shwew! I was about to pour some antifreeze in my little snorkel thingy.

 

Hmmmm. I bypassed mine but, I live in the south only an hour from the gulf. I have never had a truck with a heated throttle body before and have never had one freeze with ambiant temps down to 14F and wind chill near zero but I only have a few days of that per year and am not saying it couldn't happen.

So I would say if you are into keeping that problem gasket up and keeping it from leaking stay with the stock setup. But if you live in the south and don't make any trips up north in the winter then bypass may be an option.

It would be your call as to bypass or not. I did but that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. I just got tired of replacing the plate and gasket over and over and also tired of coolant dripping on my engine all the time.

Whatever you do, be sure to bleed and bleed and bleed your system when done until you are SURE you have ALL of the air out. Small air pockets can take some work to get out of these. You can find plenty of good threads on here on how to bleed the system correctly. Be careful with your bleed screw, they snap and unless you live near a ROVER or BMW dealership you would have to order one.

And if you do pull your upper intake be sure order a new gasket for that and have it ready or a new throttle body gasket if you only pull the throttle body. You may be able to change it without pulling either the upper intake or the throttle body if you have a 1/4" drive socket set.

Also be very careful when cleaning up any gasket surfaces as it is very easy to gouge the aluminum surfaces if using a metal scrapper, best to use a plastic scrapper or razor blade carefully.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the hard plastic lines get very brittle over time and they will snap if you look at them crooked, so be very careful while disconnecting the line from your throttle body heater that runs to the expansion tank. If it's still the original on an 03 you may want to pick one up and replace it while you are doing all of that. You don't have to replace it but if you have the extra funds I would and if you do change the line, be careful with the nipple on bottom of the expansion tank, they snap real easy too! Anything on these trucks made of plastic will break very easy!

 

Hello

To replace the throttle body heater plate kit, the rave manual says "Disconnect the throttle and cruise control cables from the throttle body".

I took pictures of the throttle and cruise control cables as shown below


So what do they mean? Disconnect the 1st photo, the 2nd one or disconnect both?

What do you do to disconnect the 1st, 2nd or both locations?

 

Yes.

1) Loosen the nuts in pic 1 toward the drivers side all the way over the little gap the threads. Then pull the cable to the passenger side and slide the cables out of the clip.


2) Once you have slack you can pull the cable enough to rotate the peg I circled in pic 2 and slide it out.


I hope my crude pictures helped you under stand.

 

Hi Jared

The annotated pics definitely, definitely helps! Thank you.

Quick questions: In step #1 above, are the purpose of the nuts for some sort of adjustment of the cables, or are they just there to secure them to the clips? In other words, should I make sure I don't touch the nut on the passenger side and mark its position with tape or something?

In step #2, is the peg just secured by the cables' tension? Are there any "watch out's" in reassembling the components for this repair?

Thanks again

 

1. only loosen the nuts on the right, then slide the cables out of the bracket using the flat spot on the cable. the left nuts will stay in place allowing for easy setup after.
2. you simply have to hold the throttle open while you slide the cable out,

 

The nuts in pic 1 are for adjusting the cruise and throttle cables. As you loosen or tighten the nuts they will increase or shorten the gaps shown in the picture below.

The Rave has the specific measurements that those two gaps need to be set to, but if you take a picture or mental note of how far the gaps are before you remove the cables then you can get them close enough just by eye.
Also, take note of which cable is the cruise cable and make sure you put it back on the correct clip (I believe it's the outside clip).

I just remembered you were only removing the TB and not the whole upper manifold. Skip everything above and just do this>>>If you are just removing the throttle body and not the whole manifold then you can just pull the throttle full open and remove the cable without messing with the nuts in pic 1 at all. That way you won't have to adjust the cables when you put them back on.

 

actually if your just doing the throttle body heater, i think i left the cables in place and just flipped the throttle body over?

 

This ^^ could work, but I think he is also changing the TB to Manifold gasket so more than likely the TB will have to come all the way off so he can get the old stuck on gasket off. Plus it's a good idea to take the TB outside and clean it really good with brake cleaner while it's off.

 

Firstly thank you to everyone who replied to this post.

I worked on it this weekend. The instructions everyone provided were all perfect. However it didn't have a happy ending

While tightening the last of the 3 bolts on that secure the heater gasket, I felt the threads on the throttle body got stripped! I was so pissed off since I was only using a 1/4" drive with a short 4" handle and was tightening the socket with just my hand grasping the socket!

Hoping that the seal would still hold, I put everything together and I drove the vehicle for a few blocks but saw coolant seeping through the new gasket. Needless to say, was very disappointed.

Warning to other members: Be careful when tightening the 3 bolts on the underside of the throttle body. The threads can strip easily and you will end up like me!

So I ended up bypassing the coolant hoses. I sawed off one of the metal hose tubes from the old heater part and used the sawed off metal hose to join the two coolant hoses together.

Don't really know how important the heater is, being I'm in California. What would you guys do? Is there a way to salvage the throttle body? Would you buy a replacement throttle body to reinstate the heater function?

Attached are some photos of the project for those members who will be attempting this fix.