A carburetor also metered the volume of air that went into the combustion chambers, but it served a second purpose, too: It mixed air and gasoline into a fine mist. Years ago, there would’ve been a carburetor where the throttle body is. The throttle is what controls the airflow into the engine and the assembly that houses and works with the throttle is known as the throttle body. The air then flows through a tube to the throttle. That helps remove dust and debris so that it doesn’t enter the combustion chamber and cause trouble. Outside air enters through the air intake at the front of your vehicle and then travels through the engine air cleaner element. Throttle body location on a 2016 Mazda CX-5 What’s a Throttle Body? However, there is one component that mechanics like to clean when cars run rough, have a rough idle, or out of an abundance of caution. It may need its oil changed once or twice a year, and there is a cabin air filter to change a few times on your way to 100,000 miles, but there’s not much more to do until the big single service involving a timing belt change and spark plugs at around that point. In modern cars, many maintenance intervals have extended almost to the life of the car. Yet, we all knew what a tune-up entailed after nearly a century of paying for them.
The tune-up, as it was once known, has come and gone. That big circular port in the engine is the throttle body/Image Credit: John Goreham Tune-Ups Are a Thing of the Past