^this

I need someone to do mine too.

 

Well if you guys want to drive a day I'll help. LOL.

 

It's super easy, mine were just stained black at 25k Kms, but I did em anyway. The prep work is the most important , make sure u cover everything in plastic, towels also help to catch the wallnut blast. I taped a vacuum hose to the end of my blaster so I could get in there good, worked awesome. Duct tape all the open seams in plastic. And have a shop vac handy, also taped a fuel line to the end of that so I could stick it in by the valves to vacuum everything out. My rule was blast a few seconds, them vacuum everything up, took longer , but no mess after to clean up.

 

Any opinions? This was just released

CRC Intake Valve Cleaner

So they say - specifically designed for GDI engines for cleaning valves. Instructions are to to spray before the turbo which, if true, and if this works at all, would be by far the easiest intake manifold method that I'm aware of.

 

Looks like it may work decently kind of like a seafoam but maybe better idk. How bout you test it out and and afterwards take a pic of your valves and give us a full report?!?! haha

 

That's good looking stuff, but would need to see results from others before I would try it.

 

Well I just ran a can of it because I'm getting all the symptoms of heavy valve deposit, which would only make sense since I'm at 90k miles now and I more than doubt the previous owner (at 60k) actually cleaned the valves at any point. And I have no good way of cleaning it via media blasting unfortunately other than paying someone.

There is basically no information about this stuff except that it exists, being as it's so new I imagine.

I followed the instructions to the letter. I immediately noticed heavy intermittent hesitation on local roads. I just drove it on the highway for about 25 minutes (as per instructions). I kept light on the throttle until I did a u-turn and re-entered the highway and put it under some load on the ramp. It was not happy, literally chuffing and puffing at one point. The car instantly produced a smoke cloud worthy of seafoam but all at once - although darker.

I let off of course and all was as it was before. The can implies that most of the cleaning occurs during the first hour of driving afterwards. I have no idea if I should keep off the throttle or not. Part of me wants to just go WOT and clear out the carbon as they used to say, but I'm not going to risk it with zero information.

This may be the first "review" on the net I'll update later if anyone is interested. I was having seriously long cranks and/or difficult startups and I'm pleased to say that it started right up after the treatment but I'm cautious to attribute it to the cleaner until I get a few more in, particularly cold starts.

Will update if my car explodes as well

 

yes please give us an update. With spraying that much and following directions, I would think it would take a good bit to clear it out.

There isn't any amount of spirited driving that will clean that carbon build up out. That stuff has to be blasted and scraped out.

Good luck.

 

Yeah I imagine if I hammered on it now it would certainly clear out whatever it's loosened up, I just don't want to accidentally clear out my turbo or a piston either lol.

I forgot to mention that my build up was very likely amplified by the fact my MAF was reporting maximum air flow at all times (655 g/s ) and causing me to run quite rich. Took me a while to find but pin A to my maf had a broken wire inside the insulation. Since from my understanding the valve buildup is from unburned fuel blowby mixing with the oil, which then burns off into the PCV and then onto the valves themselves, I can only imagine how much worse I was making it by running rich 24/7.

 

That sounds horrible. Blow by city.

 

If you read the data sheet on it. Its a gas and diesel mixture! That doesn't sound good!

3. Composition/information on ingredients
Mixtures
Chemical name Common name and synonyms CAS number % Liquefied Petroleum Gas68476-86-8 30 - 40 Diesel Fuel No. 268476-34-6 20 - 30
Distillates (petroleum), Sweetened64741-86-2 Middle
20 - 30
Solvent Naphtha (petroleum),64742-94-5 Heavy Arom.
1 - 3
Naphthalene91-20-3 < 0.2

 

Looks very interesting. In curious about it now...

 

Spec sheet here
http://www.crcindustries.com/faxdocs/msds/5319.pdf

It's aerosol petrol and diesel.

 

If it wasn't made by a well established company like CRC I would have waited. Hardly proof that it's not going to damage my car, I know, but I also wouldn't be particularly worried what is probably a tiny amount of diesel fuel either. If you purposefully mixed a small amount of diesel into your gas tank (this was a thing) over a long period of time you'd likely destroy parts of your fuel system but this is pretty different from that. Even if you filled your entire gas tank with diesel your car would simply stop running because it just can't ignite it.

Gasoline in a diesel engine is another thing entirely and can lead to disaster.

I'd be worried about other things with it honestly. I'll see how it goes

 

Honestly, this makes me feel better. That's a pretty simple concept that's been around a long time. But I've never heard it being sprayable into the intake. Perhaps someone stumbled onto it and saw that it was actually effective and heard the cash register cha ching

 

Do keep me posted! I does make sense to use it cause it wont evaporate and will soak in to the crud but will it eventually burn off? Or create more build up on it since diesel is more like an oil? Not bashing the product. It may very well work and I applaud them for trying to make a product for gdi's. Wish they showed results on the page.

 

I wish they sold it in Canada too! I would try it on an old head I have in my garage just to see if it starts to break up the crud on the valve with out scrubbing it . Anyone want to try that first? Show some results too?

 

They sell it at NAPA so perhaps they have it there, and I'm sure everywhere else crc anything is sold soon to follow. For what its worth it wasn't listed on autozone's website when I bought it today at autozone so don't let that discourage you from looking or calling one

 

^^^ this. folks always want a short cut thats cheaper. oh well.

 

Fixes:

-Much better PCV system, only the order of 10x more efficient than the stock system (that means the level of plugging I had would be experienced at 850k miles...aka after the effective life of the vehicle)
-2ndary port fuel system to occasionally wash off the valves (there are some super cheap 1 injector systems you see on Fiats in Europe for E100 engines)
-Top end cleaner usage every few K miles (on a virgin or freshly cleaned engine)...this would need to be tested

 

I'm under no illusion that this is a short cut to a solution, even the manufacturer claimed result is "23%" and even from the most respectable additive companies that can only be the most extreme case they tested (if not outright fudged). 23% is obviously not close to 100%. But I am interested to see if it works at all. Without actually looking at the valves before or after I can at least get an anecdotal result if my car behavior changes after this "clears out", because it's been consistently starting badly.

My focus the last week or two has been trying to figure out my MAF, which I finally did. I'm now just moving to this issue and frankly I didn't realize how badly gunked these could get until I started looking into it today. I have no real way to reasonably media blast my valves without paying someone for it unfortunately which is something I may have to do.

If it works, and if it proves to be safe down the road, it could be a nice maintenance thing for people with this specific issue (GDI). As far as I know most induction cleaning of this nature simply does nothing for the valves in this case. Also it's nice to see something that actually says turbo safe for once, specifically.

 

So you fixed the maf and then used the crc stuff? No cold start after the maf fix? I would bet fixing the maf and LTFT re-adjusting helped the starts more than the intake cleaner.

 

Well... I had a small string of issues. First I blew my endtank a long time ago now and threw a P0100 code (along with the extreme symptoms of course), and fixed that. Much later I had a bad seal on a hard pipe to my intercooler on the hot side which was really evidently a boost leak, and threw the same p0100 code. I replaced the MAF for good measure, but it sounded and felt like a leak. Once I found a reducer coupler that went away for months. Then I threw the same code a little later and drove me nuts because I thought it was just another leak since the first two were both essentially some variation of a leak. I messed with all the connections and actually introduced another leak through the Hahn CAI because it fit like complete ass and the hood would push down on it and mess up the angles. But at the time it seemed like after I touched the CAI, the car performed worse, so perhaps it was actually the original problem.

But in fact no, after I switched to the stock airbox it returned to normal driving behavior but I was still throwing the code. So while I did solve a potential issue, it wasn't the real one.

I replaced the MAF again with no change. I was busy with work and other stuff so I drove it this way for a while because there was no actual decrease in performance, although it smelled rich sometimes especially in a garage (but even the mpg changed so little it was negligible).

About a week and a half ago I was having start up problems. Long cranks, poor idle, for the first 10 seconds or so. I decided to just really sit down and figure it out and found the MAF pin in the connector was actually broken. Problem solved (and wow, an actual MAF issue with the MAF code)

Well it cleared the code and eliminated the rich condition, however the startup issues remained. Based on this series of events I looked into it and decided the next likely issue is valve buildup based on the symptoms, most likely exacerbated from driving it rich combined with the age of the car. That was today, and after seeing what needed to be done to really rule it out (the OP here) I found the CRC stuff and gave it a try.

So kind of a long drawn out ordeal, but I'm working my way through it. MAF was fixed for 4 days before I tried the CRC.

 

Well i know we are past the point, but you really should scope your valves before and after using such a product. We love results whether good or bad.

 

Yeah I wish I did in retrospect.

I've driven it a solid 2.5 hours over the last day and it's still having an effect. There is some light colored smoke on startup (similar to right after seafoaming). I can still "hear" it, but it's greatly diminished. I can smell it still, it definitely alters how the exhaust smells this whole time.

But the good news is that is has had a positive effect for my specific problem. It starts up virtually perfectly now. No long crank, no stuttering, idle is dead even. Seafoam did not change this at all (which I forgot to mention that I tried last week). There is an undeniable difference.

So all I can say so far is:

- It definitely isn't BS. It does do something.
- For me, it fixed long cranking and crappy start ups

What I dont know:

- If it's safe
- How long this is going to take to leave the engine. It's definitely going away, but it's taking forever compared to anything else you put in your intake

I'll be changing my oil and plugs for good measure once it seems like it's all out.