Horrible dirty Aviator Intake

[ponkotsu]

Here is a photo of my Aviator intake. Not sure if this would make it run rough or not, but I removed it and am getting it cleaned up. More of an issue I think is that maybe there is something wrong with the PCV system or something else that caused the end runners to get so dirty. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Ironically I cleaned the throttle body last week and the intake looked clean. But the only one I could see is the nice shiny one in the middle. I was pretty shocked to see how dirty the rest of them were.

 

[fusseli]

That does look pretty grimy. The PVC valve is really easy to check. I would replace it with a Motorcraft though and not a cheapo one. If you compare them side by side and blow through them there is a huge difference in quality.

 

[ponkotsu]

Wow! What a difference. Much smoother and more throttle response. By far the biggest improvement of anything I've done to it. As sludged up as it was, I imagine the prior owner was using cheap gas. I cleaned as far down as I could into the heads also. It was like molasses. Went for a usual 25 mile drive and got 14mpg where I normally would get 12. Now it seems like my flaky IAC valve is worse though. Probably only was hitting on 4 cylinders at idle before so wasn't so important that the valve was working slowly. Now the RPM's come down too slow.