Damn, who knew it could get this bad? If you havent done it already, I guess you should?
In a tutorial I saw pictures of a 1998 mystique with clogged up passages, it was pretty nasty. I figured mine would be even worse... and it was, being a '96 and all. Talk about a Ford design flaw. Here are some pictures I took.
In this picture, you can see the carbon build-up along the passages just under the entrance to the UIM.
Here it shows how I did it. I stuck an old sock in the manifold opening, so that I dont spray too much Throttle Body cleaner inside, and to catch anything from falling in there. The tin foil did a pretty good job at catching the stuff as I cleaned it out.
An overview look of what I had to do. Just detatch the accordion tube and MAF. Then take the throttle body off. Simple enough.
Sorry about the blurry pic, but heres a shot of how it looks after the cleaning. Big difference, mmkay?
Before/After Shot
Oh yeah, while I was in there I cleaned out my TB. Here's a before shot. I forgot to take an after shot though, but I got it to shine!
The carbon in the passages was so thick, that I had to use a screw driver to scrape it out. The wire brush did nothing for me. Supposedly all our duratecs get this.
