Direct Inject cleaning - question for the 5.0 members
 

Question is specific to GDI, not Jaguar necessarily.

My wife's Cadillac has the GDI engine and it's nearing 30k miles which is the manufacturers recommended initial carbon cleaning treatment.

The dealer indicated they connect the cleaner directly to the fuel rail, then clean the butterfly valve on the throttle body.

I know you can also clean via the air induction system which would also address carbon build up on the valve stems.

I'm happy to do this work myself. I've cleaned my SV8 valve body in the past and run injector cleaner through the air induction system. (and I'm aware of the molly coating on the butterfly valve)

Have any of you done this yourself or have a product you or your mechanic recommend?

I'd appreciate your thoughts and recommendations.

Your wife can visit my Jag any time she is in Atlanta !!!

Bump - anyone? 301 views. No product recommendations? Again, I'll go though the air intake.

You shouldn't have to clean the injectors if you are using a good grade of gas with sufficent detergents in it. As for the back of the valves carboning up I understand the process to clean them requires injecting the cleaner/solvent downstream of the maf/mas sensor. If to much carbon then I understand they remove the air plenum (and SC) to clean the back of the valves.

Has it been established that the Jag GDI engines suffer from carbon build up?

About the only GDI that I know of that does not suffer carbon buildup is a Lexus design. They wisely placed an auxiliary injector in the intake manifold for WOT operations. Not sure its a cure, but it seems to be a sound decision considering the growing problem.

BG44K has dominated the market and being the product of choice for several years, but other manufacturers have jumped on the bandwagon since the GDI has proliferated. There may be other names equal to the task today. (My local Ford dealership uses the BG44k Product)

At 30k+ miles, I had the process done, and reclaimed about 30 ft/lbs of torque. I bought the car used, and have no idea if this was the first cleaning, but for those gains, I'd have to assume so.

Vince

My question is in relation to my wife Cadillac SRX as it also has GDI. I was asking for input based on Jag owners experiences with the GDI carbon cleaning. I've also searched the Caddy forums but I trust you guys take better care of your cars.

Jagtoes answered my question. That was the approach I was going to take. I didn't see anything in the Jag repair manual on it.

It cost $200 for an SRX manual and their in book form only - sigh. Welcome to the 1980's I guess.

Where did you have that done and how much was it?]

Your best to go to the BG44K web site and search their list of authorize re-sellers.
Turns out my local Ford dealership was the only one in my county.

About $200 for the whole process which includes cleaner in the fuel tank along with the injection into the air intake at idle. Maybe a tad less, now that I think about it cause I had them flush my brakes with Motol 600 at the same time.

I can validate the 30 ft/lbs increase, as I Dyno'ed the car before and after.

V

There is a show called 'Wheeler Dealers' where they buy older cars and resell them. In one episode, they repaired an XK8 for a contest giveaway. This car suffered from high carbon buildup. They used a decarbonizing process which seemed to take care of the issue. Feel free to check out the link below. They start discussing the process at approx 20:30. I would say its worth it to get it done based on the results.
Note: This is not a 5.0 but it just illustrates the process.


Series 9 Episode 7 - Wheeler Dealers Episodes

I watched that show, Edd used Terra-Clean products and their proprietary machinery to accomplish that process. Applicable part is at time 20:50

LINK DEAD

I like these guys and am impressed with Ed's mechanical abilities. After watching this video it is not applicable to the direct injection cars to do carbon clean up. The earlier XK8 was a standard FI setup so this type of unit wouls clean up the back side of the valves.

Bingo.

I was just trying to help. I believe i mentioned that it was not a 5.0l.

The other thing is that if an engine is in good operating condition, (putting aside the GDI types that the OP asked about) it will not need or benefit from a 'terraclean' type treatment.

Our engines run extremely cleanly in the first place and the use of decent quality petrol/gasoline will prevent the accumulation of any significant deposits. Even the use of of poor quality (insufficient additives) will only make a minor change in fuel consumption or power output. The AAA released a study on this recently, it's worth reading.

The engine in the video must have had a significant engine fault to have accumulated that many deposits.

A video more directly related to GDI and BG44K products can be found here
https://vimeo.com/3989681

As I said, most GDI engines have this problem, and i would suspect that if you check with Jaguar, they offer a similar cleaning process under their own branding. As does Ford, Audi, VW, Toyota and I'm sure others...

Vince
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.jag...a0b88b36e1.gif