Red Triangle, P0A0F and Throttle error

Today when my son was driving it, he said it seized and dint move until after a while. He parked it as school, i went and scanned it. Had the P0A0F and something with Throttle position error / Throttle error which i accidentally cleared. I cleared both codes and now no red triangle and car seems to be working fine. moved it back and front and seems to be accelerating. After clearing codes, it didn't threw the code for next 5 minutes while i had the engine on.

What can cause this? The throttle error caused the engine start failure? May be it is not reaching the desired RPM within x amount of time? Can i just raise the rpm in "N" and see if engine responds properly?

 

Got the codes again.

 

Going to clean the throttle body. Anything else to try?

 

Thank @MAX2. So have to replace the throttle body? This plastic gear does not looks like a replaceable item. Thought of trying a used one, but with this plastic gear, its better to get the new OEM one.

Never had to replace the Throttle body on a car

I cleaned it yesterday and put it back. Drove few miles and so far no issue. But with this plastic gear inside, it will come back. Stupid design for a critical component.

 

Going to replace with a junkyard unit first. If not good, will replace with new Toyota one. Rebuilt/Re manufactured are available for 1/3rd cost, but don't know how long they last. I will try to open it and post a picture

 

Replaced it with a junk yard unit. The old one had a looseness/play in the flap and junk yard one does not have this. Didn't drove much. Will update later

 

Inner pictures of the one i removed.. For me, all looks fine. The connector for the motor was dangling and was not attached to body. May be the connection was loose? Or could be the looseness in the flap?

The housing. Motor attaches to the right..


Motor..


Throttle position sensor - Back


Throttle position sensor - Front



Plastic wheel - Top


Plastic wheel - bottom

 

I was getting codes for throttle actuator stuck open. Tried cleaning it, but it came back and is random. When it happens, car won't accelerate and have to shut it down and start again to drive it. @MAX2 posted that picture about worn out gear inside. So i was trying to check the same on my old Throttle body. It seems the one in my car is metal wheel and the one @MAX2 posted had plastic. But, the other part(i posted 2 pic of it) is plastic on my car. So far other than the loose flap / loose connector(connector was not attached to body), i could not find anything wrong with it.

If it is was a loose connector and was making random connection to the motor, wouldn't it throw a different code because circuit is not complete? The ECU should be monitoring it? I am guessing that the error posted by ECU, happens when it commanded the motor to close, but because of loose connection, it did not and the sensor could not detect the position and threw the code? But there is a catch in it, by default, it is in the closed position (2 springs). So if it is not detecting as closed, bad sensor? Just my thoughts.

Related link i found -> https://www.justanswer.com/toyota/7dwxg-getting-error-code-p2111-07-prius-related-throttle.html

 

The connector for the motor should be attached to body. It was not attached. Please see the picture. In the picture it is attached. Without it attached, if the connector was not locked to the one from ecu, it can cause loose connection

 

It was difficult to remove and had to squeeze the tab, was not making the click sound when putting it back. The whole plastic is stiff, old age. Wonder if the lock is broken.