I couldn't get my intake manifold to lean back against the bulkhead… it kept wanting to spring back to its home. So, after some prying and such, I could get my boroscope down to the valves and get some video. A bit dark, so I tried the best I could to get video with my cell phone camera… but that doesn't have the best angle. Probably a good idea to look at both in tandem to get a good idea of what it looks like.

'Before' look at a 2009 MCS engine with 50k miles on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqwANQ3wXQo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cSlFQ3SIqI
https://i.imgur.com/pCfiA.jpg

'After' look at same, post seafoam treatment: (I got a little better with the cell phone camera)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuHxy2qdtC8

'After, after' look at same, after ramming a large pipecleaner-like brush down each intake port as best I could:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQZPYz6JxOk

My viewing setup:
http://fishbert.imgur.com/intake_port_viewing

After ramming the pipecleaner thingy down there, I used up the rest of the Seafoam can on a 3rd treatment just in case it would flush out anything that the scrubbing knocked loose. I don't intend to open it up again to see what it looks like after that, though.

Anyway, the Seafoam certainly did not get everything clean. Can't say I was expecting it to, either, with how caked on it looks. But what I did notice is that there's a chalking gray looking material on the 'Before' view that's not in the 'After' views. The Seafoam may have gotten rid of that, or it may have just made it wet, changing its appearance.

I can't say much about any difference in driving feel, as I just haven't driven it much yet.

All I know is that as soon as I get around to putting in a catch can I'll probably be dropping some cash on a manual 'pull the head off'-style carbon cleaning. That is, unless Hoopty wants to come over and make a few bucks.

 

wow!!

 

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...corrosion.html

 

Ok, another update.

After the last videos, I had about 1/3 left in the Seafoam can, so I used that up and didn't bother opening it up for another look.

After reading some other recommendations on how to administer Seafoam treatments on a MINI, I picked up a second can of Seafoam this past weekend and ran 2/3 of it through using a measuring cup, narrow aquarium hose, and my thumb (to block the rest of the ventilation hose, since I don't have a boost tap). The setup worked extremely well, though next time I'd probably put a kink in the aquarium hose to slow the flow rate down a bit -- really sucked it up quickly. And this time, instead of waiting 5-10 minutes before starting it up again, I gave it about 45 minutes.

When I did hit the ignition, the engine was on the raggedy edge of dying... it really didn't even want to idle. Now, I'd already done 3 treatments before, so I'd seen the smoke before... but this was making me seriously wonder if I had killed my engine. OMG! The incredibly thick plumes just would not stop! I swear it kept going for maybe 10 minutes of revving.

Figuring this had to have done something more than the last time I took a look, I cracked open my manifold again this morning (got too dark yesterday when I did the treatment) and here is what I found:
http://fishbert.imgur.com/another_round_of_seafoam/

Still pretty black, but I noticed that in general, the coked on carbon clumps seem to be more common on the upper side of the ports. I've gotten better with the camera than I was when I started this whole ordeal, so in my early pictures/videos it's difficult to see if the coking was more distributed. But the theory I have is that, when you shut down your engine, the seafoam liquid that gets sprayed all through the manifold drips down and soaks the lower half of each port more than the upper. And perhaps that's why you see things like this (from Cylinder 2) where one side is much cleaner than the other.

The car is noticeably improved; much smoother idle and I haven't had any more 'superknock' faults since that first round of treatments a few weeks ago (I certainly would've expected multiple occurrences over this period of time without the treatments). So, despite having more than 50k miles on the engine before touching anything, running Seafoam through does help and I'd recommend it to anyone in a similar situation. There is a lot of carbon left, though, so I'd also have to concur with others who theorized that it wouldn't do much to get rid of everything that was caked on over that many miles.

I'm scheduled for a carbon cleaning service at the dealership next weekend -- they use a different product and some special injection apparatus; I hope to get more complete details while up there -- and I intend to take another peek once that is done. Other than that, I need to get on top of a catch can option, and figure out a good way to affix hoses to that passenger-side PCV line. Best I can come up with is to cut the factory hose to leave stubs at the manifold and valve cover ends, then use worm clips to attach to that... mainly to preserve the stock squeeze clip attachment at the valve cover. Anyone else have any ideas?

 

Fishbert - How much did the dealer quote you for the carbon cleaning you have scheduled?

 

Fishbert!! Thank you so much for posting the pictures and videos. Makes me feel a little sick inside. I try to do the Sea Foam treatments in rounds of three. Also some places have Sea Foam in a spray can. That works the best and one can is about three 4 ounce treatment or two six ounce treatments.

Your pictures lead me to believe that initially more Sea Foam applied in a treatment is better to help break the coking up. Then maybe follow up with a few smaller treatments to clean it up.

I do the treatments about every 5K miles. Looks like I'll be changing that to 3K-5K miles for the treatment.

Again WOW!!!

 

It's a 2-part service that adds up to around $200.

As part of the service, they introduce some BG product (I think) to the PCV system; and I may decide to only have them do this portion to cut the cost a bit. They (MINI? The dealership? Not sure.) recommend the cleaning now every 15k miles... though as far as I know, it's not covered by the maintenance plan.

I don't necessarily expect it to do much more than the Seafoam treatments I've done... but we'll see.

 

Any chance you could do a how-to for opening up the manifold?

Thanks for posting this!

 

Probably not. Hoopty did a fairly good job back in post #23 (that's what got me started), and my setup is not stock — have an intake that makes it a lot easier to get at the manifold without the OEM air box in the way — so it'd only be maybe 1/2 a how-to.

 

Grumble, grumble... won't know for sure until I get home and have my code reader handy, but I'm pretty sure I had another 'superknock' on an on-ramp coming in to work this morning. Was hitting it pretty hard, though.

EDIT: yes, 'superknock' in cylinder 2.

 

Ok, another update…

This past Saturday I had an appointment for my dealership's standard 15,000 miles carbon cleaning service ($200… ouch!). I wasn't expecting much, but I figured I should at least give it a chance, as Seafoam didn't really do the trick.

I wanted to find out exactly what they use and how they use it, so the Service Manager took me back to speak with the technicians in the service bay about it. This proved extremely helpful.

One of the technicians, after I showed pictures of what my buildup looked like, said the cleaning service I was going to have them do (the product that touches the intake valves in this service [at this dealership, anyway] is this Granitize Tune-Up stuff) wouldn't make much of a dent; that it was more of a preventative thing than a hard-core cleaning thing. He suggested instead running a bottle of BMW Fuel Injection and Induction System Cleaner Concentrate (in two passes; 1/2 a bottle at a time) through some 'fogger' apparatus they had in the shop. He said that what he's seen it do is clean out everything except the really caked on chunks that need manual scraping.

I asked if I could use this product myself with the seafoam method I mentioned (holding the mouth of the bottle at the hose and letting the suction pull it in), and he strongly cautioned against it, citing concern over hydro-locking the engine (I got the impression that this was more of a concern with this stuff than with seafoam-style light weight products [maybe this burns off slower?], but I didn't specifically ask for clarification). He seemed to like the idea of spraying it in with an atomizer spray bottle, though.

[As a side note, he said the shop had experimented with Seafoam in the past, but gave up on it due to less than impressive results.]

Anyway, I had them run a bottle of the blue stuff through instead of the Granitize stuff (they also knocked the price down to around $150… turns out the blue stuff is nearly $50 per bottle!). When it was done, I couldn't open the intake then and there, and I had to get back home (2 hours away) for a hockey match that night… but earlier today (Sunday) I opened it up once more and took a look at what the blue stuff did in there.

This is with about 200 miles on the engine after the blue stuff went through.
And for the sake of comparison, here's what my intake ports looked like after two bottles of Seafoam.
They all look much improved, but the cylinder 3 image is a pretty damn good illustration of what the MINI technician I spoke with was saying. Everything is gone and those port walls are like-new shiny… except for the caked on bits near the valves. Very impressed!

Now I've just got to figure out the best way to remove those remaining chunks. Maybe a pipe cleaner with wire bristles? A metal wire I can pick at it with? … I even read on some truck forum some guy suggesting soaking an old t-shirt in cleaner, shoving it down each port, and using a drill with a certain kind of bit to grab the shirt material and twirl it around (doubt I'll try that one). Hoopty (the OP of this thread) didn't go into much detail on the scraping implements he had success with.

EDIT: Oh, I should add that the 2 hour drive home was fine, but driving around in town later that night (Saturday), the car threw the some CEL-lighting catalytic converter code 3 times (sorry, don't have it in front of me at the moment). It was usually within 5 minutes of starting out after the car had been sitting for a while, and it didn't do it at all today (Sunday).

 

I bought the BMW stuff on eBay. The seller appears to have a constant supply and the price is great and it works great. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/bmw-f...Q5fAccessories

Did the MINI tech use it straight from the bottle? A tech at the bobistheoilguy forums said he uses it diluted,150 ml of cleaner with 400 ml gas. Anyway, I use it with the carfood resuable cleaner feeder bottle which atomizes the cleaner by mixing it with air as it is sucked into the intake or PCV and you control the flow. Very easy and safe and used by professionals. http://www.carfood.com/noname95.html It is actually $10 cheaper if you buy it packaged with some cleaner chemicals.

Also learned of a pressurized system for injecting cleaner into the intake manifold. Do not know anyone who used it or the cost. http://www.terraclean.net/product.php?id=2

 

Just got on this thread after my wife's '08 Clubman S gave a few misses and then cleared up but with a code. Took it to the dealer with 49,920 miles on it...that's right, 80 miles left on the warranty, thankfully. They cleaned the valves, apparently through the intake ports. We'll see. This forum has been really useful. I wonder what MINI USA has to say about this? It seems like this is a factory defect; no one should have to do this at this low mileage, and I certainly don't want to be worrying about it the rest of the car's life.
However...
Maybe they're just trying to be authentic. Does anyone remember the good old days of having to "decoke the cylinder head" every 40,000 miles on British cars?
Mike
'08 Cooper S Clubman (wife's)
'67 Austin Cooper S (mine)

 

Ok, so after some manual scraping, a round of Mopar Combustion Chamber Cleaner (in the intake manifold *and* down the spark plug holes), a new catalytic converter (thank you, EPA-mandated warranty!), and another round of that excellent presto-chango "now you see carbon; now you don't" blue stuff… I finally got a catch can on that damn PCV line!

http://fishbert.imgur.com/catch_can_installed
I didn't plan it this way, but it complements the DoS intake quite nicely.

 

Very nice install.

 

fish, I don't see a black cap fitting as an option with the OCCs on the 42 Draft Designs site. Is that something new, or did you finish the cap?

Elegant install, BTW.

 

See this thread from a while back, which has links to the procedures:

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ut-please.html

Fuel Injection and Induction System Cleaning
Procedure for R50
Procedure for R53
Procedure for R56

 

Thanks! I really like how it turned out, but mostly I'm just glad it's finally off my to-do list.

Yeah, the all black can is an option from 42dd. I think they just added it recently, and they charge a little more for it, but I think it looks nice. My one complaint would be with the dipstick — they powder coated the part of the handle that slides inside the lid, so the finish rubs off right away where it makes contact. I got rid of the rest with sandpaper, but I think that also got rid of some of the material on the o-ring right there that makes the seal at the dipstick hole. I might ask if they'll send me a second dipstick… this time with the brushed finish.

Interesting stuff… but it seems like only one of the 2 or 3 parts to the $200 carbon cleaning service that they do (as it was described to me, at least).

 

Very nice. I understand the PCV line coming off the manifold by cylinder 4, but where does the other line go?

 

why, the other end of the hose, of course!

 

I saw your other OCC install photos. Where did you get the fitting on the PCV outlet from? (the one that clips to the valve cover)

 

Ah, now I see it. I just assumed you replaced that hose entirely and wasn't quite sure how you accessed the lower port and/or if you swapped fittings on the lower attach point.

Nice job! Have you had it on long enough to tell if it is collecting gunk effectively?

 

I bought a second crankcase ventilation hose and removed its fittings. Ended up swapping them too (good thing they are the same connection!) because it pointed the hoses in more convenient directions that way.

The stock hose itself is plastic, but the end piece fittings are cleanly removable with a bit of elbow grease (I used pliers and just peeled the hose material off them). They provided a good attachment point for my own hoses. Well worth the $40-50 I paid the dealer for the extra part.

I also re-used the nylon sheathing of the cannibalized hose to protect the out-flow hose to the intake from any rubbing or chaffing with the other hoses and such it navigates through on its way to the intake manifold. The thing was a real pain to get on the new hose and then to position it properly (didn't think it would even fit, at first). I had to trim that hose a couple times to get the length just right; which meant more fighting with that sheathing to trim without damaging the hose below. But then just a little lighter flame to clean up the frayed ends, and I was pretty happy with how that part turned out as well.

I haven't checked yet. It's only been on since Friday. But if I pull the dipstick while the car is running, the engine starts to labor as if I removed the original hose for a seafoam treatment, so I am reasonably confident there's good flow through the can.

 

does anyone think it would be a good idea to use a metal cleaning brush on the end of a dremel (at low speed) to clean the carbon off the valves? (in addition to coating it with seafoam)

 

I had a choice between a metal brush or a stiff nylon brush.
I went with nylon because I was concerned that the metal bristles might break off easier and fall into the combustion chamber. And a dremel... I think that might increase the chances of bristle breakage.

I don't know much about brushes, though, so take it for what it's worth.