I have decided that I must be a masochist for driving a mini. Last Friday I fixed my leaking broken water crossover pipe which was beyond ridiculous. I seriously hope there is a place in car hell for the engineers where they will be cursed to an eternity of replacing an endless supply of crossover pipes. Seriously, who thought it was a good idea to bury a plastic part that deep in the engine. Anyway, back to my point. I had to remove my intake manifold and found that my valves are disgustingly nasty but did not have the time to clean them then. How difficult is it to clean the valves yourself? When cleaning yourself how easy or possible is it to screw something up and make a much bigger more expensive problem?

 

The nearest shop to me that does walnut blasting is over an hour away and price starts at $700….so I will be doing this myself. I hate to admit it, but I am kinda scared to do it, seems like it would be easy to make a bigger problem. The idea of putting solvents in an engine or media blasting in an engine scares the hell out of me. Has to be done though so the big decision is to invest a few hundred dollars in the blasting equipment or do it the manual way with solvent and brush

 

I take it you have a MINI S (direct injection); your best bet is to get the equipment and do it yourself. There is plenty of information online so you can learn how to do it. It's not rocket science. One cylinder at a time, and make sure the intake valves are closed. You'll need a good shop vac, an air compressor with a lot of CFM, and a media blaster w/ walnut media.

After you blast, install a Snow performance water/methanol injection kit; that will keep the valves clean.

 

Before you go to the trouble to blast the stuff off I'd recommend you try a bottle of Techron fuel system cleaner.

This:

Chevron Techron Fuel System Cleaner 10oz

There is this:

Chevron Techron Fuel System Cleaner 12oz

The instructions on the first bottle call for mixing the 10oz of Techron with 15 gallons of fuel.

The instructions on the 2nd bottle call for mixing the 12oz of Techron with 12 gallons of fuel.

To me 10oz for 15 gallons suggests a *stronger* Techron blend...

While the fuel with Techron doesn't get sprayed onto the back of the intake valves the back flow of combustion gases into the intake port -- which is primarily how the back of the valves get loaded with deposits -- with Techron in the fuel the combustion gases contain Techron in vapor form. When it hits the deposits being these are cool the Techron changes from vapor to liquid form and this will loosen/remove the deposits.

In your case I'd recommend you treat the engine to a 2nd full dose of Techron. So you run two tanks of fuel through the engine. But the engine gets cleaned as you drive the car.

To me it would be worth a shot. Walnut blasting deposits off of valves for the DIYer is just too much work and I believe risky of something going wrong.

 

thanks for that advice. I am familiar with Techron but have never used it…to my knowledge. Never considered the vapors getting to the valves and cooling. When I first got the car I put a bottle of Lucas fuel injector cleaner in the tank just to clean out and treat the fuel system. After getting home one day while the engine was still warm I revved the engine a few times, after turning the car off and getting out I noticed black splattering on the concrete behind the exhaust. Considering how much build up is on the valves I’m a little worried about a chunk breaking loose and causing a problem. Sounds like the biggest mistakes doing this job are not having the valves 100% closed and turning the engine backwards when rotating the engine. I had an idea about using a shotgun bore mop soaked with solvent instead of spraying solvent and letting it sit and then blowing out from the spark plug side when finished with the valve slightly open to make sure nothing seeped in. For whatever reason I get nervous anytime I have to remove the intake manifold.

 

The black spattering was almost certainly water (condensed from the exhaust gases) and having collected a bit of soot. It is unlikely if the engine shed anything it would have made it through the converter.

Based on my (admittedly) limited experience Techron does work. I switched from Shell V-Power to Chevron Supreme (with Techron). Filled up my Porsche Boxster's fuel tank with Supreme. After about 3/4 of the tank was used up the engine was running better. My usage didn't change.

But I will add that my Porsche Turbo engine didn't react good or bad to the Chevron Supreme gasoline. Why? Well, the Turbo engine had fewer miles by over 100K miles than the Boxster engine and the Turbo engine used wide band O2 sensors which provide much more precise fueling than the narrow band sensors of the Boxster engine. IOWs the Turbo engine had not collected engine deposits while the Boxster did.

I'm really loathe to open up an engine even to clean out the intake ports unless there is no other way. I'd try a bottle or two of Techron. Ideally you should take a before and after pic to document any improvement (or not) with the deposits in the intake ports/on the valves. If you see improvement a 3rd bottle or even a 4th bottle may be called for. However I'd change the oil/filter before doing a 3rd bottle.

Because Techron doesn't burn but will revert to a liquid this can lead to an increase in oil contamination. To me 3 or 4 bottles of Techron in a row while it might help with the deposit problem is a bit worrisome regarding what effect it can have on the oil. Oil is cheap compared to what it would cost to address problems arising from contaminated oil contaminated to the point it results in insufficient/inadequate lubrication of the engine.

 

Cleaned my valves yesterday and am surprised that my engine still ran considering how badly fouled they were. All in all it cost me around $70 to walnut blast them and about a day to rig up the equipment…make the nozzle and vacuum adapter and disassemble/reassemble. Honestly was not that hard of a job, I can’t imagine trying to clean them by scraping and brushing, I think that would have taken forever. Engine did not want to fire up the first 3-4 times I tried cranking which made me a little nervous, but finally she fired up and after a little sputtering she came to a smooth idle. She drives like a different car now, good acceleration and no hesitation. I credit all the information and techniques, as well as reading about others mistakes here to pulling it off successfully, this forum is a gold mine of mini know how and knowledge.

 

Thanks for the update. Glad you had a good outcome.

Did you have a walnut blasting setup already or did you buy or rent one? And what size/capacity of air compressor did you have?

 

After - I did not leave the walnut shell bits in there

Before
I already had a 25 gallon 125psi air compressor which was plenty sufficient. I picked up the super cheap gravity feed blaster (sku 37025) from harbor freight on sale for $28, 25 pounds of fine walnut shell media (92155) for $30 and then picked up a long reach blower kit (63574) for around $8, I just used this to make the blasting nozzle with. I basically just followed a guide that I found here on NAM which was awesome I must say, guide should be attached…I did not write this, I would credit the creator but I just saved the pdf and don’t recall the creator. I also picked up a borescope/inspection camera on Amazon for about $35, I was wanting one anyway, this was invaluable for me, not just made it easier to see the valves and visually ensure they were closed, but also used it to inspect the cylinder for any stray bits of walnut shell that might slip through. I would do a quick burst of blasting and then use the camera to inspect the cylinder through the spark plug hole to make sure nothing was coming through the valves and then did a final check before reassembly, still had to blow one or two stray bits out of a cylinder. Another trick i had read about that worked well was using four 1/4” x 2 foot dowels to put into the cylinders through the spark plug holes to find top dead center. Place the dowels and then watch them move up and down as you rotate (clockwise only!!) the engine with a ratchet, this made closing the valves and ensuring the valve were closed much easier. There are a few things I will do differently the next time. I will go ahead and buy the proper, either aluminum or plastic shop vac adapter, will probably get the blast wand nozzle as well, and will upgrade my shop vac (mine is 3.5 hp and didn’t keep up great. The blast nozzle and vac adapter I made worked, but they were cumbersome and hard to move around in tight spaces. I also would use the wide blue painters tape to seal off everything that has an opening. I used rags at first but the walnut shell media tending to collect in the rags and some would fall off and into the cylinder and valve port when removing…definitely seal up absolutely everything that has an opening…pcv, turbo, vacuum line, valve cover holes for spark plugs, everything….no matter how careful you are you will have bits of walnut shell everywhere.

I wanted to add to this post for others that might be searching for problems and codes. Prior to cleaning my valves I was getting the half orange engine light and code 2885 when revving up to and past around 4500 rpm. Car had become very sluggish, had rough idle after cold start and would throw a CEL for misfire’s occasionally after cold start. Since cleaning the intake valves all these issues have gone away and seriously runs and drives like new with 134k on the clock. With that said I should add I have only had the car 3 months, prior owner replaced pretty much everything including timing chain.

Anybody reading this and thinking about doing it themselves and maybe nervous, feel free to message me, I would be happy to go over in detail what I did and boost your confidence, I was extremely nervous and apprehensive about doing it myself.

 

+1 I just did mine and the brushes help as the first, thats the kit i used first to get most of the gunk because with just the blaster the media will cake: Step 1 https://www.ecstuning.com/b-astro-pn...t/ast9020~asp/

Step 2: Then went with the bimmerhelp tool and our bav auto media and blaster tool. https://www.ecstuning.com/b-bimmerhe.../b1100025~bav/

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...-valves-7.html

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ke-valves.html


Much better now and much more power and strong pulls.