Throttle body 318i

[arts99]

I had a very lucky escape on the motorway today. I was doing about 75 miles per hour in my 318i (2000) and all of a sudden the engine lost all acceleration and it felt as if the accelerator was stuck I had no option but to move from the fast lane to the hard shoulder, it was quite busy on the raod and I am glad that it didn’t cause an accident.

A thing like this has never happened to me before. I called for the roadside assistance and the guy who came to the rescue diagnosed that the fault was with the throttle body as for some reason it was stuck.

He took it off, cleaned it with a liquid cleaner and tried releasing it a number of times manually in his hand and occasionally it would get stuck, as I was about 2 hours away from home and it was Friday afternoon he said that he will try fitting it and see if it works by placing the foot on the accelerator gently, fortunately it did and I was able to get home.

He has advised me to get the throttle body changed; what I wanted to know is that has such a problem happened with anyone else? It’s a very dangerous situation to be in as the engine looses all power.

What I don’t understand is that why would it get stuck all of a sudden while engine was running? Normally when things wear out they start moving more freely then getting stuck....?

Can this issue be easily repaired or a new one has to be put in? Any ideas of the cost of a new throttle body?

Thank you

 

[Big Daddy]

Does it have a bunch of deposits on it, as they can build up mostly if you are using cheap gas. Try using some carb cleaner on it (removed from the car), than use a good injector cleaner every other fill up. Try Techron or Red Lines SI-1 injector cleaner.

 

[arts99]

Thank you for your reply.

I just use the normal unleaded fuel that is available at the pumps.

Well he cleaned it with some kind of injector cleaner and it seemed some black stuff did drip down from the inner walls, however even after that it was getting stuck while he was manually trying to check by hand if it was getting stuck or not and it was getting stuck at that time.

However since fitting it back it is working so far; however I have been very gentle with the accelerator so far and have pressed and released it slowly.

Do the injector clearners also clean the throttle body as well?