ETM cleaning on the T5 V50

[moorgate]

Thought that was going to be easy. Not a bit of it... The T5 ETM is right at the front of the engine bay, at the top: it's held on by four screws, which point upwards and attach to the inlet manifold. Underneath it is the main pressurised turbo pipe, which is pretty sturdy and attached at the other end to the output of the turbo.

You want that pipe out of the way: the problem is, in this area of the car, there is nowhere to put it. and if you want it taken off altogether then you need the undertray off and for that you need stands or ramps... it's a real delight, honest it it is.

So I tried to do it with the pipe in place. The one vital thing you need to know, which explains in an instant why garages take the manifold off to do this, is that the T30 headed things holding the ETM to the manifold are NOT BOLTS. They are gert big long coarse-threaded plastic screws, about 8cm long or more. To get the ETM off you have to undo them - and there is almost no room to swing a socket. I have lots of diddly tools from messing about with bikes, which is good - in a manner of speaking. gradually winding out those bloody wood-screw looking things is fairly easy: doing them back up again, however, really isn't! It's like the screw cuts a new thread into the plastic, and the force needed is much higher then that required to take them out, originally.

So I am on the sofa, because the position required to develop the turning force to wind the screws in on the manifold is a kind of gorilla crouch, with your whole back tight to support the high turn forces required with each agonishing 1/12th turn, upside down for many centimetres...

It was worth doing in terms of getting the butterfly clean, though! Mine was oily and black on the inside. I managed to use some fine rag on the edge of the throttle butterfly itself, rewarded with lots of little back flakes that had built up towards the hinge. After I put everything back together, the car was much smoother, idles far better and seems to be a couple of MPG more economical.

Oh and the other little discovery is that the jubilee clip on the top of the big boost hose is attached, at the back, by a little metal clip that hooks over the top of the hose! You can't see it normally, which provides a few minutes of "amusement" when trying to pull the tube off the ETM.

[T5R92011]

Didn't know they were plastic screws!

To be honest, I'd have gone straight for manifold removal and chucked the unit on a table inside!

Did this on a Toyota Avensis 1.8 once and it seems to be so much easier to pull the manifold than remove the TB on those VVT-i engines.

Looks an incredible tight squeeze trying to remove it with manifold in situ! Well done for taking it on!

[LizardOfBodom]

Maybe a dumb question but is ETM = Throttle Body?

If so, what year is your car, is it FL model? I did the TB removal last year and although a PITA (2 attempts) managed to do it with ratchet+gooseneck extension and some cursing with jubilee clip. But my screws were defo metal, long ones with torx head. Does that mean those are non OEM, can anyone verify that?

[moorgate]

Originally Posted by LizardOfBodom

Maybe a dumb question but is ETM = Throttle Body?

If so, what year is your car, is it FL model? I did the TB removal last year and although a PITA (2 attempts) managed to do it with ratchet+gooseneck extension and some cursing with jubilee clip. But my screws were defo metal, long ones with torx head. Does that mean those are non OEM, can anyone verify that?

sorry, these are metal screws with a wide, relaxed thread built to screw into a plastic receiver of some type. My car is a T5, UK 2005 model. and yes, ETM = Electronic Throttle Module.

I was using little teeny ratchets but a gooseneck would have made the job worse not better!