neversummer

It seems no one knows for sure why GM ran coolant through the TB. (does GM even know)

Some say it was to prevent icing. BWAHAHAHAHA Though it's been a while since I've flown, I recall that icing is a condition that occurs in AIRPLANES for these reasons:
-- High altitudes equal less temp
-- Carb temps decrease with venturi effect
Therefore it gets cold in there. (at 14000' MSL in Utah it's DAMN cold even in the summer!) ((I can neither confirm nor deny flying that high in VFR)). Throw all that together and you get water vapor that likes to turn into water non-vapor -- ummm... ice. So when you sense a decrease in engine performance, or on any landing, you decrease the performance even further by venting hot gases into the intake to melt the ice to make it safe.

Anyway I drove a car, a couple cars actually, in Flin Flon, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert (hehe), and Snow Lake -- All our friendly northern neighbor cities. And none of those cars had a heated TB. The only thing you worry about up there is plugging your car in at night. You know, to recharge the batteries.

Boy this is a stupid long post. Or just a stupid one. Anyway the question about cold starting has been answered. The coolant's gonna be just as cold as everything else. I've heard that it was designed as an automatic choke....

Oh, and in the summertime when your hood is hot enough to cook an egg and you're out cruising with the A/C on (which actually can lower temps in city driving cuz it forces the fans on, but that's another topic), your coolant in your TB is supposed to cool the intake air temp. .... .........
wait, not agAiN....
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

I'm certainly no expert. Otherwise I would be making 6 figures. But these are my humble observations.

Why did GM do it? Why not? Research and development? Some nut thought, 'Hey, look, instead of running this line there, let's run it through here!' Make a mistake and make it big. You might learn something from it. (Like my post...) Maybe that's their motto. I know sometime's it's mine.

Muskys SS

For something that is so simple to do, why not.

Although the air is in the throttle body for a very short time, the heat can still be transfered to the intake itself.

I don't see how somebody would BS and post fake dyno results of the TB bypass?

But for something that is cheap and quick to do????

Famous words from Nike: "JUST DO IT"

shoebox

When I wrote that about icing, I was just guessing or maybe I had read it somewhere. I was about to give up and let it go, then I decided to consult the factory manual to see if it actually said anything about it.

It does -



I guess now we know.

NOMAD

At partial throttle positions in severe weather, the throttle body bypass is put there to prevent icing of the blades and more importantly the IAC. As cold damp air passes through the throttle body and gets trapped in the IAC passages, it can eventually freeze, causing the IAC to stick or stop working completly. They could have routed it so many diffrerent ways, but it may not have heated the IAC any.

LT-1's aren't the only cars with a throttle body coolant. Saturn has them, 2.8, 3.4, etc. It's one of those GM "We won't give it a chance to break" type things. It's been determined by the public it's absoloutly wothless.

As for HP gains, The dyno doesn't lie. For the cost (Free), it's worth the 5 minutes it takes to do

-Shannon