Cobra4B

Hey fagatrons who know 5.0 motors... turns out the Panoz has an australian Falcon motor. It's still a stock 5.0 but with the manifold flipped. I have some questions:

What are these two ports on the back of the throttle-body? Are they coolant lines for the factory application?


Is this my coolant temp sensor?


What are these two plugs? One is not connected.


What is this do-hickey on the left side of the TB? It's not plugged in either.


How do I remove the throttle cable w/o mis-adjusting it? I want to remove the TB, but my Z06 is fly by wire so I'm not familiar w/ a traditional TB.

I don't think it's good to have this blocking your air bridge... out she goes.





The gay GTRA filter shield will be getting stripped and repainted wrinkle black.

Fabrik8

I know nothing about Falcon engines, but I'm going to make some observations out of general knowledge.

Those are coolant ports, you don't need them for a race engine. No one cares about emissions stuff, you don't have to worry about throttle icing, and you don't want to heat up the intake air I'm assuming.

That looks like a coolant temp sensor, yes. It could be a fan temp switch also, but you'll have to see where it goes. Fan switches aren't usually right on the block, so the fans won't turn on until after the thermostat starts flowing, so I'm pretty sure it's a coolant temp sensor.

The plug that isn't plugged in is an extra throttle position sensor. Some ECUs use dual sensors and use an arbitration algorithm in case one has a fault. Whatever ECU you have only needs one it looks like. Notice that there are two of them stacked, that's a common configuration and you could replace them both with a single unit but there isn't any need. You normally can't take just one of those off because the shaft design is a little funny. You now have a spare to plug into, but sometimes one of them will have an inverted signal from the other, so check before using the other one as a spare.

That's one of the crudest stock throttle bodies I've ever seen, it's a true piece of crap, but hey, consider the engine it's on..

The disconnected monstrosity on the side of the throttle body plate is probably some type of cold start or fast idle thermo valve type thing, it's on the same plate as the coolant fittings, so I'm assuming that's all emissions and cold start crap. It looks like a solenoid or vacuum dashpot, don't know which, but it's probably something you don't have any need for.

Get rid of that mid plate, and make an aluminum spacer to replace it all. You could probably just get some shorter studs and mount the throttle body right to the manifold but I'm sure you'll agree that the extra intake length would be better anyway. Get yourself to a machine shop..

Throttle cables are easy, just put them back where they were, make sure the throttle can move freely without binding or being held open, and you can adjust the cable to take any slack out of the pedal that you don't like. There is usually a threaded adjuster somewhere at one of the cable ends to make adjustments like that.

I'm guessing that tube is to smooth out the flow across those lovely intake tube corrugations.


I know this is an ex driving school car, but that's the most un-race engine I've ever seen in a Panoz. For the love of God, it's painted tan..

Cobra4B

Thanks Chris... you're spot on. Kevin (Floda aka Flim Flam) answered most of the questions in the EMF forum, but he said he'd never seen a TPS w/ two sensors... glad you know about them.

Apparently the "do-hickey on the left is the EGR valve... I'm going to make a blockoff for it and then cap the TB coolant lines on the right. He said some race teams use the tube in there to smooth out the intake and stop it from constricting at ultra high rpm, but I doubt that will be an issue w/ this 250 hp motor.

I'll be building a medium-effort carb'd 331 with my father next winter.

Fabrik8

Cool, my intuition still works.. You may find that your Vette has dual TPS sensors, a lot of cars with drive by wire have dual sensors for safety, but they're often built in to the throttle body if the motor and motor driver is all integrated.

Sorry, did you say carb'd????? Keep it FI!!! Sorry, I work for an ECU company, I'm a little biased..
But if you are going to get a 331, think about an Edelbrock Pro-Tuner EFI setup.. Look closely at Edelbrock's site, you'll know why..

Cobra4B

I say carb'd because there's no easy way to put a scan tool on this thing if a sensor goes bad.

You were right... from corral.net

Fabrik8

Yeah, most non- drive-by-wire ECUs only use one. I didn't think about the transmission controller using its own TPS, but that makes sense. A lot of tranny controllers piggyback the TPS signal off of the ECU anyway, so whatever.

Cobra4B

I pulled the EGR off and took some time going over all the wireing w/ fresh electrical tape and zip ties. Cleaned it up a bit and got the wiring all secure. When road racing if it can move it will move. I'm going to get one of the EGR block-off plates.

So if the EGR was hooked up on a factory car where does the exhaust get injected?

91se-r

The exhaust gasses get sent up the center of the intake manifold through a port and is routed to the EGR plate (the thing with the 2 coolant lines) and dispersed to the incoming air stream via a port in the plate.

Cobra4B

^ Gotcha... there's 3 lines at the rear under the upper manifld that are capped off.

91se-r

The fitttings under the upper intake are vacuum, PCV and cannister purge. If the emissions have been bypassed then some of those will be capped.