Clean the Carburetor

It is important for every car owner to know how to clean the carburetor or throttle body on their vehicle. Not only does it increase power and efficiency of the engine as a whole, it really helps keep maintenance bills down from things like spark plugs and valve deposits. Even though there are not very many cars with a carburetor any more, the same basic principle also applies to fuel injected engines which have a throttle body instead of a carburetor. You will need a can of carburetor cleaner, and a can of lubrication like WD-40. The main idea is to get all og the gunk off with the cleaner chemical, and then lubricate the area so dirt is not as likely to stick there again. This is a trick that they use at the dirt tracks, to keep the dirt from damaging the carburetor and make a linkage stick. So remember cleaning the carburetor is only the first half of the job. Now that you know why it should be done, and a little trick from the race track that makes it last longer, we can explain the process of how it is done.

Getting to the carburetor, or throttle body on any engine is fairly straightforward. All you have to do is look for the air filter, and itis at the engine side of that filter. If you do not know what an air filter is, then have someone play with the gas pedal, while you look around the top and sides of the engine for the lever that is rocking back and forth. That lever is the throttle lever, which you will be spending a few seconds cleaning, and lubricating, but you have to remove the air duct from the top of what the throttle lever is connected to, this is the carburetor or throttle body on the engine.

Once you remove the air duct from the engine and have the top of the carburetor exposed, spray it down with the cleaner. The dirt and grime will run off onto the intake which can either be caught with rags (recommended), or wiped off later (acceptable), or left to dry (not recommended). Make sure to get the linkage real well, and all down inside the carburetor. It will come as clean and shiny as the day it was new. Then open the throttle and spray the cleaner into the engine, and clean it out as good as you can. A toothbrush works very well to clean the throttle blade, and the hole that it seals against in the throttle body. Make sure to spray it down with WD-40 when you are finished, and do not wipe the WD-40 off. After about ten minutes, you can start the engine and drive it normally, as the liquids that you used to clean the engine need time to evaporate and dry up. If you start the engine too soon, it can actually cause electrical damage to sensors that got wet with any kind of chemicals, so be sure not to skip any steps as far as waiting is concerned.

Once everything is sprayed down, cleaned, rinsed, and lubricated, you can put it all back together and be good to go for about 6 months. After you touch certain things like air filters, PCV valves, and intake air temperature sensors they normally need to be replaced, so keep that in mind when nit comes to how careful you should be when doing this project.