Throttle cable is locked! Need help diagnosing

[Nitro413]

hey everyone

This forum is my best bet....there wasn't anything specific the non-modified parts.

so as I pulled into my driveway coming home from work today, my car stalled and a little bit of smoke came out of the drivers side of the hood, closest to the windshield.

The smoke stopped quickly, so I popped the hood and everything seemed to look alright. I started the car, and it started right up and idled fine. Went to give it some gas, the the pedal would not move....

So i pulled the throttle right at the throttle body and that worked fine.

At this point, I'm pretty stuck on what to do though. I started tracing the throttle cable back, and found it is pretty complex.

If you follow the cable from the throttle body, it loops around, and goes into a metal box mounted on the chassis to the left of the throttle body. It looks like it is some sort of pulley system; there is a cable coming into the bottom (which I assume is connected to the gas pedal) and 2 cables on the front: 1 is the one coming from the throttle itself and the other goes into a solenoid or something in front of the battery. That solenoid goes into another solenoid.

I'm not sure how to check any of these components to see if they are shot. I'm also wondering of one of the solenoids caused the smoke (which would mean the smoke traveled across the engine and came out the driver's side).

And help diagnosing would be greatly appreciated....I really don't want to start taking the throttle cable apart (i couldn't find that in the manual).

Thanks!

 

[zippyshoe]

The metal box you are describing is part of your cruise control system. This box has two "input" cables - one from the gas pedal and the other from a device controlled by the ECU. This box has one "output" cable which connects to the throttle body itself. This way, the gas pedal can control the throttle plate when cruise control is not in use. When cruise control is active, then the ECU can control the throttle plate in an attempt to maintain a constant speed. The metal box itself is a purely mechanical device and is generally pretty reliable. You may want to trace the cable between the box and gas pedal (both in the engine bay and in the cabin) to see if there is anything obvious preventing free movement of this cable. Check in particular the area between the gas pedal and where the cable passes through the firewall. Since you were able to move the throttle plate by hand, then the cable from the box to the throttle body is probably able to move freely.

 

[KFT0001]

From your description it sounds like you melted your throttle cable. If your engine ground is bad, loose, disconnected or whatever, it can use your throttle cable as a ground wire. Definitely check for the cause of the short before you just replace the cable and figure everything is okay. You got pretty lucky, worst case could've been an engine fire.

http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194404
http://www.dsmtuners.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28445

 

[Nitro413]

Thanks for the replied guys

KFT,

I think you called it! I started looking around, and take a look at this picture:

ground cable

I'm pretty sure the smoke was the rubber on that ground wire. I'm not sure what could have caused that though...


zippyshoe,

Thanks for the info. Since it's probably not the throttle box that has problems, i'm guessing inside the cable guide that the ground wire is sitting on (in the picture above), there is a melted throttle cable....


Any idea on what would cause that to happen? it seems that the cable fried and snapped, and thats when the throttle cable became the ground, like KFT said, and just welded itself to the guide tube. good thing my nearby fuel-pressure reg. and gauge isn't leaking....

 

[siceclipse]

the small gauge ground wire is nearly 12 years old.
thats what happened to it.

go to mistu or the junkyard and pick up a new cable (i really suggest mitsu for this one)
and go to a speaker store and get 12gauge wire (about a foot of it) and 2 "loop" connectors.

replace the ground and you should be fine.

PS cut the 1 foot of 12gauge wire to fit what you need.

While doing this you might want to get 4gauge wire and replace the 2 OEM grounds coming off the battery.