Decarbonizing GDI Engines....

   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines....
  • Thread Starter
#41  
Obviously, the trick, if you will, is to do a wet clean with Seafoam every oil change. I can't wait to get into the Transit.. Bore scopes are cheap today. You can get a nice color digital one at HF for about 60 bucks, has a built in light and darn good resolution. I use mine on my rifles all the time for inspecting chambers and copper buildup in the barrels.

I'm waiting for some warmer weather to do the Transit and then the Focus. The Transit is running pretty rough as of late.

Sounds like we could do a Seafoam commercial pretty easily :).

If your borescope can export pics, pls post what you start with on the Transit, and what it looks like after treatment, Round 1.

Rgds, D.
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines.... #42  
Sounds like we could do a Seafoam commercial pretty easily :).

If your borescope can export pics, pls post what you start with on the Transit, and what it looks like after treatment, Round 1.

Rgds, D.

I have to do a SeaFoam kudo... I was at Menards today and they had the gallon size on the shelf for 45 bucks. Last gallon I bought was in a metal can and it was 60 at Autozone and I thought that was a good deal. The new gallon size is in a plastic jug, much better to pour than the metal gallon and a heck of a price too.

far as I can tell, the bulk stuff is the same as the pressure can of intake cleaner, the pressure can was 12 bucks at, you guessed it, Autozone. No spray cans at Menards, wishing there was....

Thinking again (probably a bad thing) to use the crankcase vent inlet in the airstream pre- throttle plate and introduce the SeaFoam there in a liquid state with a squeeze bottle. Might be the cheaper way to go instead of the pressure can. Certainly lots cheaper in the long run, considering the recommended dose interval is every oil change.....

I wish I could get the borescope in there in as much as it has a video out port but I'd have to pull the intake manifold off and that would be a chore and a half. I'll know soon enough after dosing the engine if it makes any difference. It should. The little 4 holer is idling like it has racing cams. It lopes bad. The wife is getting irritated but I need some better weather.

I'm also wondering if the K&N I installed in the stock airbox somehow impacted the MAP sensor. I wonder if perhapse some of the filter oil coated the sensor and thats adding to the no code bad idle. I guess dosing the engine and pulling the positive battery cable to clear any soft codes and allowing the engine to 'relearn' the parameters will improve the base idle / fuel trim. It returns good fuel mileage always but I've noticed as of late, the tailpipe has a coating of soot inside which is indicative of a bad a/f ratio somewhere in the operating range.

My 2014 Focus SE Flex is getting fantastic mileage. 39 average. I think I can do a Prius 40 even.... not on alcohol for sure. Car is rated at 26/32. First car I ever owned that got better than advertised mpg, especially a 'made in Michigan. domestic car.....

It will get dosed in 3K more miles too.

Opinions on 'pouring it into the PCV feed line would be appreciated. The Transit engine and the Focus engine are twins basically. Only difference is the Focus is throttle by wire and the Transit is throttle by cable. Intake tracts are about the same, displacement is identical as is the valve actuation (DOHC with hydraulic lifters).
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines.... #43  
I'm also wondering if the K&N I installed in the stock airbox somehow impacted the MAP sensor. I wonder if perhapse some of the filter oil coated the sensor and thats adding to the no code bad idle. I guess dosing the engine and pulling the positive battery cable to clear any soft codes and allowing the engine to 'relearn' the parameters will improve the base idle / fuel trim. It returns good fuel mileage always but I've noticed as of late, the tailpipe has a coating of soot inside which is indicative of a bad a/f ratio somewhere in the operating range.

Just a thought, but it may be worth getting some MAF cleaner and wiping down the sensor plate as well prior to pulling the battery cable.

As an aside I changed tires on my truck from passenger tires to heavy and slightly larger LT tires around 20K. Afterward I would have occasional strange shifts and there would be odd times when the automatic grade braking feature (automatic down shifting) would come on. This continued until I pulled the positive on the battery cable while in the process of adding a aux. power distribution block. Afterward the computer went into "learning mode" again and it seems to have eliminated the strange issues I was having previously.

Opinions on 'pouring it into the PCV feed line would be appreciated. The Transit engine and the Focus engine are twins basically. Only difference is the Focus is throttle by wire and the Transit is throttle by cable. Intake tracts are about the same, displacement is identical as is the valve actuation (DOHC with hydraulic lifters).

I have not done what you propose but I know of several folks on a gm forum who are doing the exact same thing in order to get around the less than fun task of inserting and orientating a spray straw just upstream of the throttle plate in the 1/2 ton gm trucks. If I remember correctly they use the PCV hose to take small sips of sea foam from a cup. I believe the trick is to not get too enthusiastic and limit the amount of time the PCV hose is allowed to suck Sea Foam. I'm thinking like one to two seconds per sip.
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines....
  • Thread Starter
#44  
I have to do a SeaFoam kudo... I was at Menards today and they had the gallon size on the shelf for 45 bucks. Last gallon I bought was in a metal can and it was 60 at Autozone and I thought that was a good deal. The new gallon size is in a plastic jug, much better to pour than the metal gallon and a heck of a price too.

far as I can tell, the bulk stuff is the same as the pressure can of intake cleaner, the pressure can was 12 bucks at, you guessed it, Autozone. No spray cans at Menards, wishing there was....

Thinking again (probably a bad thing) to use the crankcase vent inlet in the airstream pre- throttle plate and introduce the SeaFoam there in a liquid state with a squeeze bottle. Might be the cheaper way to go instead of the pressure can. Certainly lots cheaper in the long run, considering the recommended dose interval is every oil change.....

I wish I could get the borescope in there in as much as it has a video out port but I'd have to pull the intake manifold off and that would be a chore and a half. I'll know soon enough after dosing the engine if it makes any difference. It should. The little 4 holer is idling like it has racing cams. It lopes bad. The wife is getting irritated but I need some better weather.

I'm also wondering if the K&N I installed in the stock airbox somehow impacted the MAP sensor. I wonder if perhapse some of the filter oil coated the sensor and thats adding to the no code bad idle. I guess dosing the engine and pulling the positive battery cable to clear any soft codes and allowing the engine to 'relearn' the parameters will improve the base idle / fuel trim. It returns good fuel mileage always but I've noticed as of late, the tailpipe has a coating of soot inside which is indicative of a bad a/f ratio somewhere in the operating range.

My 2014 Focus SE Flex is getting fantastic mileage. 39 average. I think I can do a Prius 40 even.... not on alcohol for sure. Car is rated at 26/32. First car I ever owned that got better than advertised mpg, especially a 'made in Michigan. domestic car.....

It will get dosed in 3K more miles too.

Opinions on 'pouring it into the PCV feed line would be appreciated. The Transit engine and the Focus engine are twins basically. Only difference is the Focus is throttle by wire and the Transit is throttle by cable. Intake tracts are about the same, displacement is identical as is the valve actuation (DOHC with hydraulic lifters).

That is a great deal at Menard's - if I was closer, I'd be on that like a rottweiller on a T-bone ! That size is not common up here..... can't remember seeing it at a regular retail store.

Small Seafoam cans now have some kind of note recommending that liquid into vacuum lines be done by a lic. mech. Not saying don't do it, but intakes are a lot more complicated/different today. With a carb or TBI, the manifold was designed to carry vapour in all runners, so judicious dosing of liquid probably more or less evens out between runners on those older designs.

GDI intakes are designed for pure air only, so the issue I can see is the liquid not distributing evenly between runners - that will vary a lot between various GDI engine designs - why Seafoam's legal dept wanted that note on today's cans.

Try a Ford forum if you haven't already, and see what success other people have had with that engine.

Rgds, D
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines.... #45  
I'd recommend putting some of the liquid seafoam into a cheap, 1 gallon chemical sprayer that you can pressurize and viola, you now have a pressurized can of seafoam and you can control the spray pattern and the volume?

Your thoughts on the K&N oil mucking up your MAP and AIR TEMP sensor may be right on. This is actually a very common problem with oiled air filters. I would pull those two sensors and clean them very well with throttle body cleaner. As well I would clean the throttle body itself with the same cleaner BEFORE I injected any SeaFoam. You may not need to do the Sea Foam treatment at all.

I have done this on engines and it's made a world of difference.

DEWFPO
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines.... #46  
I'd recommend putting some of the liquid seafoam into a cheap, 1 gallon chemical sprayer that you can pressurize and viola, you now have a pressurized can of seafoam and you can control the spray pattern and the volume?

Your thoughts on the K&N oil mucking up your MAP and AIR TEMP sensor may be right on. This is actually a very common problem with oiled air filters. I would pull those two sensors and clean them very well with throttle body cleaner. As well I would clean the throttle body itself with the same cleaner BEFORE I injected any SeaFoam. You may not need to do the Sea Foam treatment at all.

I have done this on engines and it's made a world of difference.

DEWFPO

I'm thinking it could be an issue. I really didn't start the rough idle until after I cleaned and reoiled the K&N.. I'm sure it has intake valve carbon however, it has 77K on the odometer. Good idea on the 1 gallon sprayer, never thought of that. I'll do just that.
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines.... #47  
The oil used in those filters will definitely mess up your air meter.
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines.... #48  
Pretty hard not to use K&N products, in as much as I'm a distributor for them...... I probably over oiled the filter when I cleaned it and it atomized some of the filter oil and deposited it on the sensor. That will get a spritz too.

I even run K&N's on my lawnmowers.....lol

My 2004 Chevy Tracker with 155 grand on the clock has a twin cam V6 GDI engine with a K&N and I never had issue one with it and no carbon either (far as I know).
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines....
  • Thread Starter
#49  
I'm thinking it could be an issue. I really didn't start the rough idle until after I cleaned and reoiled the K&N.. I'm sure it has intake valve carbon however, it has 77K on the odometer. Good idea on the 1 gallon sprayer, never thought of that. I'll do just that.

I'll forth or fifth that.... happens enough, as mass-air sensors aren't usually designed to deal with oil contamination, at least on an OE intake.

I was talking with a guy recently, who was planning to seafoam his late model, but high-mileage, Kia Rio. Didn't see the engine, but what he was describing was a problem with the intake routing to certain cylinders (vs. where the seafoam would have to be poured in). I think his background was as a machinist, so he was planning to drill out access ports in the plastic intake, very close to each cylinder. My first instinct is to keep an intake pristinely sealed, but I understood his logic - competently done that would be a solution not that dissimilar to what one poster here described on the future Ford and Toyoda intakes.....

Rgds, D.
 
   / Decarbonizing GDI Engines.... #50  
It's not really plastic (like say styrene), the intakes are more of a structural fiber composite and that would work too. I just happen to own and operate a machine shop as well. You'd have to carefully drill each intake runner with a left hand helix drill so as not to get any swarf in the intake runners and then seal the holes carefully, probably with push in synthetic rubber plugs. Myself, I think I'll go the pre throttle body route. I'm sure the throttle plate and metering ports could use a 'spritz' as well.

If you can make a bullet proof oil pan from a fiber composite, why not. I think the valve covers on FCA vehicles and most Fords are 'plastic' as well. Detroit Diesel and Cummins Diesel have been using structural fiber pans for a few years now and overhead covers, problem with the pans are there is no impact resistance so a stone to the pan equals a catastropic failure. Plain bearing engines don't last long when starved for oil.
 

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