Throttle body. To clean or not?

[wato]

Morning All! So ive scoured the web for a couple of hours and yes ive searched this forum but get conflicting information. Question is it it worth the drama of codes being thrown up and rough running engines and crazy idle to clean a throttle body? Even YouTube shows different methods of doing it on 2006-2011 is250's. Some leave it on to clean the front, then to clean the back they manually push the butterfly flap. Others say no no no don't do that it confuses the computer. Taking the body off would be the correct way to do it but then apparently you have coolant pipes attached to it which need to be disconnected then the cooling system purged of air. I might have missed it in my search but I don't see any write ups here from someone who has done it. Whats peoples views?

[Atlantis]

Did it around the 100k mark. Made lots of smoke, didn't notice any other difference.

[wato]

Ill guess you use decent premium fuel since you've had it? Thats a good thing then you didnt notice any difference! mines onto 185000k but is running great so ill do some more research. It appears not to many on this forum have done it! Cheers, thanks for your reply.

[Atlantis]

Nothing but 98 since brand new, so yeah... very little gumming up the works.

I'm having your dilemma about doing a gearbox flush. Car drives perfectly fine at 160,000km, but oils really aren't "for life" but I don't want to regret the decision either way.

[Ashley]

Hi guys I saw this thread title and immediately thought " I hope he hasn't done it yet". 

I decided ( god only knows why) to clean my throttle body on my 05' Nissan Maxima ( yes I know not a Lexus), and all I accomplished was destroying the throttle body butterfly fly by wire leaving a gap so it revved close to 2K rpm at idle. To pile on the pain I also decided to "clean" the metal surface on the body itself, massive mistake as all I did was rub off the factory coating ( slightly rough coating before the butterfly). 

 

I sincerely hope you haven't done it yet because its a irreversible action especially if you push the butterfly, now I'm assuming Lexus use fly by wire on their throttle bodies but I may be wrong. 

Best regards Ashley. 

[wato]

Well Ashley lol no I didnt clean the throttle body at all! There wasn't enough info out there or stories about someone doing it to make me feel confident I wasn't going to cause damage. Its a similar problem with nb Mazda mx5's. They have that coating on the flap as well and I actually scrubbed that off before I read no, don't scrub that off. But for some reason the idle came down slowly when I pushed the clutch in then after a few k's it fixed itself and runs great again. The Lexus is running a treat now so im leaving the throttle alone. Thou I did clean the MAF sensor  a short while back and that made a big difference. Cheers!

[Ashley]

Hi Wato, what can I say your incredibly lucky or its a testament to the Lexus legendary build quality. 

With my Maxima at a standstill the revs were so high it was "pushing" the car forward, which you don't want to deal with ever. 

Regards. 

[oldandymac]

Have you cleaned your MAF sensor? Easy to do, just be careful and use the correct stuff - definitely dont physically touch it with anything. 

 

[Ashley]

Agreed and do not push the throttle body butterfly at all costs doing so breaks the fly by wire and you will need a brand new throttle body. 

I learned the hard way so you don't have to, save yourself the stress and money.

Regards.