Cleaning the Throttle Body – 2000 Tacoma

I’m not a mechanic.  I really have no knowledge of doing anything to vehicles outside of filling up gas or washing it… this truck it super useful to me, but it’s also an opportunity to learn more about cars/engines.

In an effort to try and fix the same problem I’ve had on my Tacoma, I moved on to cleaning the throttle body.  The truck hesitates a bit before starting.  Like a delayed start.  Here’s a video of my first attempt of the fix by cleaning the Mass Airflow Sensor.

I’m sure it helped something, but it didn’t help this specific issue.  Based on conversations with friends and more research, I figured I should try my luck with cleaning the throttle body.

To get to the throttle body, I needed to remove the intake hose/boot/whatever you call it.  You’ll note in the pic below that the intake boot is very old and already taped up.  I tried taking it off and it didn’t budge.  I noticed that it looked like it was ripped before (hence the electrical tape) and me removing it was ripping it more.  With that, I ordered a new boot so that I could rip the old one out and put in a new one.

Here’s what it looked like with the intake boot off.

Here’s a pic of the new vs old intake boot.  Note how the old one is in pieces!

Ok, so now we’re at the throttle body.  It’s pretty dirty, but on the other side of the flap (found inside this cylinder) is way more dirt, so I had to take the throttle body out fully to really get it cleaned.

After disconnecting a few hoses and unscrewing a few bolts and disconnecting a few cables, I got the throttle body out.

Here’s a shot of the backside of the throttle body.  Very dirty.

Here’s a shot of the engine without the throttle body.

So I basically sprayed the throttle body down with throttle body cleaner.

Check out all the dirt that came out!

Here’s what it looked like after the cleaning.  Admittedly, I could have done more work to clean it up, but it started to sprinkle, but I did get a lot of the gunk out.

I put everything back in place, installing the new intake boot.

To my surprise, the truck still works!

but…. the problem is still there.  It still hesitates a bit when starting.  I do notice a slight difference when I drive, like the engine has more responsiveness, which is great, but I really want to pinpoint how to fix this problem!  Back to the drawing board.