2nd Gen R56 Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: The 'Carbon' Problem...

Ford is already doing this with thier direct injection motors. Each DI injector has a secondary one behind the valve. There was supposed to be another advantage to efficient fuel consumption as well but I'm gonna guess it mostly has to to with the build-up from PCV.

I have a friend who is an Audi Mastertech in Vegas. He is seeing the carbon build-up on thier DI motors. He says it's worse on the higher performance cars. (EDIT: Just saw the post BThayer23 put up... )

I'm in a smilar boat to you: I just passed the 42k mark with my 2010 MCS. I drive about 60miles round trip everyday and I'm a pretty "spirited" driver. I'm not showing any signs of build-up. No valve chatter on cold start-up. No hesitation on acceleration. Still feels good. Though, I've never seafoamed the intake.

My Dad has an '08 MCSa and he IS seeing these issues. He has 38k miles. But he does a bunch of short trips. So engine isn't run too hard and not often to full temp. I told hime to start complaining to the dealer. The service guy we have said he can get it done for free. He just needs 2-3 trips into service for those issues before the service manager will okay the intake cleaning as "Dealer Goodwill" (read: Free).

 

Yep.:crazy:

Actually, displacement and HP have nothing to do with it. It's a matter of PCV (Positive crank-case ventilation) recirculating vaoprized oil and particulates that build-up on the back side of the valve because there there is no fuel spray hitting the back of the valve in direct injection that can help clean it off.

So your 400+ HP 4.2l V8 in your RS4 or your 75 HP 1.5l in your Prius are both susceptable to to the issue. (Assuming the Prius gas engine is actually DI; I don't know anything really about Priuses)

 

I'm at 47,XXX miles now with my 2010 and I haven't had any issues. While speaking with my SA the last time I was in (about a month ago) he and I talked about the issue. He seemed to observe that cars that he could confirm were driven to temp AND driven hard (spirited some call it) had no issue. It was the long lopy highway miles at low revs and no boost that showed issues in the 30k+ range and the short cold trip cars that showed sooner than that. This is based on his observations though and certainly don't denote absolute fact.

As far as the seafoam or other water treatments: from what I've heard it helps a bit but once the carbon had bonded it's REALLY hard to remove chemically as it's become very inert/unrreactive in such a base chemical state. SO it might slow the process but not stop or reverse it.

An oil catch-can makes sense to me but I haven't seen any good long term comparo's to say it's a solution or not. It's not going to get everything that the PCV valve dumps back into the intake it should collect a big % of it.

Beam, thanks for posting your experience. I'm glad your dealer performed the valve cleaning. You might want to pop over to the new member introduction section and introduce yourself and post some pics of your ride.

 

Never Seafoamed.

OCC? Oil Catch Can? If you mean catch can no, this is without a catch-can. I will be installing one in short order though.

During a search over the carbon cleaning issue I found a guy on MINI2(... I think) that had a 2010 JCW with 4 tracks days and 62k miles and posted pics. His valves were actually worse than mine but it put the fear of carbon in me. lol.

The official quote was like $560.00. However, if you are paying out of pocket all amounts ar negotiable to a point. I have a good relationship with my service guys and talked'em down to cost for the parts: blasting media (walnut shells) & intake cover gasket. And I paid the standard labor rate but I only paid for the actual hours worked not the "book hours". Knocked me down to just over $400.

No, not cheap. However, that saves me the worry about getting a decent clean and without other work I know the car is good for another 58k miles before needing another clean.

Remember: Mine wasn't actually "that bad". The tech said I would have been fine to keep going for a while but I figure that I'll stop it before my car ends-up like that gal with the 2009 MCS.

 

Correct. Image files are labled as such as well.

 

Do you have pics of your intake ports? That would be great for reference.

I will say I didn't have any sign of an issue either. Car ran fine.