The others are giving you good advice on the intake situation.
Let me give you another tip that you should be doing sooner than later. Especially if this vehicle has an air conditioner.
Your car is old enough that it likely did not come with a cabin filter or if it did, it might be pretty much disintegrated at this point. You need to check to make sure the rodent did not store food down your cabin ventilation system.
I got this lesson reinforced first-hand many years ago when I bought a used MR2 which had been parked for a long time after its owner died suddenly. A rodent had stored dog food in the cabin air system’s intake just in front of the windshield. The pellets then fell down and landed inside the blower chamber. The air conditioner didn’t work when I bought it and it had T-tops, so I didn’t pursue the matter any further until I got tired of being overly hot in the summer and fixed the air conditioner.
When I ran the blower, it ground up the dogfood into a fine powder. The air conditioner then caused moisture to build up in the blower chamber. This made a nice nutrient slurry which attracted bugs. When the godawful smell started, I dropped the blower motor and discovered that the entire chamber was crawling with bug larvae. Took me all day to scrape them out through that little hole and sanitize the whole thing, and the smell lingered for 3 years afterward no matter how much lysol I sprayed into the vents.
Don’t let this happen to you. Drop the blower motor now (it’s just three bolts, under the glove box. Very easy) and make sure there isn’t any food sitting in that blower chamber.
Lol Blackbird. And I’m sorry to hear that shadowfax.
I ordered a new air filter and am trying to get a hold of a smallish hosed vacuum. I will update this discussion! Thank you everyone so much for your help!
Can I just vacuum out the tb and replace the air filter and drive it to someone who can take apart the tb? I’m afraid it might be beyond my skills. Unless, all it takes is unscrewing the four screws I see on there, cleaning and screwing back… But, would only doing the minimum and driving it a few miles do further damage?
The fact that you asked the last question causes me concern. There are only the 4 bolts at the base that hold the throttle body on. If you don’t know how to work the bellcrank to open the throttle, then have someone step on the gas pedal and look down the throat. If you can’t see anything, then chances are that anything that got in there has passed through the engine.
There are inspection cameras that can see down into the passages that you can get for about $80, but you can probably find a mechanic that has one and can inspect for you, but that may cost $80-100. Most will fit down through the open throttle and see all the way to the valves. Its not much different than the camera that goes up your butt when you get a colonoscopy.
Put in the new air filter and button it up and see how it runs.
Yes, keith. I’m not trying to tackle projects I know I’m not ready for. I don’t have any experience working on cars so this is my first project.
Also, I noticed this today which I hadn’t noticed before cleaning things out… Could maybe be contributing to air getting into places it shouldn’t? Do I now need to try and order a new one of these?
The MAF is after this so it is not an issue. But I do suspect that the reason the truck is running bad is related to the MAF. It needs to be taken out and cleaned. It may have been damaged when all that junk got in there so it may need to be replaced.
In electronically fuel injected vehicles the entire air intake system from the air filter to the throttle body needs to be air tight for the air/fuel metering to work correctly. So yes, if that torn boot is between the air filter and the throttle body, good idea to replace it.
Sounds like the idle is way too low…or it is simple tune up problems. I agree with @keith a compression test will reveal if we are working with a full deck of cards here…We can speculate and come up with solid possibilities…but without a quick Comp test we cannot know which direction to take this.
