Mini-review of the OTB.

[ka-boom]

The checkout process on Cordova was pretty easy with paypal. You get a nice invoice, twowheelin / Scott is good with communication, and the shipping time was about average. It came FedEx nicely padded, in good condition. I replaced my stock ‘AA’ throttle body with a ‘BA’ version on my 2004 6s ATX with 94K miles. The only mods I have is a magnaflow catback exhaust, the air box mod, and a K&N filter. (pfft!!)

Install: When it comes to mechanical aptitude, I consider myself about average. I’m not a total newb, and Im not a total gear head. I have a meager set of tools in an apartment garage. I found a walk through online how to install the OTB so it made it easy. Even without the guide it would be very simple with minimal to basic mechanical skills. It’s literally 4 bolts and 2 hoses – that’s it. Assuming you don’t drop your sockets into the bowels of the engine compartment, it shouldn’t take longer than 40 minutes to install for a total newbie. I found that removing my battery gave me some much needed extra room, this is a tip that was not mentioned in the walk through I had.

I unscrewed the coolant reservoir cap to relieve the coolant pressure and lost about a teaspoon of coolant when I removed the hoses. Removing the old throttle body was easy (for me) the screws came right out with moderate force, the sealing was all good, the hoses came off good as they should. Putting the new OTB on was no problem, just be sure to attach the bottom side coolant hose first, rather than trying to attach the hose after you already have the OTB bolted on.

Reactions: Immediately after install I hooked the battery back up and let the car idle for about 10 minutes like you're supposed to. The RPMs began at about 1000 but settled down within 10 seconds to 600 where they usually are. I listened for any air leaks or coolant drips and didn’t see anything so I eagerly jumped behind the wheel and took it for a spin.

I’m not gonna lie – my first and honest reaction was “is this it?” I knew ahead of time not to expect more than 4-5hp, nothing earth-shattering, but I was very much disappointed. Maybe it was my fault for getting so excited I hyped it all up in my head, but I had to really pay close attention to notice any change in throttle response or extra ‘oomph’ through the RPM range. The difference is very, very minimal (to me) from stock throttle body.

5 days later and more than 166 miles driven since then, things are weird. The engine sort of “lunges” at slow cruise (like through parking lots) or coming to a stop. The RPMs spike a couple hundred RPMs for a second then go back to normal. This never happened before the upgrade, and if it continues I may put the original TB back on since I have not sent it back for core yet.

To sum it up, to me, I probably would hesitate to recommend this upgrade for fun. Safety and recall notices aside, I personally don’t find this upgrade worth $299 / $249 from a performance standpoint to me for my money. This is NOT to discourage anyone from doing this, or from ordering from twowheelin because he has nothing to do with my satisfaction level here and was professional in every step of the process. If your TB is working fine, and you are not worried about recall issues from the ‘AA’ models, consider what I have said. Again, it’s just my .02 USD and others will surely disagree.




--- On a side note ---

Yesterday driving down the highway I smell coolant for the first time ever inside my car. So I pull into my friend’s house and see a trail of coolant on the ground. I cut the engine, pop the hood, and see coolant spraying all over the place from the top of my engine. FUCK! So I hung out and came back when the engine cooled down and the smoke steam settled.

My dumb ass attached the top coolant line to the OTB under the part next to it (closest to the grille) rather than over it causing a kink in the hose and it split. Coolant was literally coming out like a geyser at first. So I just took some pliers and removed the top hose clamp on the OTB, cut the section with the crack off, and put it back on with no problem. (thank god for that inch of slack!)

However I still see a small 2-3” coolant puddle in parking lots and the garage whenever I leave the car sit for a few hours after driving it. I don’t know if this is the remainder of my geyser eruption just finding it’s way out of the engine bay or another leak? I don’t visibly see anything dripping either. All I know is I’ve never had any problems with this car before I did this OTB upgrade. This incident last night, although caused by me, doesn’t help matters either.

To make the situation worse, my friend saw the spraying and came out with a gallon of water to put some in the coolant reservoir so I didn’t run low. By accident he opened the power steering fluid reservoir and poured an ounce or two of water in with the power steering fluid. SHIIIITT!!! So I made a small drive to wal-mart and bought a turkey baster, a bottle of power steering fluid, and suctioned out what PS fluid I could and replaced it with clean PS fluid. I was reading horror stories online today from people who did this and DIDN’T get it flushed and it can cause a world of problems. Looks like I’ll be getting my PS flushed completely tomorrow.

Would you flush your PS fluid if you were me? He said "an ounce or two" of water got into the PS reservoir. I would assume the water would float on the PS fluid, and my suctioning would have cleared it out?

What about the coolant puddle now, I know it's impossible to diagnose with a stupid online post, but any suggestion where to look first?

[smokeU6s]

Seems like this mod really only works if you have a full CAI or the CP-E MAFCI to really take advantage of the optimized air flow in the TB.

[madman49]

QUOTE (ka-boom @ Nov 10 2009, 05:37 PM)

I knew ahead of time not to expect more than 4-5hp, nothing earth-shattering, but I was very much disappointed.[/b]

%

A 4-5 HP gain is what it is. It is a lot of money for a little gain, but like what Smoke6s said it'll be better with a CAI combo.

[Egierda]

Are you ATX or MTX?

EDIT: n/m...I just read your post. You're ATX.

The peak power gain definitely isn't what you're going to notice, however, it was a night and day difference in throttle response for me...

[kpjimmy]

I personally have an ATX and have the TB spacer and OTB with a k&N SRI with an apexi filter element. From what I have read the spacer regulates the airflow whereas the fluctuation of RPM's are relatively normal again.

I have removed and replaced my stock a like 5 times to trouble shoot my hesitation issue in the past month. And at each time I went as far as put the stock TB on, NO TB spacer, stock TB WITH TB Spacer, OTB NO spacer, OTB WITH Spacer. After each different combo, I test drove up and down the hill around my apt and have to admit the best combo is the TB Spacer WITH OTB, without much surprise to me hehe....

After cleaning the TB, MAF and installing a clean filter element, I can say the stock TB with no spacer seemed like less torque and I had to press a little more down on the gas to get going. With the spacer, no different. OTB no spacer, really little difference with it on, other than the whistle one hears from a result of the TB spacer. But with the combo of TB Spacer and OTB, to me, seems a lot more "peppier" than stock setup. But maybe its in my head because of the money spent lol...no I do indeed feel the difference. Yes NOT a lot, but def a difference in torque with a combo of SRI/OTB.

[Egierda]

For 6cyl ATX owners. Put your car in neutral and blip the throttle around....if you can't notice a difference in throttle response, you're crazy.

[joebrez]

I just installed mine this weekend. My Initial thoughts were the same, throttle response was improved but not huge. The power gain was minimal at best.

Now after 250 miles, the difference has grown. The car just drives better. The throttle response seems to keep getting better and I now notice the power difference. The other big change for me is my engine doesn't seem to be as much as a light switch. Previously, It had nothing before 4K. Now the power builds much more linear.

A++ Mod!!!