How To Clean Carbon Off Your Engine!

I guess direct injection actually sucks if this is the result...

2016 I had a 2007 Astra 1.9cdti van and for a diesel I thought it was nippy..
90k on it.. after about 8 months of owning it my friend borrowed it and drove it 216 miles at 70-80mph so it had around 4 hours running on the motorway around 5000rpm..
when I got back in it I couldn’t believe how much more responsive it felt so giving them a good run if they have been short journey round town cars does actually help revive them without any snake oil additives…
And I think it was probably running on red diesel and hadn’t had an oil change or filter done as I only brought it to run my dogs round in and transport ladders on the roof rack and could get dodgey mots so services weren’t done by me in two yrs of owning it.. only got rid after changing a fuel pump and noticing one of the glow plugs was snapped and just fused back on so it stuck and did work but trying to change the plug snapped off the bolt head so getting that drilled out and possible 3 more and all the work/cost to removed the head meant that went to the scrappy and I brought another cheap one

Remember in the 70s when you had to do a valve job on about just about everything here we go again

Why not "hack" a filter right before the intake recirculation? Some thing you can make replaceable.

Diesel engines have had this problem forever.

Do you have a video on how to do the soot out of a diesel?

What about a toothbrush? 🪥

Chevy V6 LGX with GDI - appreciated this video, even if it's not for my car's engine... thank you!

You are promoting complete bullshit about direct injection, look at LS engines, when they went to direct injection the engines did not make any more power nor was it concerning fuel. Direct injection is the biggest automotive mistake in history yet pride prevents people from cutting their losses and dropping the bad decision.

Since my Mitsubishi 380 (Galant) has over 300k (still runs great)I've decided to do this over the CRC intake cleaner spray as im afraid it may do more harm than good? Thanks for sharing great how to vid!

please note, i haven't gotten wet in a rain storm since I started running like that.

A tank of chevron gas, Techron in it.

Not familiar with VAG engines but what was the improvement they made in Gen 3 engines so that they don't have to carbon buildup problem? I imagine they are GDI engines with PVC action just the same?

I would do this to my 2007 Nissan Frontier 4.0 litre V6 if you have a cleaning kits for it.

Third day of water pump replacement and valve cleaning. This car is a nightmare to work on.

I didn't hear a mention of the 5 cylinder 2.5L engine, does this also have this problem or no?

Your valves get carbon build up due to your PCV venting into your engines intake for burning in the combustion process. This is an EPA requirement. To avoid carbon build up on your valves, vent your PCV to the air/atmosphere. Remember those little mushroom things on the top of your engine's valve cover back in the day. Those use to vent PCV fumes to the air/atmosphere until The EPA decided that it polluted to much and required routing into the intake. On the vast majority of cars you can easily modify your PCV to vent to the air/atmosphere thereby bypassing any need to clean those valves.

what about a VR6 3.6FSI in Passat B7 or Superb mk2 ? Is there a possible problem with carbon? Thank you

As mentioned in some of the other comments, before and after emission readings would be interesting to see, I don't doubt the air flow is ncreased and would help a better combustion; but the end result is always good to see.

So glad my Lexus IS-F has both port injection AND direct injection.

My 103K mi 2010 VW CC had its valves cleaned with nut shells. I was not prepared for the increase in power. But what was really amazing was that at 70 mph highway driving I in a 3 hour standard driving loop that I do. I was able to get 11mpg to 12 mpg increase. Which when my car was new I was getting about 4mpg worse. So, I am actually getting better mpg now than when my car was new.

ZIP TIE method: love it!

I heard compressed air works really well.

So roughly what is the cost of valve cleaning a 4cyl DI car?

Couldn't dry ice be a good option for media blasting? No need for vacuuming because the dry ice will evaporate.

Mr Muscle, lover's the jobs you hate.

Is direct injection better then port injection enough to have to deal with this nonsense?

How about not buying these cars and instead just buying Toyota/Subaru cars with D4s system ?

Absolute useless procedure!

Perfect honest video - after reading so many dodgy and destructive and ineffective methods on the web, I am now totally confident that the scraper and zip tie method will fix this issue at 80-90% of the effectiveness of walnut/vapour blasting - cheaper too and thus one can maybe do it again in 10-20k miles to compensate for the slight difference in efficiency.
One suggestion
I worry about sharp steel scrapers/points scratching a valve stem or poppet head stres raiser causing a broken valve.
I suggest using a piece of copper pipe instead, maybe 3/8 or 1/2 dia with a semi circle shovel sharp edge cut out at the end to scrape the valve.
The curved shape will enable the easy scraping of the back of the valve stem and the softer copper will make no marks or imprint on the valve.
Thanks again great honest presentation too.

Best option is to




Buy a toyota with port fuel intake engine😂

To much bs

Wait I’m confused the valves look way dirtier at 120k but I thought you said carb didn’t really build up anymore because he was taking better care of the car???

Use carb cleaner spray not brake clean. Carb cleaner spray will dissolve or soften the carbon making it much easier to remove where using brake cleaner will not.

So in other words , on a v8 di car or truck. To have this manual cleaning done you are easily looking at 1k plus …

I'll summarize.
Scrape it off.

I know that those deposits are so hard it takes a lot of grinding on a wire wheel to remove them. I doubt this product works. In fact GM came out with a walnut bead blasting kit for the 2.8 mpfi engines. Why would they want to sandblast valves ifva chemical would do the job?

Perfect cleaning 👌

Media blast good, Thank you.

Terrified to look at my 175k buildup

A water mist while engine is running has always had a decent result for me. Neighbors dont like it much though>.💨💨💨

Hi. Do you know if this can be done in my Vw Touareg 2006 3.2 V6 gasoline? Thanks

would be interesting to see a dyno with before and after , i'm curious how much did that carbon inhibit the air that the engine needs . maybe it would help also if users wouldn't take the car to cross the street and avoid short trips

Can anybody tell from where does carbon cleaning machine was invented and by whom? Other info.

Dry ice blasting will clean it spotless with no damage (marring) to the parent metals. No chemicals or intrusive mechanisms needed with minimal preparation and cleanup.

Last time I doing maintence at local repairing service they show me the carbon condition through the scope,very...sick.Then I doing a dry ice carbon removal , very impressive scene before and after.

Does not take long distances and the inlet valves are carbonated again.

For me, it's always a combination of elbow grease and media blast.

Is this problem more common in the US because of cheap low octane gasoline?

Thank you for sharing guys!