2000 B3000 Broken Throttle Return?

[itinerant]

Hi all,

I have a 2000 Mazda B3000 4WD Reg Cab Manual transmission with 143,000 miles. I've had it for 7 years.

This morning on my way to work I was driving about 50 mph when I felt the accelerator pedal 'give' - the resistance in the pedal just went away and all of a sudden my foot went to the floor and the truck accelerated. Hard. So I put in the clutch and the engine raced, of course. I sort of wiggled the gas pedal and it slowly came back, rpms slowly came back down. I carefully drove the rest of the way to work, the engine racing a little every time I shifted (although not as bad as I feared it would - maybe up to 4000). I also noticed that at idle, it won't go back to its normal idle speed; instead, it stays at around 2000 rpm.

I don't know much about throttle linkage, but I looked up at the pedal and the cable seems fine - it's not getting stuck in the housing or anything, and the pedal moves completely freely, it just has no resistance or willingness to return back to the normal position once your foot is off it. So I'm assuming that there's just a spring somewhere in there which finally rusted through and broke, or something like that. Does that make sense? Or is there a second cable that handles the throttle return (like on a carburetor?) Your help is greatly appreciated! I don't have a local mechanic that I know very well, so I'd just as soon try to tackle this issue myself (if anyone knows a good mechanic in Bergen County, NJ, let me know!).

Thanks!