How do I get at my throttle body flapper?

[dorlow]

Ok, I'm sure the technical term for the throttle body flapper thing is not a flapper.
I've been having this problem for a while now where if my car sits for an hour or so, my gas pedal sticks. I always figured I just needed to lube up my gas pedal cable, but never was sure how to do it. Well I was talking to a pro mechanic and he said, oh no, that's the flapper thing in my air intake that's sticking. I just need to clean it with some intake cleaner.

I swear I've seen these "flapper" things before and thought it was when I took off the air cleaner duct to the engine, it was right there. I was surprised when I took mine off and there's a screen there.



I was expecting the flapper thing to be right there.

Well the more I look at it, the spot where the cables from the pedal hook to the throttle body a little closer to the engine on the back side, so that make sense that is where the flapper would be.

So, I see the one bolt at the top and two at the bottom. The top one I can get off really easy. The two bottom ones I can't figure out how to get off...



See in the picture above, just to the upper right of the radiator hose, there's that black bracket. That bracket is L shaped, so it's blocking the bottom left bolt there. I can't come straight in at it because the exhaust is blocking that. I tried taking the bolt out of the bracket hoping it would move left or right so I could then access the bottom left bolt on the air intake, but the bracket didn't move at all. I tried getting a boxed or open end wrench on it but no luck. I'm sure I'll have just as much trouble on the back bolt.

The only way I can see to get at the two bolts is to take the water line off, then the muffler, then the bracket and then I'll have full access to those bolts, but that seems like a lot of work for such a simple repair where all I need to do is access that "flapper" thing and clean it.

I seriously thought this was going to be a 10-15 minute repair... now I'm looking at it being a major project.

I know there's 10,000 ways to fix something wrong and one way to fix it right. I'm sure I'm just looking at it wrong and I need someone to just tell me the right procedure to cleaning the "flapper."

[gmtech1]

You can spray through the screen, the throttle plate is behind it. Some have a retaining ring holding that screen in there, you can remove the retainer, then carefully remove the screen, it's pretty fragile. If it cannot be removed, spray through it. If you NEED to get to the throttle plate you will need to remove the throttle body.

[dorlow]

But still if I find I have to take it all off, what is the right way? I can't image I have to take the exhaust, the radiator line and that L shaped bracket off. It seems way overboard.

[gmtech1]

You can get a pry bar under that bracket and rotate it enough to access that throttle body nut. The one on the backside can be had with a wrench. You don't need to take the exhaust off.