Local Garage Cable Tied Valve On Air Inlet - 2003 Yaris D4D

[puj]

Hey my yaris is having problems idling and from reading the forum it seems that i need to clear out the air inlet as it is likely to be full of soot.

The engine revs up and down between 600 and 1000 when at low speeds when cold.

i took it into a local garage, and th guy thought it was one of the valves on the front of the engine into which the rubber tubes go.

He then cable tied the brass bit connected to the air inlet and that seemed to have fixed the issue. This brass valve? Was turning constantly while the engine was hunting and fixing it helped.

Is this a safe solution? I will get a photo ASAP

[Cyker]

Wow, that is freaky - I have just had the same problem!! - http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=138689&hl=

Seems this is a common problem on older D4Ds!

Tying the brass lever thing will hide the symptoms but not fix the problem and will make the car a bit smokey at lower revs.

The fix is actually quite easy - See for the details http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=85740

You can print it out and give it to your mech.

If you're feeling adventurous and have smallish hands, it's not that hard to do yourself and'll save you £50-60 of labour. It is very fiddly because there are a bunch of hoses obscuring some of the bolts making it very easy to accidentally drop them!

You just need to unbolt the throttle body (The bit with the lever that was kicking back and forth that has the thick but short hose connected to the top of it) and clean it out. I'd loosen the bolts and unscrew them by hand to reduce the chance of dropping them.

Once it's off, have a look inside - There is a smaller hole slightly smaller than an old 5p (Or new 10p?) which is probably clogged with soot - Poke it out with a small screwdriver to remove the worst of it then flush it all out with carb cleaner, wipe it clean and let it dry.

The blocked hole can be tricky to see if it's really sooted up as it may end up looking like it's part of the pipe wall (I missed it the first time I looked because of this.)

If you have a flexible pipe cleaner thing that might help, but don't use anything plastic as the carb cleaner will melt it (So no using a bottle scrubber )

I also took out the EGR and sprayed some carb cleaner into the channel that connects it to the throttle body because that had a quite an impressive lining of baked soot but this probably isn't necessary, as long as air can pass through it.

Put it all together, fired up the car; It made some scary mis-firing bang noises at first - Probably the carb cleaner - so I turned it off and restarted it twice and it's been fine since. Back to its old self! :D

[puj]

Thanks for that, I thought that was the problem, now I just need to get it cleaned.

Does anyone know what the brass thing does? It was turning constantly open and closed when the car was hunting. Just trying to work out the implications of disabling it with a cable tie.

[Cyker]

The brass thing is some sort of suction valve I think; It actuates that arm which is connected to a butterfly throttle valve inside the throttle body.

I think it regulates the mix of air between the intercooler and EGR somehow but really I have no idea XD

Maybe igor or fishy will have some better explaination...?

[puj]

The brass thing is some sort of suction valve I think; It actuates that arm which is connected to a butterfly throttle valve inside the throttle body.

I think it regulates the mix of air between the intercooler and EGR somehow but really I have no idea XD

Maybe igor or fishy will have some better explaination...?

I think you are correct, the egr is effectively disabled on my car now as the inlet manifold vacuum required to suck in the exhaust gasses from the egr will not be available. the inlet butterfly valve is used in order to generate the manifold vacuum.

I think the hunting is caused by the egr also being blocked so that when the engine tries to take in egr by closing the inlet butterfly too little enters so the pressure to too low. The engine then open the butterfly and the cycle repeats.

Cyker thanks for all your help.

[Cyker]

Most welcome :D

Glad I could share my findings; I was getting very worried with mine and was relived it was something so simple!

Are you just going to leave it permanently pulled back now? Be interesting to see what effect that has; It should be more responsive and have better MPG but may fail emissions testing because of the higher NOx

I do wonder if the car will go into limp mode when it realises the EGR isn't doing anything, like what's happened with others here who've actually blanked it off!

Keep us informed! :)

[puj]

Most welcome :D

Glad I could share my findings; I was getting very worried with mine and was relived it was something so simple!

Are you just going to leave it permanently pulled back now? Be interesting to see what effect that has; It should be more responsive and have better MPG but may fail emissions testing because of the higher NOx

I do wonder if the car will go into limp mode when it realises the EGR isn't doing anything, like what's happened with others here who've actually blanked it off!

Keep us informed! :)

I still havent got arround to cleaning my EGR but now the yellow engine light has come on.

Anyone know how to reset the light or how to check what the problem is?

EDIT: I removed that cable tie and give it a good run. It went back to hunting on start and did not effect the check engine light.

[Cyker]

Yeah, once it's blocked you can't fix it with an 'italian tuneup' sadly.

With the check engine light, it can be reset by most ODB2 diagnostic readers which any garage would have. It will just come back on if the problem isn't fixed tho' so whoever resets it would need to clean out the sooted up parts.

Sucks... I was hoping your kludge would work!

[puj]

Yeah, once it's blocked you can't fix it with an 'italian tuneup' sadly.

With the check engine light, it can be reset by most ODB2 diagnostic readers which any garage would have. It will just come back on if the problem isn't fixed tho' so whoever resets it would need to clean out the sooted up parts.

Sucks... I was hoping your kludge would work!

Thanks for your help Cyker, today i have cleaned out the throttle body with a load of card cleaner and a screwdriver. The hunting is now gone and i no longer need the cable tie as seen above.

Before I cleaned it out it was completely blocked, I have some pictures attached from before i cleaned it.

I tried reseting the ecu by removing the Battery cable for 10 mins but that did not work, have now ordered a cheap ODB2 box.

[Madasafish]

Puj

Be interested to know what fuel you use?

I use Shell for the detergents.#. Do you use mainly supermarket?

# last time I inspected when I cleaned EGR valve, the inlet was pretty clean.

[puj]

I have only had the car for a few months, so i dont know what was used for the first 70,000 miles. I now mostly use esso.

[Cyker]

Woo! Good job mate, glad you got it sorted :D