Of all the people that I know that have EB's, none have had this issue. I have had two, and I have not had any issues. There are several guys I know that have over 100K and have been pleased with them. Everyone that I work with that have them puts about 50K/year on them, so we drive them a lot everyday. I think longer drives, and harder pulling, is good on these engines. It keeps their temps up and steady, and doesn't allow as much of that build up to happen. This little engine is barely working when you are driving empty miles.

 

Yeah but I get allot of people coming to me complaining that the dealer cannot fix it and have done all the tsb's coils, plugs new coolers etc for misfire issues and makes you wonder how many there are out there just being misdiagnosed. We will see with time.

 

The way I figure with this intake valve issue is this. The 7.3L Powerstroke had PCV and it is direct injected, those engines go half a million miles, sometimes more, and never have the top-end touched. When my Injection Harnesses failed on my engine and I replaced them the intercooler pipes (hot and cold side) were absolutely filthy with oil vapor build-up when I removed them. I didn't put a borescope into the intake plenums, but I imagine they were filthy all the way to the chamber. Why is it not a problem for a Diesel, but is for a DI gas engine?

 

I would imagine it has to do with the fact diesel fuel does not vaporized nowhere near what gas does to start, the higher compression and compression ignition are another major factor making them more resilient.

 

Anybody remember the scam hydrogen generators? All they were were a water boiler that the steam was funneled into the intake. As we know from WWII fighter airplane engines steam is a fabulous carbon/soot deposit remover. Not having an EB to invent a system for it, anybody with one that wants to get inventive would surely be a winner, not to mention a fabulous enterprise. The heat source could easily be the exhaust pipe. This is REAL close to the urea that the diesels use to remove soot/carbon from the engines and exhaust systems. Urea is 80% water, FWIW.

 

I've actually been kicking around ways to make something like this or make setup that connects a can of intake cleaner to the PCV inlet. With as many DI cars are on the road there is a ton of cash to be made from it.

 

Got to love this... we are all beta testers these days

GM is having fun with it's second go-round on it's ridiculous 8-6-4 engine, it's almost as much of a POS as the original one they put in caddys

 

I know that is the way it seems they made the technology good enough but not perfect. An oem solution to the problem would be fine but we have yet to see any new word except for the new tsb for the 3.5l EB in the cars.

 

I also just posted a new video on how to prevent as much of this carbon buildup as possible.

 

Got a link??

 

Sorry yes-

 

OK, I saw that one. Thanks. I have 18,000 miles on mine but the first 16,000 miles I had catch cans on it. The drivers side didn't have hardly any oil in them, but the right side had about 2-3 tablespoons every 2 weeks or so. In my opinion, that is a lot of oil.
So what is Ford going to do about it? A company near here has done a long term test on an E/B and the valves looked very coked up at around 18,000 miles and got worse as time went by. Fuel mileage was also affected.

 

One of the German car makers is having deposit issues with its turbo direct injection engines as well. They are playing with isobutanol with an amine that is introduced at the throttle body and the engine is allowed to idle for an hour. The engine literally is running off of the isobutanol as the injectors are not firing. I haven't seen any of it, just heard about it. Obviously the turbos are not running at idle. Isbutanol is being considered as a replacement for ethanol in our fuels. It has 98% of the energy of our gasoline and does not absorb water. It can be made from most any plant life but certain algaes are supposed to be ideal. I don't see this as a fix for deposits in any direct injection engine but it might just burn cleaner creating less of them. I haven't seen any data on it yet.

 

I don't know if this would apply here or not. Volvo's with 5 & 6 cyl engines have a problem with valves getting carbon up and tapping or miss fire on start ups. The fix is to put car in low gear, run it down the road at high rpm for about a mile or 2 at a steady speed. This seems to clear up the problem every time.