While porting my intake plenum . . .

[supercrackerbox]

I came up with a couple questions.

1. I disassembled my throttle body in order to better ensure that the intake is ported to match it. The throttle shaft rides inside two small sealed bearings. Just how good of a seal do these have? Would I be safe cleaning up the throttle body in a solvent tank? Or should I just stick to a soft brush and compressed air?


2. I think I have the intake done as well as I can, except for one spot. Just inside the elbow, there's a 5/8" hole where the EGR was mounted on the '86 GLHS and CA destined '87 cars. Despite being blocked off from below, I'm wondering if this hole causes any sort of disruption in the airflow. It would be quite easy to tap it for an aluminum plug which would then be ground down and sanded smooth. But, is it actually worth the effort, or am I thinking way too hard on this?

[RoadWarrior222]

My gut says, you'd be okay hosing/scrubbing it down with solvent, but submerging it might not be a good idea for the bearings. If you've got really stubborn gook on it, you could arrange it to sit in a shallow pan to soak, with the bearings just clear, then flip it for the other side, leaving you with just a little bit in the middle to deal with with a toothbrush or etc. Depends on the solvent though, I think I'd be happier to leave it in kerosene than other solvents... but only just covered, if you put it into a foot of the stuff, the pressure may force more in. That's thinking that if a little bit of kerosene gets in, it'll just help out old half dried up grease, by softening it up a little, whereas other types of solvent may break it down completely.

[turbovanman²]

Solvent is fine for the T/B, just make sure to blow them out and reoil.

[supercrackerbox]

Well, here's what I came up with. I seem to have only taken one pic of the throttle body for some reason, but I disassembled it, cleaned and polished the butterfly, scrubbed the individual pieces in the solvent tank, and scrubbed the body itself with the solvent brush, but without actually submerging it. I did like the Kerosene idea, but now that I've got electric heat, it's been years since I've had any kerosene around.



As for the EGR hole in the intake, yes I obsessed about it and had to do something. I picked up some aluminum 3/8" pipe plugs from Speedway, and tapped the EGR hole to suit.







The reason it looks like a goat's eye is because I ended up grinding through to the hole for the hex key. The best solution I could come up with* was to carve a chunk of aluminum stock into something that would mostly fill the hole, and then secured it with JB Weld. The stock is T shaped, so there's no chance of it working through and being ingested.

*keep in mind that I live in BFE, I don't have any way to weld aluminum, and I only really make it to the shop in the middle fo the night.

[turbovanman²]

Awesome job, I'd be proud of that,

[supercrackerbox]

Thank you, I appreciate that.