and EGR valves would be my initial guess.

man, this is like ages old question. yes you can clean the TB and the upper, yes you should disregard the lable because ford "thought" the teflon will save the TB from being gunked up like that, and yes your teflon coating however useless is safe unless you scrap the surface w/ the wire brush

Mine TB wasn't coated.
Not that it matter much since I optimized a long time ago.

The oily garbage crap comes up from the hole in the bottom of the upper intake opening. (just behind TB)

The way they set it up is beyond stupid IMO. Straight draw of oil vapor (hell probably oil itself under heavy acceleration & high rpm's :p ) into the upper intake mouth.

My intakes were completely coated and caked after only 21k miles. The secondary valves actually have chunks on them!
I couldn't imagine 40k or 60k or...

Definitely something I just fixed here recently! I can't imagine the air flow loss across the manifolds, much less those valves! Definitely won't get dirty again!

Some feel that the only reason Ford did the teflon coating was so that Ford would not have to pay for cleaning as a warranty issue. The throttle body does not gunk up as bad as the non teflon coated ones, but they still gunk up as you have observed.

Yes, you should clean it. Yes, you should be a little gentle when cleaning so that you do not destroy the teflon coating and the benefit it provides.

Even before the teflon throttle bodies came into use, Ford started to use DRI (deposit resistant injectors). In a similar manner, the injectors did not plug up as bad, but they still become somewhat restricted with time. Although not as critical as in the 80's, injectors still benefit from ocassional cleaning.

run a bottle of pro-gard fuel injector cleaner in your tank and just see how much better the car runs, accellerates, and idles. this is great stuff and cheap too.

See the following posts:

Throttle Body cleaners compared

carbon buildup and tb cleaning

The Intake overhaul (How-to on contour.org) was the best thing I've done to my car! I've gotten so much lower end torque back it's amazing. At 80k miles, my EGR Passages where nearly completely clogged with that black carbon buildup and the back of the Throttle Body plate had nearly 1/8" of buildup! insane! My cold starts have even been fixed. She runs sooooo good now!

It was actually not that difficult of a job either. The only experience I have working on cars is installing my KKM Just follow the directions in the overhaul how-to and you'll be fine. BTW, I decided to do the whole intake overhaul how-to with the exception of the injector O-rings. My main concern was cleaning the upper and lower intake manifolds along with the Throttle Body. no sense just shoveling the snow out the very end of the driveway if you have to drive all the way up to the garage, right? The lower intake manifolds where just as horrible of a sight. I'd recommend having a small vacuum on hand though for when you get ready to pull the lower intake manifold off. Vacuum and leaves/debris from around the backside, front, and sides of the lower intake manifold since anything back there will want to fall directly into the cyclender heads when you remove the Lower. Good luck! and remember, it's worth it!

However this would not help any of the problems listed since the injectors spray only into the primary head ports. (which of course look as clean as day 1)

This leaves the UIM, LIM and secondary ports and valves still as dirty as before.

The only solution is a painstakingly carefull cleaning. I still can't believe how bad the secondary valves were!!!

BTW - only use the good Techron, not the cheap watered down one.

deamon, do you notice any difference between the cheap progard cleaner with techron and the expensive chevron cleaner with techron? i have tried both and have not been abel to see how one works better that the other but i have never tried it on the same car. i just know this stuff works on cleaning injectors. what kind of cleaner do you use on the intake runners and TB?

I pulled them and cleaned them by hand.

Cleaning the secondary valves took forever! I don't recommend it for the faint of heart.

Yes there is a big difference between the pro-gard and the real Techron. One's 100% Techron fuel additive and the other is around 20% and 80% filler.

I've never seen the cheaper stuff work well at all, but atleast it's not like most other base models or cheap brands and uses harmful fillers!!!
You'd be surprised what's on the market that will harm your engine!