mr_diggs

I haven't seen any pictures of ecoboost valves that comes anywhere close to the BMW N54 valves get. I have a 535 N54 car and there seems to be a consensus that cleaning the valves on the bimmers is worth it, but again nothing in the ecoboost is NEAR as caked.

papa tiger

I would be most concerned with the stuff baking on the stem up by the guides of these little valves. The stems are tiny slightly larger than 2/10th of an inch and the springs are light with a tolerance of 10% loss with almost .000" clearance. This is where the sticky begins and never ends well with the intakes.

Tuner Boost

Correct. The valve guide wear begins even with low deposits due to the abrasive nature of the deposits.

And any deposits are a detriment to clean flow, but as I have pointed out many times, the EB has the least amount of buildup that I have seen of any of the DI engines, but the photos in the BG test show it get pretty substantial over time.

And one more time, anyone anyone that is happy with these deposits and is not concerned should not even be worrying then, or arguing the point. Your minds are made up so all this is pointless. This is for those that do care about addressing this issue.

The pictures posted by the actual owners that have removed their IM's and examined all show depostits great enough to both affect flow and cause premature wear of the valve guides. And even at .002 of wear this causes instability of the vales themselves and further issues.

Wannafbody

Who has the most miles on their EB and is willing to do a teardown?

itguy08

So then how can we quantify these issues? Cause MPG shows that they are not an issue and do not affect that. Dyno testing shows that they not really affect that measure. So what is this reduced flow doing for me of I can't measure it? One would think reduced flow = reduced power.

And I also wonder about how the Ecobost's deposits cause wear enough to cause an issue. The valves are constantly being "cleaned" by the up and down action. That alone keeps the deposits off the part that goes in the valve guide clean as deposits never form since it is constantly being scraped off. It's not like the VW/Audi/BMW where you have that sticky gooey mess everywhere. EB deposits seem to be much less and drier.

engineermike

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! It all sounds so scary! Wait...where are the reports of worn out valve guides? Where are the out-of-spec clearance measurements? Where's the flow bench data proving the "deposits are a detriment to clean flow"? Where's the dyno data proving such? You keep making these claims and, while we've asked for the above easily half a dozen times, you have yet to provide it. The engine's been out for 5 years so surely there's something out there. All of the data presented so far proves otherwise.

BG also showed little/no effect on power on the dyno. I noticed you leave that part out every time...because it doesn't sell any of your catch cans.

Tuner Boost

Only need to remove the intake manifold to get a close look at the valves. A boroscope can also be snaked into the closes ports and see with only the TB removed.

The EB's deposits are vary hard an abrasive VS the avg BNW or GM DI. And it is just this "scraping" you describe that is pulling the abrasive baked on deposits up in to do the wear (similar to sand paper would) so that makes no sense. A valve needs both the stem and the tulip free and clean to flow correctly and not wear the guides.

Here is a valve after a very good manual cleaning:



And before with a badly coked one on the left, and mildly coked on the right:


Se this hardened, carbon and other abrasive particle coated stem that travels up and down thousands of times a minute when running? And this is fine for you? The logic that some dirt and debris inside an engine is fine puts us on 2 different planets. My engines I want NO wear/damage/dirt/deposits/oil contamination/water/fuel in period, and suspect most others that care do not either. I can't imagine arguing something like this, but the world is free for YOU to do as you like to your own engines....but please stop trying to convince others this is acceptable.

And the fuel mileage is proven beyond any question. 1-3 MPG on average from clean deposit free valves to dirty coked up ones is a no brainer. If it did not matter why would the engineers go to such lengths to design these free flowing flow enhancing shapes if it didn't matter? Why not just throw in any shaped valve and intake port radius, etc. And why the complex piston top shape as well if it didn't matter. Seems like alot of wasted time and money and effort to design something this efficient and with all the diagrams and illustrations of the controlled burn pattern and clean and controlled flow characteristics if it didn't matter.

Again, I am not trying to convince you to do a thing to your truck...you paid for it, treat it like you want. This again is ONLY for those wanting to learn.

fx4phil

are those from an ecoboost or another completely different engine?

itguy08

I was thinking more like a piston ring where there is the junk from combustion and it scrapes it off the walls. And there is little wear from them as engines easily go 100-200-300k with proper oil changes.

And there is always junk in an engine. It's not a surgical operating room. An air filter is not 100% efficient. An oil filter is not 100% efficient. You have a nasty, dirty process (combustion) spilling all kinds of dirt and debris thousands of times a second. There will always be dirt. It's a mobile effort to get it like an operating room but IMHO not needed in a street car/truck.

MadocHandyman

Once again, I'd like to see a comparison of the number of high mileage engines still on the road, with and without a catch can.
I've had 3 trucks with high mileage and neither one ever had a can. My last one before the Eco, '99 F250 w/5.4, had 500000+ kms (the odometer quit working) and it still ran great.