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Chowderhead mistake

Green Heep

NAXJA Forum User
I have done some foolish things in my time but I believe I have truly outdone myself. Let me tell you a story.
My 96 XJ started bucking and kicking and threw a TPS low voltage code. No sweat, I'll change that baby out and be back on the road. Well, the T20 bolts wouldn't come free and after rounding out two bits i called it quits. I thought I would take the throttle body off and take it to my buddy's house the next day and get the TPS bolts out with the throttle body in the vise. With the throttle body off i stuck a blue shop paper towel in the intake to keep debris out of there. Later that evening i went back out to put the windows up. The rear window was moving slow and without thinking I started the engine to get the window moving faster. Did you know the 4.0 will run without a throttle body? Well yes sir it sure will! for the split second it ran the RPM's shot right through the roof before I shut it down. Oh no, I thought. This is going to be bad. I opened the hood and as I feared the shop towel was gone. Tried to reach into the intake with the four finger grabber tool (official name) to no avail. the next day I replaced the tps and I told my buddy what my kid did ( no way was i leaving myself open for that crap) and he came over to help. I got lucky, we were able to pull most of it out of the number one cylinder spark plug hole and took the chance of starting it. Runs like a sewing machine, smooth as silk. Ran it for 30 minutes and have not had any sign of trouble. Gotta love the 4.0. I hope to be obsolved of my sin by sharing it here with you guys. Hope you got a laugh from it!
 
Reminds me of a story I was told by a former coworker. He had worked for Jay Bittle, owner of JBA Racing. They had an engine on the dyno that just kept asking for more airflow, so they set things up with the throttle body just stuck to the intake with a thin bead of RTV (or something like that) and a pulley setup so they could lift the throttle body right off the intake from outside the dyno room. They did this, and the engine really took off. Everything was great until a shop towel got caught up in the draft and sucked right into the intake. They immediately shut down the engine, fearing the worst. Funny thing was, that towel went right through the engine. It came out the exhaust, intact. Neither the engine nor the towel seemed to have suffered any particularly adverse effects from the event.
 
Yeah, they're tough little bastards... I had a buddy of mine that had the displeasure of working as a service tech at a stealership during Cash for Clunkers. Well, Uncle Obama and the feds didn't want the engines from these trade-ins ending up in another "clunker" so the engines needed to be destroyed. Their SOP for doing this was to take the condemned out back, put it on jack stands, take off all the wheels and tires, drain the oil, start the vehicle up, put a brick on the accelerator pedal and check on it in an hour. He said every 4.0 (and for that matter, 318/5.2 Magnum) vehicle they did this to was still running after an hour. At that point, they would re-install the oil drain plug, fill the crankcase up with the sodium silicate solution they were issued for this purpose (imagine super-fine sand mixed with water) and repeat the process. Even then, he said some of those engines still ran for another 5 or 10 minutes before completely giving up the ghost.
 
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