Hi all.

 

While doing a little research into the slight misfire, stutter I am experiencing a number of people believe  that carbon build up is the problem and petrol cleaning additives will not help as I have a direct injection engine.

I then noticed that terraclean now claim that with a new tool (s tool adapator) that they now can clean the inlet manifold and injectors on a direct injection engine.

Has anyone used this new method or heard how successful it maybe?.

I have only heard bad things about that process :-/

Here are a couple of recent Briskoda threads about Terraclean.

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/358123-terraclean-huge-problems-monte-carlo-tdi/

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/347171-anyone-terracleaned/

Only heard doom reports of it. Read up on the forums to see the general views.

Quite a positive review here;

 

http://www.mk5golfgti.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=86445.0

Yes there are some horror stories but mainly diesel owners.But this is for direct injection petrol engines seems a pretty new process as these engines have never not benefitted from this kind of clean before.

I think I will try to research it a bit more before I make a decision.

Personally I'd just remove the inlet and clean it by hand to de-coke. Plenty of guides online and probably some YouTube videos too.

The wife's Mini Cooper S suffered with coking up and as you say most cleaning products are ineffective due to the direct injection so anything you add to the fuel system is a waste of time. I tried BG248 for petrol engines and it made no difference where I have used this before with great results and it's diesel counterpart. I was recommended a product called Seafoam which I did one treatment of and got instant results but it was short lived and the stutter returned. Not sure if it only cleaned it enough but not entirely to cure the problem and repeat treatments may have cured it altogether.  

With the Mini it would never stuttered when the Sports mode was selected which I can't explain. A litre of oil every 800 miles (500 miles and BMW would have accepted there was problem) meant we didn't keep it long and it's now someone else's problem. 

 

Edit.

If you do use Seafoam warn your neighbours first as it kicks up some right exhaust smoke.

Edited 24 September, 201510 yr by CWARD

Really don't have the confidence or tools to do it myself. is this a service which is offered by professional ?

You could take it somewhere but I did it myself using Youtube videos

Wow that seafoam stuff looks pretty good and looks a lot simpler to use than a clean out.Anybody  else used this method?. 

Thanks CWARD how long did it last before stutter returned?

Just a couple of months which makes me think it needed more than one treatment to clean it properly.

You could take it somewhere but I did it myself using Youtube videos

What cleaner did you use ?

 

Any tips to share ?

On the Mini I used Seafoam as above. I followed these instruction http://www.northamericanmotoring.com/forums/how-to/178640-maintenance-how-to-do-seafoam-treatment-r55-r56.html remember to introduce it very slowly as you want it misting inside rather than being a liquid. 

A quick search on Youtube for the TFSI gives you https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmMvi7o6Ja4

Wow that seafoam stuff looks pretty good and looks a lot simpler to use than a clean out.Anybody  else used this method?.

I do this using mineral turps, degreaser, methylated spirits and water.

https://youtu.be/hHF-Jdw0eto

The problem with coke in direct injection petrol engines has been known ever since Mitsubishi (under which patent VW build their TSI/TFSI engines) came out with thir GDI engines nearly 20 years ago. The Mitsubishi garages used a system where they flushed the inlet manifold while it was on the car.

Terraclean probably does the same.

Edited 25 September, 201510 yr by Tranberg

Previous owner of my car had a garage strip the inlet and decoke it - they measured the flow before and after too... Seems like a much safer way of doing it.

Can't say how much he paid as the receipt is for that, new top mounts, new thermostat and resetting and airbag light for £575

Sure, manifold off and walnut blasting or solvents & picks are safer and probably more thorough but the cost would be in the region of AUD 800 (GBP400).  That gets a bit annoying having to do it every 50k-70k miles.

 

I'm fairly comfortable with chemical cleaning - I first started running water injection in cars back in the late 70s and it wasn't a new idea then.  I'm pretty sure Spitfires used water/meth injection (or was it the opposition?).

Manual cleaning (removing inlet) is the only real way of making sure as much carbon is removed as possible. Some chemical cleaning may remove some deposits but nowhere near as much as manual cleaning.

Water/Meth is the only real preventative to carbon build up

How much is a process like this likely to cost?