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740weapon | profile | all galleries >> My 1990 Volvo 740 GLE (16v) >> Throttle Body "Knifing" tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

Throttle Body "Knifing"

First off, I’m a cheap bastard. I went to a few junk yards looking for 960 throttle bodies and 16 valve intake manifolds but none were to be found. I then searched for said items online only to realize that I’m too cheap to drop the probably $60 for the two items shipped to my door. Ideally a 16v intake manifold can be ported to accept a 960 throttle body and then the ducting to the AMM can be changed accordingly, total cost for such an endeavor would have probably been $120 or so.

Another nice aspect of porting the intake manifold would be that the injector bungs are practically blocking airflow in the runners of the 16v intake manifold and could easily be ground down to increase airflow. Since this car is my daily driver and I didn’t feel like diving into it at the time, I “knifed” the stock throttle plate instead of actually doing something worthwhile.

When a throttle plate is knifed, the rod is supposed to be mostly removed and bonded to the disk at the two edges using solder or some other type of adhesive, this is in itself sketchy, but I would have also had to fill in the stock screw holes in the throttle plate. Not wanting to get into it, but also being bored. I molested my throttle body a little bit and this is the result.

I ground down the rod a bit wherever I could, removed the ends of the mounting screws, and made the leading edge of the plate more streamlined. Did it improve my cars performance? Probably not. But at least it didn’t cost me a dime, and I don’t wonder if knifing the throttle body would make my car faster.

I don’t not recommend this mod. But if you do it half assed like I did, don’t actually expect anything to change about your car.
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