4 Things That May Be Causing Your Car To Idle Too High After The Throttle Body Has Been Cleaned

There are a lot of DIY videos out there to help car owners do simple car repairs and detailing. When it comes to these DIYs, it seems like the easiest and least risky are those cleaning ones. However, what you may not realize is that even those things, when done without proper tools and training could actually lead to expensive damage. Just take your car throttle body for example. It may look simple to clean but you may end up with high engine idling when not done right. So if you just did that and now wondering why that’s happening, here are some possible reasons you’re experiencing that car problem.

1. Computer Readjusting

When you take apart the throttle and clean it, your car’s physical system resets. This means it’s taking more time to do its job which is to regulate fuel and air mixture in your engine than usual because your car’s computer is recalibrating. When this happens, extra fuel is being added to the system causing your idle rpms to rise.

To fix this and make your car’s computer re-calibrate quicker, follow these two steps:

Step 1: Put your car on drive and wait for two or three minutes for the idle to come down.

Step 2: Turn on your air conditioner, with the blower set on high. Do this for three minutes.

Doing this will allow your car’s computer to get a feel of the general throttle parameters of driving. If this trick didn't work, then the throttle wasn't even properly cleaned to begin with.  

2. Not Cleaned Properly

DIY videos online are good for many reasons but they also come with problems such as car owners being too self-confident that they can do car servicing themselves flawlessly. The thing is, not every tiny but critical detail about car repair and car detailing can be relayed and explained properly on those videos.

So if you did DIY your car’s throttle cleaning, it’s possible there’s still some debris left in the throttle bore. You could have missed it since you haven’t had prior experience with it before so you didn't know what a properly cleaned throttle actually looked like. This may result to your plate moving erratically instead of smoothly.

If this is what happened, you’ll have to redo the whole thing. You’ll have to remove and clean both the front and rear of the throttle bore again. When you’re done, expect it to idle since it is readjusting and re-calibrating like mentioned above. However, if you think the throttle body looks pretty clean to after removing the whole thing again, don’t try to reinstall it right away. Check the air control valve as this might be the one causing the idle.

3. Air Control Valve

With standard cleaning, the idle air control valve usually don’t get cleaned properly since it’s difficult to do so without removing it from the throttle body. So it’s possible that the debris causing high idle is stuck in there.

What you can do to make sure this component is cleaned thoroughly is to remove the air control valve and the plate to clean them individually. This should do the trick. But if it doesn’t and your car is still idling too high despite doing all these methods, you might be looking at a damaged throttle sensor.

4. Throttle Sensor Damage

The throttle sensors may have experienced damage while you or your mechanic cleaned the motor. It is possible the damage could have occurred from other causes as well, but if you noticed the change right after the cleaning, there is a good chance the sensors were damaged in this process. This can happen when the plate is opened and closed repeatedly and quickly. You need a computer scan tool to check the throttle activity and position to determine the kind of damage and what kind of replacements may be necessary to fix your high idling problem.

Pretty inconvenient right, not to mention troublesome when you’re practically just trying to avoid all those problems in the first place. So next time you want to do something to your car, that you have zero knowledge or experience about, you may wanna reconsider DIY-ing it no matter how easy it may seem and just seek a trusted car servicing shop in your region.