Ok, the cleaning went fine.

I put it all back together, and plugged the two electronic plugs in. I started the car up, it took a while to finally go, but it did. I tried revving the engine, only went to 2500rpm and would stop. I stopped the engine and restarted it, same thing.

Well, it turned out that the MAF plug (i think) was not in all the way. I pushed it in, and engine worked fine (had to reset the CEL). I just want to make sure that i didnt do anything bad to the engine. It feels fine now (cleaning it helped me chirp 2nd for the first time in 2 years ), but i am just neurotic.

I assume that the ECU limited the engine because the it thought the MAF sensor was shot, and the ECU thought it was protecting itself, but i just want to make sure.

 

bump

 

You're correct.

Dont worry, no harm was done.

 

what did you use to clean your throttle body?

 

stp throttle body and air intake cleaner

it was actually much easier than i thought and it made a noticable dif too (higher idle, smoother acceleration)

why does that little bit of dirt affect performance so much, is the butterfly plate sticking or something?

 

well, I just cleaned out my throttle body a few days ago.
I put all the connections in tight and started it up. At first it was like the engine didn't want to get fired up. It sounded like an old carbureted engine all out of tune.

So then I floored the pedal and it fired up almost instantly.

I think when you spray in all those cleaning chemicals, it totally changes the amount of oxygen that is left in the manifold so it gives the engine are hard time to start at first. Plus the fumes probably alter the MAF reading for a few seconds too.