Anyone have a good pic of s4 n/a throttle linkage?
 

I'm helping a friend get the 88 he just bought running. It's having issues idling and on deceleration. It also seems to have a massive version of the 3800 rpm hesitation. At 3800 it starts hesitating, it almost feels like fuel cut in my turbo, but as the title says, it's n/a. We tried adding grounds, which helped, but didn't fix the problems. I noticed that the problem only happens when the gas pedal is pushed more than halfway so I thought the butterflies might not be opening for some reason so I took off the the duct and found that it looks like this picture. I'm assuming they're not supposed to be open like that. So does anyone have a good picture of the throttle linkage so I can figure out whats missing?

Crap, the picture didn't work.

hey brian, I did a little research, and found out that they actually are supposed to be open like that... I also found out that there is very likley a vaccum leak somewhere, so maybe you could help me find that somehow... like by tightening up stuff... Here is an e-mail I got from the rotaryresurrection.com guy...


Youre talking about the throttle plates. THe set you see on top, sticking
out, are the secondaries. IF you look behind those, there are another set,
that is closed unless the throttle is being pushed.

Ill try to explain the function of this setup, but the secondaries you are
talking about SHOULD be open when the engine is off.

IF youll notice, theyre attatched to a vacuum actuator on the front of the
TB. There is a line from this, to the back of teh TB, to that beige plastic
deal. Then, another line from here, to the manifold runner. When the engine
is running, the runner, and the line from it, are vacuum. When the engine
is off, there is no vacuum. The beige thig is a temperature valve...it is
open when cold, and closes when it gets hot (coolant runs through this via
the larger hoses). So, when cold, the vacuum from the manifold hose passes
through the valve, and over to the vacuum actuator. THis, draws the
secondaries closed. WHy? To keep you from raising too much hell when the
engien is not fully warmed up...keeping air restricted from entering the
engine keeps you from raising a lot of hell.

SO then, the coolant in the hoses warms up, and the valve closes. Vacuum is
cut off from the actuator, and it allows the plates to spring open. Now air
can flow farther inside, and you can raise hell. Get it?

I dont see that you need a new TB. In fact, many people, including myself,
get rid of this set of throttle plates altogether...take the plates off,
the actuator, and pull out the shaft, and fill the holes with jb weld. This
is because a) it gets rid of stuff you dont need anyway, since we're now
smart enough not to raise hell when the engine is cold anyway, and b) even
when open, these plates can cause a little bit of airflow restriction,
which means a tad less power. The difference is not measureable, but its
just something we do to clean things up when working on the engine.

Bottom line, dont worry about it. IF your car runs ok, dont screw with it,
or you'll regret it. IF it runs poorly, then take it apart, throw away all
teh useless BS, clean everything up, cap off teh holes, and put it back
together...itll run great.



he seems to know what he's talking about, and in another e-mail I asked him if he had any idea what was wrong, and said "could be literally 50 things, can't tell w/out being in front of it" :-/

Lets try this...

HA! It worked. I should mention that this picture is NOT his car, and I know that someone is holding the butterflies open.

I guess its different than mine then, I went and checked before posting that.