How to clean a throttle body and Idle air control valve (iac)

okay guys today I'm going to show you how to clean the throttle body and the idle air control motor on a fuel-injected vehicle we're gonna do this on a 4.2 liter Ford Econoline van but the process is going to be very similar on all makes and models first we're going to locate the intake tract and on the van we're going to take all this stuff off to get to the throttle body so we'll start by just removing all these pieces they just kind of pop apart on the vans so you'll see there's the air cleaner and everything all coming off in one piece then after we get that off well loosen this clamp this big barrel thing here is the mass airflow sensor and the mass airflow sensor is telling the computer how much air is actually being drawn into the engine and it's a very important part of engine function and it's also very delicate so you want to make sure that you take care and not join this thing around too much or touching anything that may be on the inside of it on the GM cars and stuff you'll see the little wires hanging on the inside and they're very delicate so make sure you don't touch those they do sell mass airflow sensor cleaners but I've seen mass airflow sensors with 400,000 miles on them that haven't had anything wrong with them and I wouldn't suggest cleaning them because you could damage them they're very delicate like I said so I'm just finishing up taking the mounting bolts out on these Ford's there's four bolts these two up here and the two that I've already taken out so we'll just take those out the rest of the way and then I'm gonna grab it and gently pull it apart and you're going to take the connector off that's connected to the mass airflow sensor you'll just depress a little button it'll pull right out then you set that off to the side and I like to install bolts a lot of times when you're working on stuff if you just have bolts that are coming out and you know you're they're not going to get in the way you can just go ahead and reinstall those so that when you put it back together you'll know how everything goes back together so the next thing now is just to take this the rest of this intake apart we're gonna take it apart in one piece first by just removing this one clamp and this is the intake air temperature sensor connector which will remove here in a minute so first we'll loosen this clamp then once the clamp is loose we'll just kind of give it a little pull and wobble and then we'll depress the button on the connector and I use a flat head screwdriver and it slightly pry on it now I make those connectors all look easy there they're difficult at first and on all different makes and models those things will be different don't forget about this little breather tube on these four point two liters but the the connectors will be different you'll have to be careful with those you don't want to break them so just study them out and like I said they're all different but they're they're pretty simple to take apart so I set the wires all the way now we got to get this throttle body cover off I'm just gonna use the socket and go ahead and go in here and break that thing loose I'll just pull it off and then I'm going to also reinstall that bolt just so that I know where it goes whenever I have to put it back together now this is the throttle body and you can see here the when you when I'm moving this this is actually what you would be doing if you're given the car gas you can see the two cables to the right those are actually the gas pedal and the cruise control cable and those like I said those pull on the throttle body and open it up and the thing over here to the left is the throttle position sensor now that's reading where or how much gas you're giving the engine so that the computer can add more fuel by spraying more fuel with the fuel injectors now you see these things come off really easy you just kind of pull back on it and wobble it'll come out and the other connector just pulls back and you see how it was just clipped in now this connector basically just like all the rest of them I'm gonna use a flathead screwdriver and I'll depress the button again with my thumb and just gently pry on the backside of it now we'll locate the four mounting bolts of the throttle body this is pretty standard for all cars although some cars like I have 95 Camaro that has an lt1 motor in it and it has a twin blade throttle body but it still will mount basically the same way so you'll just take the four bolts out then once you get those out usually these throttle bodies are stuck pretty good so you'll have to just give a little tap with a hammer and I'm tapping on a thick piece of the aluminum so that I'm not going to break anything because the casting is pretty delicate and they're very expensive and you can see the dirt on the backside of it which is pretty typical of a motor like this with 150,000 miles on it same with the intake passage here and you can see this little hole that is the idle air control motor passage that is actually where the motors drawing air at the idle to control the RPM of the aisle you can see this the little bit of dirt here which also is just a pretty common occurrence so here's the idle air control motor and I'm just gonna break the two bolts loose on it and if you're new with the connectors I'd suggest to remove the electrical connector first because they're tricky to remove especially on this thing because it's way up under the cowl and it's hard to reach and if you're having trouble reaching this stuff I'd suggest standing on something and you can get a few more inches of reach up in here making it look kind of easy but I'm pretty used to working on these so you see I just use the screwdriver and just lightly pry it off while pushing the button down to pop that connector off and then this is your idle air control and motor and you can see on the top hole there the little pintle that thing actually will move back and forth and that's going to allow more or less air to flow into the engine at the idle which will keep it running this is the throttle body cleaner the gasket scraper in the toothbrush that we're gonna use to clean the throttle body and also remove the gasket from the throttle body so first you have to scrape the old gasket material off of the throttle body and this is tricky especially on the Fords you want to choke up real close on the gasket scraper and be very careful not to gouge the aluminum too much because you don't want to cause an air leak here or the engine will not run properly so you can see I'm just very carefully scraping a little piece at a time and I'm scraping away from my body so I don't cut my fingers off or anything and you want to do this like I said until the whole surface is clean and smooth and we'll have to do the same thing on the intake surface to that's on the engine to make sure that both surfaces are clean before they're mounted back together so you can see here I'm just cleaning with the throttle body cleaner and using the toothbrush to get into all the little holes the only two parts like I said earlier that we're going to use our two gaskets that are both only a couple bucks each so this is a really cheap job and the only other thing that you'd really have to buy is the throttle body cleaner and the reason that I'm not using gasoline is because the throttle body cleaner is safe for the sensors now you can see here I was just pointing to the surface they had to be clean you can see where I've scraped it now it's pretty clean and I'm just gonna use the toothbrush just to put some of the throttle body cleaner on it to eat away any of the remaining gasket material so now that I've got it all sprayed out and I just kind of dabbed it real lightly with a rag making sure I didn't leave any rag debris behind that looks pretty clean then we're ready to reinstall and you can see the gasket on the Ford has a triangle on one side and it's ovate on the other that's just kind of showing gasket orientation so on the Ford for some reason even though the gasket looked like it would go on both ways they want a bit on a certain way so just pay attention to that whenever you're taking them apart now it's time to just reassemble everything and I'd like to use a anti-seize lubricant on all the bolts so that if I ever have to take this stuff apart in the future it'll all come right apart and rust and corrosion won't be a problem so now to get this thing on this is the idle air control motor I got the gasket on there I'm holding it with my fingers make sure that the gaskets lined up that's very important to make sure you've got the gasket oriented properly and it's lined up and then I'm just gonna put one bolt in first and screw that in a little bit and then I'll go ahead and put the other bolt in and as I'm tightening those bolts down I'm gonna keep them tightening down in an even fashion so that one side doesn't get pulled tighter than the other or I may have a vet vacuum leak at this location which will cause a rough idle and it'll cause a rough running situation at any rpm so the motor will not run right if this is not put on properly and then I'll just tighten that down now this is all pretty simple and this is stuff that just a basic home do-it-yourselfer can do you're not really getting into anything too crazy on the inside of the engine by doing this stuff and this is all just pretty much general maintenance on any fuel-injected vehicle so for all the connectors I'm going to use dielectric grease I like to put this on all of my electrical connections and I work on and this ensures that no water or anything will get into the connection and cause the sensors to malfunction so you see I just put a little bit on there and just plugged it in and now I'm going to make sure that my guide lines up and once you know that your gasket is proper and it's going to line up you can go ahead and just slide that on and then for all four bolts I'm going to use the anti C's lubricant on all those actually on the forward you can see there's two of them that are nuts the two that I've just installed are actually both nuts and then the other two are bolts here's one of the bolts and then here's the last one and then to tighten them down I tighten them in a crisscross fashion so that it gets a good even tightening on the gasket so that I prevent a vacuum leak at this location like I said it's very important that this is sealed very well so I'm just crossing from one to the other and just tightening a little more and more each time then I'll put a little bit of dielectric grease on my connection and plug the throttle position sensor back in and then it's time to put the throttle cables on I just use a little bit of oil but that across the spring just so that the spring always stays free moving and I'm also gonna put a little bit here on the throttle cables just because they do move in and out a lot and it's not really something that wears out but it's something that moves and this keeps it moving freely now I just put a little drop there just so that you'll see here in a second why this simply just slides in and this other one you'll see kind of clicks in so that's why I put a little bit of oil on it just to help it pop in and then all that's done then we can just reinstall the cover I've already taken the bolt back out that I put in earlier then I'm going to slide that in I have dielectric grease on or anti-seize on it and I'm going to screw that down and then once that's down we can start installing the intake so we'll put the elbow on first just wobble that on make sure we install the breather and we'll take the this is the mass airflow connector the mass airflow sensor connector and the intake air temperature sensor connector so I'm going to put some dielectric grease on both of those and once I've done that I can tighten up my clamp then once I'm happy with the tightness of the clamp I'll go ahead and remove the bolts that I put back in and I'm gonna anti-seize those so that if I have to take the mass airflow sensor off in the future I won't have a problem getting these bolts out there you can see I was just pointing to show you that you don't want to touch anything in there if you can help it stay away from all that and just go ahead and gently plug it in and the mass air flow sensor mounts into these little rubber washers sima have to wobble it around a little bit and you'll get your bolts started so i'll start those top two and then we'll come down here and do the bottom two then we'll run those in and like I said they sell mass airflow sensor cleaner but I've seen him with 400,000 miles on him and they were problem free and I'd honestly be afraid to spray anything on him because they're expensive and they're pretty delicate so if you think you might have a problem with him it might be a problem with the wiring or something like that maybe rubbing on something and this get this clamp here is pretty important so you want to make sure you see I tightened it but I ended up right here loosening it and just pushing it on a little bit more so you want to make sure that you got those clamps all tightened especially these here after the mass airflow sensor or the computer is going to be getting an inaccurate reading of how much air it's taking in then you don't want to forget to plug in the connector you can see my dielectric grease on it okay and it's time to reinstall the air cleaner and the Fords it's real simple you just kind of wobble it in and once you get it in place just tighten the clamp down and then you can put the last piece of the intake track on and that's it now the tools that we used were the throttle body cleaner and oil we use the dielectric grease and the anti-seize the screwdriver and the gasket scraper the toothbrush the ratchet and sockets were used in the hammer now the flashlight and the little mirror would be for if you had to get behind something or just if you needed help seeing anything so that's pretty much it if you guys have any questions I just feel free to ask me and thanks for watching my video

Channel: Ernest Massoli

Views: 5,643,947

Keywords: how, to, clean, Throttle, body, cleaning, Idle, air, control, maf, Rough, idle, 4.2l, ford, chevy, dodge, liter, litre, the, throttle, on, 4.2, v6, van, car, truck

Id: ZMa0nom1iwc

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 02 2012