Intake Manifold Sludge Discussion

Pablo · **Joined:** Thu Feb 02, 2006 10:06 pm **Posts:** 1201

That Elephant hose and ORM will reduce the sludging. Ever since I added the provent and did that the MAP sensor is clean. Before it was caked in crud. I think if just stop the problem, the turbo will slowly blow out the existing buildup.

Uffe · **Posted:** Fri Jun 06, 2008 5:10 am

gmctd wrote:

Since yours is an ought three, check the intake plenum, see if it is bolted to the side of the aluminum cover - should be a series of horizontal bolts along the side facing the battery................

Wasn't bolted on. Had the intake plenum looked at from CAC hose side when it had to come off to fit a boost probe, didn't seem to be clogged. A slight bit of oil, but no ash thick clog of soot.

Threeweight · **Joined:** Mon May 14, 2007 5:57 pm **Posts:** 679

I finally got around to installing my home-made PVC provent mod (well, actually made by TDIWagonGuy over on the VW diesel forums, cost me $50 bucks). Essentially a poor man's Provent, made of PVC pipe. After just 50 miles on my rig, the filter media is already turning grey at the top (oil vapor comes in about 4" from the bottom of a 10" by 3" PVC tube, with the exit hose about 2" from the top). Bit of a shocker to see how much oil was entering the turbo.

ATXKJ · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 8:49 am

GoodCRD wrote:

I also cleaned out the intake at 50K. Just remove the intake plenum and put a bunch of rags to catch the run off when you spray brake cleaner through a long thin tube at the hole for the Boost sensor. There is also a plug on the other side of the intake manifold. You can remove that to spray the other side. After you put it back togther just run it hard down the 30 bypass for a few miles. It will smoke a bit then clear up. If you don't want to remove the plenum just spray the brake cleaner in and run it hard. I will be doing this just before changing my oil as normal maintenance. Good luck. Stay away from the D'ambrosa Stealerships. They are real butchers.

Hey this was over in another thread - sounds interesting - if we can't pull the intake - maybe we can flush it?

(also on my Provent I dump about 1 oz/1000 miles of oil/water mixture - so a little at a time but it'll add up)

Larry R. · **Joined:** Sun Jan 21, 2007 1:35 am **Posts:** 92

What if you took the air pipe off the intake and used some chrysler combustion cleaner? This stuff foams up to expand to get into nooks and cranies. I have used it on gasoline engines, works great.

Joe Romas · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 12:26 pm

Larry R. wrote:

What if you took the air pipe off the intake and used some chrysler combustion cleaner? This stuff foams up to expand to get into nooks and cranies. I have used it on gasoline engines, works great.

The problem here is the CRD is a diesel and as such there's not much room for non compressable stuff inside the compustion chamber :shock:

A little Sea Foam down the intake of a 4.0L six is great but try that on a CRD and you'll be driving your XJ again :wink:

nursecosmo · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:22 pm

Doctor B wrote:

OK - so I finally took off the MAP sensor and it was a gooey mess - like the one I've seen pictured in a thread somewhere here - cleaned up nicely with some B-12 Chemtool. I also swabbed out the hole a bit with a number of Q-Tips. Probably not much effect overall, but it cleaned the immediate hole anyway. I also put on my EHM, and did the ORM. I'm waiting for my SGII to arrive. It already runs quieter and stronger. Amazing really. I'm going to try to do a Seafoam purge perhaps - or maybe just put it in my tank. I dunno. I'm reading many threads on it, but it's not clear what's best. But I'm not up to taking it apart and cleaning the intake manifold. Won't it just char up and burn off eventually - if the mods are in place?

Seafoam is a great injector cleaner but it wont do anything for the intake plenum unless you were to find a way to squirt it directly in there probably at the FCV area. Do this only with the motor running or you are likely to hydrolock the pistons and break something expensive.

I really don't think that cleaning the plenum is necessary as a maintenance procedure, as no one has ever actually reported a buildup heavy enough to affect airflow and I respect the wise man who said, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

Joe Romas · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 3:32 pm

nursecosmo wrote:

I really don't think that cleaning the plenum is necessary as a maintenance procedure, as no one has ever actually reported a buildup heavy enough to affect airflow and I respect the wise man who said, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

Actually DieselToys reported a very clogged manifold on a engine out of a wrecked CRD with 60k miles

Having first hand experience on a VW Jetta tdi at 60 and again at 120 I can tell you it's a fact of life with EGR diesel engines :cry:

If you've looked at your MAP sensor just imagine what it looks like inside where it resides :wink:

Doctor B · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 5:10 pm

Well, the initial mods are done - the EHM, the ORM, the Fumoto install
after tapping new threads, and I wait for the SGII so I can clear the MIL.
I filled it up for the very first time - $80 - AAARRGGGH! Say, how much
is biodiesel? And I put in the can of Seafoam for the heck of it. I know
it won't go to the intake manifold as such, but I'm hoping that the sludge
that's in there will just dry up and go away somehow, burn off or something.
I'm dreaming I guess. I'm going to consider the things you guys have posted,
and will eventually try something. But it sounds like the only real way to do it
is to clean out the manifold directly. But do you have to take it apart. Or could
there be some way to flush it - without getting the gunk into the engine?

Sir Sam · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 5:16 pm

Doctor B wrote:

Well, the initial mods are done - the EHM, the ORM, the Fumoto install
after tapping new threads, and I wait for the SGII so I can clear the MIL.
I filled it up for the very first time - $80 - AAARRGGGH! Say, how much
is biodiesel? And I put in the can of Seafoam for the heck of it. I know
it won't go to the intake manifold as such, but I'm hoping that the sludge
that's in there will just dry up and go away somehow, burn off or something.
I'm dreaming I guess. I'm going to consider the things you guys have posted,
and will eventually try something. But it sounds like the only real way to do it
is to clean out the manifold directly. But do you have to take it apart. Or could
there be some way to flush it - without getting the gunk into the engine?

the only way you could try spraying some chemical stuff in there and not worry about "hydro" locking the engine would be to remove each one of the glow plugs and then do it.

That way you effectively remove a "spark plug".

Doctor B · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 5:18 pm

Oh, I see I missed something up above - ATKJ posted a post from Good CRD that describes
just what I was thinking about:

"...Just remove the intake plenum and put a bunch of rags to catch the run off when you spray brake cleaner through a long thin tube at the hole for the Boost sensor. There is also a plug on the other side of the intake manifold. You can remove that to spray the other side. After you put it back togther just run it hard down the 30 bypass for a few miles. It will smoke a bit then clear up. If you don't want to remove the plenum just spray the brake cleaner in and run it hard..."

I need to ask Good CRD how this worked out for him. Anyone else try this yet?

Joe Romas · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 5:20 pm

If you've done the ORM then you'll have a cel. The Sanguage and most (all?) scanners loose communications after differing amounts of time. Our data bus is kludged mess

Hold up on further mods till you drive it for a tank or two and get a feel for it and some mileage figures. My all intown short trip driving gets me 20 to 22 summer and 17-20 in the winter. I'm happy with that. However my highway mileage is only a couple better and that's keeping the speed and rpms down :roll:

Some get 30 and better but not mine :cry:

Doctor B · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 5:21 pm

Thanks Sir Sam, interesting take on that. But how does that
Good CRD fella get away with it the way he described?
Maybe the brake cleaner evaporates quickly?

Doctor B · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 5:27 pm

Thanks Joe, The MIL / CEL isn't too annoying - and I turn it off
everytime I scan the car with my laptop. I'm trying to find
a good software to use with my ElmScan5 (ELM 327), that
will work well with the CRD - that scantoolnet thing is too limited
and I'm too cheap to buy digimoto.
The scanguageII seems to be working well for folks, and only
needs to be on for the first few minutes to clear the MIL.
I could just plug in the MAF until I start the car then unplug it,
but it would be a pain to do this with every startup.
And it sounds like the SGII has some other neat features
like trip computing etc.

Joe Romas · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 6:35 pm

Doctor B wrote:

Thanks Joe, The MIL / CEL isn't too annoying - and I turn it off
everytime I scan the car with my laptop. I'm trying to find
a good software to use with my ElmScan5 (ELM 327), that
will work well with the CRD - that scantoolnet thing is too limited
and I'm too cheap to buy digimoto.
The scanguageII seems to be working well for folks, and only
needs to be on for the first few minutes to clear the MIL.
I could just plug in the MAF until I start the car then unplug it,
but it would be a pain to do this with every startup.
And it sounds like the SGII has some other neat features
like trip computing etc.

Let us know how you make out with the elm327 chipset. One good thing about the elm is that many users of it are not in the US and maybe down the road someone will get into our bosch ecm :lol:

There's a thread in the tech section to report results of various scan tools. I use a VAG-COM on a P166 :shock:

lap topand it will read most parameters.

Doctor B · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 6:49 pm

I tried a version of Vag-Com, but I couldn't get it to work.
Sometimes it would see the port, but never the ELM.
Do I need to set it up differently? Do I need a different
version of Vag-Com? The only thing that seems to
work is Digi-Lite and that Scantool.net thing, just
very limited in usefulness. I'm hoping to find
something better. I may just lay our the $$ for the
full version of Digimoto.

Joe Romas · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 7:06 pm

Doctor B wrote:

I tried a version of Vag-Com, but I couldn't get it to work.
Sometimes it would see the port, but never the ELM.
Do I need to set it up differently? Do I need a different
version of Vag-Com? The only thing that seems to
work is Digi-Lite and that Scantool.net thing, just
very limited in usefulness. I'm hoping to find
something better. I may just lay our the $$ for the
full version of Digimoto.

The only versions of VAG-COM that works with generic OBDii are the later/current ones that are keyed to a genuine vag-com adapter :wink:

I actually ordered a digimoto elm scan unit once and after 2 months of non delivery and excuses I cancled the order and updated my first generation vag-com adapter :lol:

nursecosmo · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 10:55 pm

Joe Romas wrote:

nursecosmo wrote:

I really don't think that cleaning the plenum is necessary as a maintenance procedure, as no one has ever actually reported a buildup heavy enough to affect airflow and I respect the wise man who said, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

Actually DieselToys reported a very clogged manifold on a engine out of a wrecked CRD with 60k miles

Having first hand experience on a VW Jetta tdi at 60 and again at 120 I can tell you it's a fact of life with EGR diesel engines :cry:

If you've looked at your MAP sensor just imagine what it looks like inside where it resides :wink:

As you can read by toy'z own description the buildup was not enough to affect performance

http://www.lostjeeps.com/forum/phpBB3/vie ... ht=#296229

Dieseltoyz Quote
"the engine has 57,014 miles on it. I purchased it for R&D for our kits so I am unsure of the driving habits but I verified the mileage when I went to initially look at the vehicle at the yard. It was a rear total vehicle and the cluster was still installed. They fired up the engine and revved it up. It seemed to run great so I bought it and took it to the shop. It was only after I began cleaning stuff up that I noticed the intake was so dirty. The MAP sensor was much like the ones here on the forums that I've seen. So I removed the intake flange and shined a light up in there and it was horrific! I probably removed over 2 cups of grime within 5 minutes of scraping with just my finger. It was then that I decided to remove the intake and have it hot-tanked. There's just no way to get to the runners without pulling the intake and hot-tanking it. VW Tdi's have this exact same issue so I was kind of expecting it. -Todd"

I'm not saying that it cant or wont affect performance eventually but as of yet no one has reported a problem. Perhaps a good time for a cleaning would be at timing belt replacement.

Joe Romas · **Posted:** Sun Jun 08, 2008 11:30 pm

[quote="nursecosmoDieseltoyz Quote
"the engine has 57,014 miles on it. So I removed the intake flange and shined a light up in there and it was horrific! I probably removed over 2 cups of grime within 5 minutes of scraping with just my finger. [quote]

His own words tell the story :shock:

nursecosmo · **Posted:** Mon Jun 09, 2008 3:19 pm

dieseltoyz quote
"They fired up the engine and revved it up. It seemed to run great so I bought it and took it to the shop. It was only after I began cleaning stuff up that I noticed the intake was so dirty"[/i]

As you say his own words tell the story.

Intake Manifold Sludge Discussion

Who is online