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My Nissan minivan gets a hesitation about every 30 or 40,000 miles when starting from a stop sign or red light. When that happens, I clean out the throttle body with some fuel injection safe carb cleaner stuff. I have to remove the airbox where the filter is and spray it on the little butterfly gizmo. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll scrub it a bit with an old toothbrush.

It's been about 50,000 miles since I've had to do that so maybe I've been running better gas or something.

If your TCH is running fine otherwise, I'd skip it and just get the Toyota recommended service done.

You can check the Edmunds Maintenance Guide and it'll tell you what the service should cost in your area.

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clean throttle body ?

If the air filter is clean,,,and all of the tubing,,,hoses,,and clamps from the air filter box to the throttle body are tight and in good shape,,,,and there is not a problem,,,then why would any " cleaning " be necessary ?

Oh,, im sorry,,with the way these new-fangled cars are lasting so long nowadays,,,,the dealer has to make money any way they can.

My wife has a 1998 toyota corolla,,it has 85,000 miles,,,i cleaned the throttle body,,,once,,,,

And when i did take it apart to clean it,,,there was only a trace of dirt ( more like dust ) inside of it.

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Absolutely unneeded if it's running fine, a wallet flush. Watch out they don't slip in other unneeded stuff (like my Lexus dealer tried to do).

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Yes throttle bodies do get dirty. They gum up from the fuel vapors when a car rests after running for a while. The Intake manifold from the rear of the throttle plate to the intake valve is all open and the injectors sit inside this manifold. The injectors spray the fuel into the intake at each valve opening, and when the car is shut off, some injectors may have been in a state of firing off when the ignition is killed, leaving a small amount of fuel in the intake that evaporates, then deposits itself on parts of the intake manifold and related parts, especially the TB. In the TB is an Idle Air Control module that works by opening and closing a valve to allow more or less air in to keep the engine idling at a certain speed while maintaining the proper fuel ratio. This is the part that gets clogged up and causes idle problems, and is mainly what gets cleaned. Newer cars that have direct injection, are more like diesels in where the injector is in the cylinder head itself, and much less likely to gum up the TB and AIC. The Toyota engines do not have this technology yet, but there are some maufactureres that are building engines with direct injection, so if anyone does have this type engine, TB cleaning is a rare event.

At 30K miles you should not need to have the TB cleaned, the dealer is trying to be more thorough, yes it is a legitiment service, but no it is not needed at 30K miles, 60K yes, 100K definate, 30K, no.

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