Anyone who's been following rockman's and my saga for our 454 TBI rebuilds is probably familiar, but I'm trying to rebuild the TBI on my 454 here. I don't particularly want to send it anyplace, and the rebuilder place I found said they don't have any cores of mine, so I should just send mine in. No thanks.

What I did find was a tool kit online designed for replacing your throttle bushings on TBI-equipped vehicles. The tool can be found here:

http://www.supercooltools.com/

It's $170 and includes enough bushings to do 5 TBI units. Well, I only have one TBI unit, and I don't want to pay $170 to replace the bushings in it. However, if 5 of us (even 2 of us) split the price of this, suddenly it goes down a lot.

So, I'm wondering if anyone else has the want/need to replace the bushings on their TBIs (454, 350, 305, 4.3, whatever, it supposedly works for all) and would like to go in with me on this? The way I would figure doing payment would be as follows:

I'll buy the unit, use it once, and report whether or not it's good or a POS. The second person pays me 4/5 the original price, and I'll ship it for free. Third pays the second person 3/5, etc. Even if there's only one other person who wants in on it, I'd be glad to absorb more than 1/5 the cost and not keep the tool, just because it would save me a lot of money. If anyone is interested, message me or post back on this message.

Hope I can find at least one other person who needs to do this! I wish I'd found this tool before rockman started, then he and I could have split the cost on it if he'd wanted to.

Have you tried http://xtremefi.com/ They have these bad dogs for $160 http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/454-350-GM-TBI-54mm-BBC-tbody-850cfm-Truck-SUV-Z28-TA_W0QQitemZ260121280369QQihZ016QQcategoryZ33558QQ rdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Maybe that would be the way to go. I can't say I really have any need for larger throttle bores, and I doubt it will give me any power gain by itself, but at that price it might be worthwhile to just go ahead and do it if nobody is interested in splitting the tool.

I have two 454 TBIs, one with 255K on it. I'll check them and get back with you.

Sounds good, marc. Here are my symptoms:

1) Rough idle (not awful, but far from ideal). This is caused because the bushings produce a vacuum leak.

2) When letting the throttle close quickly (i.e. "Oh ****!" and slam on the brakes from cruise) the throttle gets stuck in the closed position, and I have to slam the gas pretty hard to get it unstuck. This is caused because the plates can get stuck at an angle that they aren't supposed to.

3) When I pulled off the air cleaner last night, I was able to physically move the throttle shaft quite a bit in the up/down and forward/back direction. By "quite a bit" I mean it was noticable play, probably around 1mm or so. By comparison, the rebuilt one I got had zero play in it.

Let me know!

Rebushing should cure that idle. You know everything I did to mine, but that is one thing that I have noticed is a lot smoother idle.

I was going to go with that company that is on Ebay, but I knew that I could get mine rebushed and cleaned for 50 bucks so that was the cheaper route for me. And I wasn't sure that 4 MM would make a HUGE difference for me on a stock engine.

I wish I could of gotten in on that tool with you! Could of started up a loaner tool program on the site here! :) A lot of people don't realize how worn their throttle shafts are. On mine I didn't have much play at an idle position, but at cruising speeds, it had quite noticeable play.

Mine is really noticable at idle. That means I don't even want to think about how bad it is at cruise. :(

I suspect that getting this fixed will make a noticable improvement in my idle, and hopefully in my running/power/mileage as well. This probably screws up what position the TPS sensor reads, which won't help running any.

My overall thought on what I'd like to do here is:

1) Use this tool and rebush my current TB (I don't think that extra 4mm is going to help me any since I have no interest in hot rodding this truck)
2) Get a rebuild kit (probably from xtreme-fi) and use the stock pressure regulator since it supposed to be the adjustable one on this truck
3) Get a pressure gauge setup (probably try out the xtreme-fi one)
4) Buy a new set of Venom injectors

The injectors will be the major cost here, but I think I'm better off just getting new ones. Depending on how many people I can get in on this tool deal, the total cost will probably be around $300-350 (injectors are about $225). I figure if I end up having an effectively new TBI setup, that makes it worthwhile. Also, I will then be able to sell off my old injectors and recoup some of the money.

C'mon, TBI guys! You know you want in on this! :)