how can you tell when a tps sensor is getting bad and is there a way to test it

 

My car would idle funny and some times when i would give it heavy gas the car wouldn't move at all and wanna borg out.I just went to autozone and they tell you how to test it but i didn't bother i just ordered the part and that was that.

 

A search would answer your question.

https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...&highlight=TPS

Basically you need to back probe the dark blue wire and the ground, black wire. To back probe get a thin paper clip and slide into the back of the connector where the wires go in. (You'll need 2 paper clips or one cut in half). Key on, engine off. You should have around .5v with the TB closed and over 4.5v with it all the way open. HTH.

Ben

 

You can test it with a voltmeter as stated, but a lot of times that won't catch noise coming from the TPS potentiometer. If an oscilliscope is used to monitor the rising voltage, it will be very obvious if any noise is present. That's how we used to check them in a tune-up shop I worked in.

 

In addition, an oscilliscope will catch a 'bad spot' in the potentiometer. Or maybe that's what you ment by noise, not sure.

Regardless, if you spent the money on an oscilliscope I'd assume you know how to test a TPS, therefore I assume you don't have one. If your TPS tests good with a meter I wouldn't pay a shop to check it out until you elminated a few other problems first.