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Completely Stuck Throttle
1999 Camry 2.2
Posted a few days ago about oil leak and changing both valve cover gasket and pan gasket.
Last night son comes home and says he had to leave the car a few miles away due to RPM running up and getting stuck at near maximum RPM ... as soon as it did it, he shifted into neutral, shut engine down and coasted to a parking spot and called for friend to bring him home.
We had done no throttle or fuel or linkage system work during our gasket replacements and driven the car for about 60 miles after the work with no problems.
So, we got to get the car this morning and after looking it over, the throttle butterfly valve was stuck open - where it was, I suspect when he shut the engine down. The gas pedal was in down position - related to throttle position. I could barely move the throttle valve, but was able to close it - started car and it behaved normally, with RPM running to about 1800 and then slowly coming down. The throttle valve was still stuck and while the gas pedal could be depressed, it was not "adjustable" - when pushed hard enough to move the throttle valve it open it nearly fully and stuck there, with pedal in down position. Since pedal was down and didn't return up, couldn't do much except manual reset the throttle valve to closed position, where it ran fine at idle.
We didn't wait any longer at this point, but I drove it back to the house using a combo of: idle speed and moving at 15 mph, then tried bumping throttle with pedal and it getting stuck at 5000 RPM where I accelerated, then shifting to neutral and shutting down and coasting, and getting out of car and attempting to reset to about 3000 RPM, and repeating process until got to house.
Pulled into the garage, cranked up heat in the garage (about 15F outside and blowing 30 knots as it had been doing so for last day or so) and got some coffee.
Waiting 20 minutes, did some more research on TN and went back to garage to start trouble shooting ... but, it worked fine with no binding! Doing tutorial thing with son, walked through cable checks from gas pedal to cruise box, linkage checks, then cruise box to throttle valve, etc. No issues, no binding, cables looked very clean, no gunk, etc. No issues.
Since there are so many posts on gunk buildup on the throttle valve/plate, I pulled intake and cleaned it well - it looked pretty good on intake side, but pretty gunky on manifold side - however, certainly not enough to cause severe binding. Cranks and runs just fine - as it did before I cleaned it.
So, what could have caused this? After thinking about it awhile, the only answer I can come up with is that following replacement of valve cover and pan gaskets, and during the trouble shooting on the small oil leak we still had, we cleaned the engine with spray gunk to ensure we could see new oil leaking - part of this process is letting cleaner sit for a few minutes then washing it off with water. Temp at this point, two days ago, was abouty 42F. We drove car about 60 miles afterwards over a period of a day and a half. Temperatures continued to drop and wind increase to worst case about 15F and 40 knots.
Best guess I have is water got into the cruise control box and froze solid enough to prevent cables from moving either direction - I didn't pay much attention to the cruise interconnection when I initially looked at it this morning, but I did pulled cover to ensure cables were connected and there was nothing visible - it was nice and clean, but I didn't try and turn the main shaft.
Anyone else enjoy "automotive forensics?" Best guesses?
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Stuart Stephenson
1999 Camry LE L4
1988 Jeep Cherokee L6
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Linear Mode
