You can't see that crud from the intake side of the TB. That'* the BACK side you're looking at, BEHIND the throttle plate. The front end of mine was spotless. Night and day difference.

At 130k or so I did mine. It wasn't spotted like that is, it was totally black. Carb cleaner, a rag and a toothbrush and it was spotless without too much trouble. I did feel a little power increase as well (I could have been imagining it though). The one dumb mistake I made though was taking off the TPS and then bolting it back on without calibrating it. So, anyone who wants to do this on your car: get a tube of gasket sealant and go at it. But don't touch the TPS, it is a royal PITA to calibrate properly again (IMO).

i did mine at 250,000 km and it looked better than that.

must've been all that redlining.

I just took my grandmothers 88' SSE to have a tune up, and i metioned the Throttle Body thing, they took it off, and it was solid black, they said they could hardley believe it could run as good as it did. The car has 280,000 miles on it, and its never been done! Im gonna take mine to be done in a few days or so, mines only got 80k, and i bought it from my 80 year old nieghbor. I doubt its ever been done. I mean the spark plugs were supposed to be gapped at .060, and they were .090!

Had my throttle body cleaned yesterday...yike...scary how black it was. Something like that should be cleaned every 25 000 kms or so.

I'm glad I did it, now test to see if I have better performance and better fuel efficiency

JW

On a scale of 1-10, what'* the difficulty of disassembling and reassembling the throttle body to the engine? My car has 127,000 miles (203,200km) on it, and I think it'* time for a cleaning, though I've never done it before but would rather not have to shell out $100 for somebody to do it when a spare afternoon is all it takes.

I don't suppose there'* somebody out there with a Series II motor who would be so kind as to have a writeup of the procedure?

or a procedure of the series l motor. LOL, i have been thinking about doing a tune up lately and was wondering how hard it would be, or worth it if it would be easier to go through a shop.

Series 1:

It'* easier on the SC than the NA, but here goes. The NA procedure will work for the SC more or less.

1. Disconnect all the connectors (IAC, MAF, TPS). Remove the MAF sensor. Square black thingy on the TB, 3 screws. Put it somewhere safe. Remove the Throttle and Cruise cable clips, and remove the cables. Remember which was which. Disconnect the cable sleeves from the support bracket. Needlenose pliers work best, these are the square plastic guides.

2. Remove the black intake hose. Remove the exhaust heat shield. There'* a nut on one of the studs that'* holding a bracket you'll need to remove. Remove the screw on the TB bracket, and the bolts on the intake so that the bracket can be entirely removed.

3. There are 3 bolts holding the TB to the plastic intake. Don't exert any undue pressure on the TB when you remove them. I think there'* a bracket right behind the crossover pipe that has to be removed too.

It'* really simple, but somewhat time consuming. This is off the top of my head when Jseabert did his 93SSE, but it should be pretty close. If you go look at it, you'll see it'* a no-brainer. Use an INTAKE cleaner, not carb cleaner. Make sure it'* completely dry before reinstalling the MAF sensor, too.