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Hi all,
Last Friday I had the day off, so I used that day to clean my flame trap and throttle body. I removed the large hose (goes over FT) the FT holder, the S-shaped tube under it, and the small hose that attaches to the manifold. My car is a California car that comes with an EGR unit, and there's no way I could remove the oil separator/breather box without removing the manifold and all the wiring/plumbing/hosing around it. Looking down I could see the BB opening; there was some pale yellowish goop surrounding the inner edge. I used a flathead screwdriver to scrape them off. The goop's consistency was more like mayonnaise, so it was easy to scrape off. I know that's not going to do much for the BB, but it's better than nothing. The goop was also on The FT and the large hose. Nothing was really gummed up, just looked like it needed cleaning. I used an engine degreaser to clean out the FT unit. I threw out the brass FT and installed a plastic one instead. The small hose to the manifold was pretty clean and clear. I forgot how a big PITA removing and replacing the FT unit is!
As for the throttle body cleaning, it was foiled by a stuck bolt (one next to the black plastic box)! I used liquid wrench on it but to no avail. Maybe I didn't try hard enough because I was afraid of slipping and rounding the bolt or damaging the black box that has a connector attached to it. Anyway, I ended up doing a partial cleaning by removing the large accordion hose and sticking my hand in the TB with a rag soaked with engine degreaser to wipe away the oily grime, which I could feel. Also cleaned the flaps too. Obviously I couldn't get the other side of the TB. I'll try again next time because I had a TB gasket in hand and was so looking forward to cleaning it!
So after I did all that I took it for a drive To Wal-Mart to buy oil for my next job. Wal-Mart has their house brand full synthetic 10w30 for under $18! I normally use 10w40 grade and was looking for my usual Volvoline high mileage semi syn oil. It was out of stock and that's when I discovered the cheaper WM brand. Anyway, after I got home I let the car idle and removed the oil cap to do the jiggle test. I didn't flip the cap upside down, as I've seen people do in YouTube videos, but just removed it and then plopped it down. It jiggled or vibrated on the filler opening. It neither got sucked down nor got blown out of position. Maybe with the engine fan blowing and the engine vibrating, it was hard for the cap to sit still if there was vacuum. This is the plastic cap, so I've heard the jiggle test doesn't really work on it. So I tried using a plastic bag to see if it would get sucked inwards if negative pressure or blown out if positive. Again, the bag seemed to flutter over the oil filler opening. It could've been the engine fan causing it to flutter and making it difficult to read crankcase pressure. I don't remember seeing any smoke blow-by while engine was running and oil cap removed. But the the pressure/ventilation test was inconclusive. But then again, I don't think I actually sealed the filler opening when covering it with the cap or bag. When I have a rubber glove in hand I'll try again.
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