I went to clean my wife's throttle body out with brake cleaner and I think I sprayed too much into the throttle body now the car won't start. It makes a small clicking/grinding noise when I try to start it. What have I done?

 

Uhhh you should have used throttle body cleaner - which is sensor - safe - you may have destroyed some electronics

 

How long has it been? Maybe something is soaked. Just disconnect battery and wait 24 hours to dry and try again.

Good luck

 

u destroyed it it with the brake cleaner, thats y u should always get the cleaner made for it, take it out and go get a throttle body cleaner and clean it again but dont soak it, or better get the Air Mass meter cleaner and clean it with that which is more safer. and let it dry real good and keep ur fingers crossed that it will start. good luck.

 

After about an hour of just letting the car sit it finally started up. It's a little white smoke coming out but I'm sure eventually that will go away

 

Oh that's scary! Happy to hear it started back up.

 

Funny but scary thing about is I didn't tell her about it at all. She would've panicked and gotten mad lol. But yea an hour later it started up. Thank God lol

 

Maybe I don't understand what the clicking/grinding noise is but I can't see how MA sensor fault leads to, what sounds like a starter issue?
If you had impacted the sensor then it should have turned over fine, not fired and thrown an error code. None of that happened, so you sure it wasn't a coincidence, where was the clicking/grinding noise coming from? Did it turn over normally when trying to start it?

Just curious, Glad it's running now!

 

White/grayish smoke means you flooded it and it's burning off excess fuel. You sure dodged a bullet. LMAO brake cleaner for the intake.

 

I just re read your first post. Did you remove the throttle body or just sprayed brake cleaner directly into the intake?

 

My guess is he didn't remove the throttle body and just sprayed it while attached to the intake manifold. The contents of the can then went through the intake and flooded his engine.

 

Hilarious! Do you use laundry detergent to do the dishes and dish soap to wash your car too?

 

The more I ponder the OP's first sentence, the more I think this isn't car-related.