Power Foam by AMSOIL

I miss the "old days" when a guy could open up the hood of a car and spend hours doing a number of useful things - giving it a tune-up. With the computers and electronics now found under the hood there are only a few things left that an average guy can do himself. Changing oil of course is the most important, oil and air filters, and one other item I found that was extremely easy was to clean my throttle body in my truck. I won't go into exact detail here on how to remove a throttle body as there are many websites that you can search and explore that will have the specifics of your make and model of vehicle. Forums are another great resource to use for these type of maintenance projects.

I did have a tune-up performed on my truck but noticed that I still had a slightly rough idle. With 90,000 plus miles on the engine, I knew it was overdue for the cleaning of the throttle body. A throttle body is the mechanism that is attached to your accelerator pedal through a flexible cable. It is located between the air cleaner and the intake manifold of your engine. I was surprised to see just how much varnish and gunk had accumulated on mine. Here are some pictures of my throttle body as it came off my engine.



Once the throttle body was removed, I simply sprayed it with AMSOIL's Power Foam product. In the past I had used Power Foam on anything that need to be de-greased. It works great on cleaning up old lawn mower engines. Just remember to use AMSOIL's MP after you clean up any parts that move, as the Power Foam will remove all lubricants. MP is great for keeping moving parts moving.

I let the Power Foam sit for a few minutes then wiped the throttle body down with a shop rag. I noticed that all of the sludge did not come off, so I reapplied a second application. I also used a toothbrush in hard to reach areas. Within fifteen minutes it looked brand new again:

This is really a simple procedure, one that can be done by yourself and will save you some money from not having a service station or dealer perform the task. My engine did run better afterward and I assume I also received the benefit of a better mpg. Power Foam is an excellent product that has many uses, cleaning the throttle body is just one of them.