Intake valve cleaning

[shnazzle]

One of the top mods at the minute (I think) is swapping out the stock filtration system for an aftermarket one.

A necessary side-effect of this is less filtration. That mixed with perhaps some aged PCV valves and the evap functionality it makes a nice claggy messy that sits on your intake valves.

Now not saying this doesn't occur on the stock car, but it's not helped by an oiled or badly maintained filter designed for flow, not filtration.

So on that note; I've decided to address my claggy valves with a practice I used to do regularly but let slip; feeding a can (or two) of <brand of choice>EGR cleaner through the intake.

Now there's 2 ways:
1) Take air filter off and fire the EGR cleaner through the opening so that it goes past the MAF, through the throttle body and then the intake manifold and finally valves.
I reckon you'll need about 2-3 cans to get it done properly this way. I used to do this using carb cleaner and I'd often go through half a big can of carb cleaner easily, a whole normal sized one. Reason is simple; much more surface area to cover.
Pros: Cleans more. Throttle body, MAF...ish
Cons: Not sure I want all of the residue in the first parts of the intake tube going down into the engine. I'd rather take the TB off once a year or so and give it a good clean separately. Same goes for the MAF and the piping.

2) Feed it through the evap tube. This is the tube that goes from the top of the blue evap solenoid into the intake to the intake.
This is a much more direct route to the valves, which is my end goal here. Skipping the intake pipe and 90% of the throttle body.
Pros: Much more direct route to valves and no risk of chunks/sand/whatever from the intake pipe flying through. Less work really. Much easier to disconnect one little tube than the whole air filter assembly.
Cons: Past the MAF so the engine throws a bit of a wobbler when all of a sudden you're making it run rather rich by shoving this stuff through, so you have to feed it a bit more air. The can says 1500rpm but I can guarantee it will stall at that. Doesn't need to be 3.5k rpm, but a solid 2-2.5k stops the engine stalling

Result on mine for sure. Needs another can but all in all it's a truly noticeable difference to engine running if your valves have never had a cleaning.

This paired with some occasional injector cleaning fluids etc do make for a much cleaner engine. I've had a borescope down my 85k miler's bores and I could see a lot of bare metal on the tops of the pistons. can't be a bad thing.

[shnazzle]

@jonbill might be interesting for you.

[Carolyn]

Guess who's car had horrific intake set-up and bad PCV?? 

[shnazzle]

Guess who's car had horrific intake set-up and bad PCV??

:lurk:

[shnazzle]

What would be very interesting is a pre/post of the valves with this stuff
Any takers for doing this and taking the block apart?hahaha

[jonbill]

Guess who's car had horrific intake set-up and bad PCV??

Err.... is EGR cleaner cheaper than seafoam?!

[delhusband]

after looking inside the bottom of the air filter box and seeing all the debris I gave it a clean to remove small leaves and dust inside.  At this point I was thinking about following the guidelines for the EGR cleaner, and reading the guidelines just raised more questions for me - I'm supposed to inject this whilst engine warm and running at 1,500rpm, without filter in, and there's a lot of dirt in there, will debris get sucked into engine? Do I need to have MAF reconnected? If I reconnect MAF and replace filter box, where am I supposed to inject this stuff?  Should I disconnect the engine intake pipe from the top of the Air Box and inject in there? I'll need someone with foot on throttle to keep revs around advised 1,500rpm and my wife doesn't drive, she'll freak if I ask her for help!

So..... I just left it for another day.

Nice one - this thread has answered a lot of questions I had a while back. TY