If you guys want to safely clean your throttle body...remove it, and clean it with brake cleaner. Harsh chemicals are in no way good for the emission controls, or the TB surface. Brake cleaner is very mild compared to carb cleaner.

 

This is pretty similar stuff to GM "Top engine cleaner" if you do it wrong, and get to much cleaner in the intake, you can hydro-lock the engine and bend/break a connecting rod. (I've seen it happen)

I briefly ran my car without the back-up fuse. The PCM never learned to compensate for AC or additional electrical load, and idled crappy. Back up fuse in and the idle learn procedure done, I had no probs.

 

It looks like "98" has been registered here much longer than I. We should all welcome different experiences and opinions and I believe that what 98 did really worked for him and I'm happy to see that he took the initiative to experiment and find something out that was good for him.
I help out when I can and my opinion is but only one of many and it's not always the right one.
This thread was very worth while as it may give someone, somewhere an alternative. It most certainly brought to light information and advice from several other key contributors of this board and even if only for that, it was time well spent.

 

Exactly my experience and I'm sure this is the general case. Again, I'm somewhat that "98" doesn't have idling problems today with that fuse out. (Unless he's tightened up the throttle cable to the point that it artificially holds the idle up higher, in which case, this is not a good thing.)

 

brake cleaner is not milder than carb cleaners, in fact its the opposite.

The shop I worked at when I was still in college made this mistake, the brake cleaner ate through the thin sealing film on the throttle plate and the throttle body was toast because the car wouldn't hold idle because of the vacuum leak.

They made sure to never use brake cleaner on throttle bodies, only carb cleaner because that's what they're formulated for.

Safely cleaning throttle body is to spray it down with carb cleaner without the engine running because most automobile cleaners evaporate fast.

 

I disagree. Then again, maybe it depends on the product. The stuff I use is pretty mild, compared to the carb cleaner I stock.

Honestly, the safest way is to do it by hand. Just use a rag and clean the bore, and most important, the edge of the throttle plate.

 

I know of people 20 years older than me that I wouldn't take advice from. Wisdom and intelligence counts...my vote will be with you x.

 

Just as an FYI, I drove an 02 and 03' all with under 6k miles on the odometer and they BOTH had this problem with the idle dipping below 600rpm. MY04 with 18k miles on it has never done it once I might add.

 

Thanks xviper. I didn't mean to suggest that you weren't "the man" as someone else said.

I'm also glad that your idle problem worked itself out. It tells me that if I do develop any problems (idle, rough running, lower performance) with the ecu fuse pulled, that I should probably shove that sucker back in and see if things get better over a period of weeks.

I work in the electronics industry (consumer/medical/military, but not automotive), integrating all sorts of sensors to processors all the time and writing algorithms for them. From what I understand, the closed-feedback obd-II systems are pretty good at correcting for imperfect sensors and controls, which might explain why many have trouble without the ECU fuse (a bunch of sensors varying in tolerance could easily cause slight "issues" when using a fixed starting-base-map I think).

In any case, xviper, thanks for your insight about everything.

To be honest, the main reason I posted this to begin with was that I couldn't find threads that had this solution (the cleaner) using key words like "stumbles" and "stalls", so I figured it would help others find what they might be looking for.

 

Nope - didn't touch the throttle cable. Also, the overall idle speed hasn't changed at all - only the throttle-to-idle stumbling disappeared.

Thanks again to all.

Sounds like I may have gotten lucky. But because I have a high-mileage S that obviously needed TB cleaning, I suspect there are others. I guess the problem is knowing which problems require cleaning and which require other fixes.