Not sure if its an issue or not. The front butterfly valves on the throttle body (87' T2) open slightly delayed from the rear ones. By front I mean closest to the elbow and rear closer to the UIM. The front valves have that spring and plastic piece on them. When I open the throttle all the way you can see all of the linkage move and the front valves open about a second later than the rear ones. Is this designed like that, or is my linkage just gunked up and sticking, Or maybe a weak spring? Seems like the front valves not opening right away would be bad for throttle response. Let me know something If you know about this.

 

It's supposed to work like that.

 

Yes and no. This system is only on the Turbos, because they have such a long intake tract compared to the NA's. If you open the throttle too fast at low rpm there's a slight delay between when the throttle opens and the AFM reacts, so the extra fuel required doesn't get injected immediately. This causes a stumble. The delayed secondary throttles prevent this from happening, but at the expense of some throttle response.

If you're prepared to learn how to use the throttle properly (i.e. not opening the throttle too fast at low rpm), then you can gain that throttle response back by removing the upstream throttles. It's a pretty common mod.

 

You can remove that *spring with plastic thing* easily by remioving the small cotter pin. Then zip tie the secondary linkage open and drive it like that for a while to see if you like it or not.

If you like it , you could leave it that way or do the *throttle body mod* which entails removing the throttle body and then the outer set of throttle plates. I doubt there is much gain in removing the plates vs tieing them open, but that's just me I suppose.