Throttle body - is this normal?

  1. Newbie Joined: Dec 2011 Posts: 4
    #1
    Evening all, this is officially my first post. I will introduce myself properly shortly.

    I have recently acquired a '99 1.4 west coast. Nice little car but suffering with a few problems.

    The one I'm concerned about currently is a suspected faulty idle control valve. The standard test of unplugging made no difference to the erratic idle. It hunts anywhere between 400-1800rpm regardless of temp and now it even stalls itself.

    I noticed this hole in the butterfly valve which I've not come across on any other car before. Is it normal?

  2. Infrequent Poster Joined: Aug 2011 oswestry Posts: 108 two tone vts
    #2
    yeah. Seen it on a few cars. My fiesta had one. lets air through for idle?
  3. Infrequent Poster Joined: Aug 2011 oswestry Posts: 108 two tone vts
    #3
    seems small though so it probably aint for that
  4. Newbie Joined: Dec 2011 Posts: 4
    #4
    It seems to be for letting air in on idle. It stalls if you hold your fonger over it. But I thought that's the whole point of the ICV?
  5. Infrequent Poster Joined: Apr 2011 Posts: 110
    #5
    That's just for some air not enough for full idling, thus that's where the ICV comes in letting more air go through and regulating it, all this obviously depending on temperature and other parameters.

    So at the end that is just an engineering decision of whoever engineered this system
  6. Newbie Joined: Dec 2011 Posts: 4
    #6
    It makes sense and I can see why it works. I suspected it was drilled to save replacing the ICV. Is this common on the TU3 engines then?
  7. Newbie Joined: Dec 2011 Posts: 4
    #7
    Success!!!!!!!

    £20 and a trip to the scrappy later, I have a replacement throttle body complete with ICV and a hole-free butterfly valve.

    It now idles and runs perfectly. One happy bunny!

    Thanks for all the help along the way