So, I got around to doing some maintenance and a few minor mods this afternoon to my truck. I got the throttle body off and cleaned that sucker up, man it was dirty as all get out. I also took out the pcv valve and cleaned that out as best I could.

While I had the throttle body out, I figured what the heck, I might as well throw a ground on there. Seems there was quite a discussion back in January-feb about whether or not to do it. I've got some more good info on it which I will post below. Finally, I had some green LED's lying around so I decided to wire them up above my cupholders for a nice easy mod. I tried to take a few pictures but they didn't turn out too well, couldn't see much.

Didn't get a chance to take it for a spin but im hoping that with all the cleaning and throttle body ground that maybe ill see a bit of performance increase. Next up will be a DIY CAI and hopefully an efan. Any new info on the throttle body ground from guys who did it earlier this year? Still happy with it?

 

So, I promised to throw my 2 cents into the throttle ground ring, here's what I got. My brother has been the lead mechanical engineer on the buckeye bullet ( http://www.buckeyebullet.com/) land speed racer for the past two years or so. They do a bunch of dyno and engine testing before they go out to the salt flats each year. I was talking with him about throwing a ground on my throttle body, and he was saying that he thought it made some sense. When you get data off an engine there is a ton of electrical noise which has to be filtered out to be interpreted. If something isn't grounded well, adding a better more direct ground could help get rid of some of the electrical noise and thus give better data for the pcm to read. So, all in all, seems to me like it could help the pcm get clearer data, which could incrementally help a host of things.

Some thoughts from a couple mechanical engineers happy to hear your thoughts or opinions!

 

This is the first ive heard of the throttle body ground so I looked it up and found the 14 page thread on it. Guess im headed to walmart tonight for some wire haha. Also where in the cup holders did you put the leds? I havent started on the interior of the truck yet so thats where im going to put my next mods.

 

Yeah, there was quite a discussion a little bit ago. I'd like to hear from guys who did it then if they still notice any gains. driving around today i definitely noticed better, firmer response, but with all the cleaning and stuff i did hard to tell what it was from. Easy to do though and can't hurt so what the heck.

I took out the radio bezel and drilled a few holes right over top of the cupholders then wired it into the cig lighter. I had to be a bit careful to keep the led's out of the way of the clips from the radio bezel but it worked out ok. Another pretty easy mod and cheap too. The led's i used were like 2.50 and I already had some wire lying around.

 

any pics of the ground and the LED's?

 

I tried to take a pic of the LED's, it was hard to see in the daytime and at night the photo sucked as all I had was my iphone. I'll snap a pic of the ground tonight and post it up.

 

The LED's are not very exciting, but here's a pic


Here's a shot of the grounded throttle body


Here's a close up of where I hooked it up

 

nice, looks pretty good. thanks for the pics. do you think grounding it will make a difference or no?

 

hard to tell, imo there is some sound theory out there that it could help clean up the electrical noise, which should give better response. It feels to me to have made a difference, but I also cleaned the throttle body and pcv valve at the same time so im not sure which made the difference. There are some good threads from a little while back on it if you do a search for grounded throttle body.