What did I break? Throttle body cleaning woes

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Care, Maintenance & Troubleshooting' started by priusnoob2025, May 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM.

  1. priusnoob2025

    priusnoob2025 New Member

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    Hi all,

    Prius noob here, I’ve got a 2013 Prius with 200K miles. Got it used at around 150K. It’s run beautifully, no oil loss, no cold start rattles, no issues.

    I had the engine temp warning light come on recently for a little bit and figured my water pumps probably going on. Replaced the water pump and did a coolant exchange.

    while I was in there I figured I’ll do an intake manifold and throttle body cleaning. It didn’t look too bad but I cleaned it out following the nuts4boltz videos. Everything went fine and it was running well. About a week later I was taking a road trip and decided to floor it. (Keep in mind I’d already driven about 200 miles with no issues). As soon as I did that the check engine light came on, I started losing acceleration and I had to pull over. Luckily I had an OBDII sensor and it came up with P0121 and P0223.

    What did I break? I’m thinking maybe the throttle body sensor got some throttle body cleaner in it and failed? I used throttle body cleaner, sprayed it on towel paper (I know) and wiped the sides from the top AND bottom (because I had it out during the intake manifold cleaning). (I also wiped the plate itself)

    any thoughts on what I might’ve broke/done wrong?
     
  2. Tombukt2

    Tombukt2 Senior Member

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    Well those are both throttle problems for sure one is showing the circuit is too high and so on so you're looking in the right place I had this happen to a 2013 persona on an engine swap I took my original throttle body from my original engine and put it on the engine putting in the car and everything worked as expected so I'm guessing the throttle body that came on the used engine was not to be and it wasn't so I used mine and all was well so maybe you'll go to a junkyard and snatch a throttle body slap it on there in your car will be running or you'll go to the dealer and pay some crazy amount for a new one either way.
     
  3. ChapmanF

    ChapmanF Senior Member

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    The throttle position sensor is really two throttle position sensors, so the ECM gets two independent readings it can compare to rule out sensor problems.

    To make the comparison even more careful, the two sensors aren't made to produce identical readings, but to produce different readings with a certain mathematical relationship. The VTA1 reading has a certain constant slope with respect to the throttle opening, and the VTA2 reading has a 1.11 volt higher intercept, a slightly steeper slope, and a knee at a certain point.

    That makes sure the ECM can catch problems like a short between VTA1 and VTA2 that would make them look like the same reading. A simpleminded design would think that looked fine, but the Toyota ECM will know something's wrong because they aren't different in the right way.

    [​IMG]

    Your P0121 means that the difference between VTA1 and VTA2 is going below 0.8V or above 1.6V sometimes, and your P0223 means VTA2 is going above 4.8V sometimes (while VTA1 is betweem 0.2 and 2.02 V).

    The simplest thing to look for first would be wiring damage, pinched or nicked insulation between the sensor circuits, that kind of thing.

    If you have a way of tracking the VTA1 and VTA2 voltages while moving the throttle open and closed, you might see just how they aren't following the graph above.

    If you see the problem at the ECM terminals with the throttle body in the car, the wiring might be suspect. If you can reproduce the problem with the throttle body on a bench, the sensor itself might have taken damage somehow.
     
    Brian1954 likes this.