CRC intake valve cleaner experience

I wonder what would be the damage to CAT with CRC cleaning method.... I am going with walnut blasting.

Stuff works fine.. drive easy after use.. of you hear pinging it's likely pre ignition from loose particles so ease up on the engine load/ reduce rpm. Blasting is a lot more involved and time consuming compared to ease and price applying a head cleaner

I too used CRC GDI valve cleaner and it did improve throttle response and drivability. After soaking for that hour after application, at the first drive mine too blew a huge puff of smoke and went into limp mode. While the limp mode cleared after a "key cycle", it continued to have light pinging for the next 30 min of driving. After having the intake manifold off recently to manually clean the valves (more on that later), I now know why it blew the smoke and pinged; the manifold air path is horizontal, then DOWN-runners, then back up into the engine.

This allows some of the spray to collect in the bottom of the runners, which then get's transported up under moderate to hard acceleration, Thus a big load of CRC is ingested, which causes it to stumble, misfire and burn incompletely, and then ping until the residual liquid gets cleared.

While it didn't appear to do any damage, it is probably wise with these Skyactiv engines to go really easy on the throttle and keep RPM below 2000 during the first 15 min of driving, directly after CRC (or any other heavily sprayed treatment). I drove mine for about 30 min after treatment, gradually increasing max RPM from about 2000 to about 4000, listening for pinging.

Re-post ruthrj‘s experience here on CRC Intake valve cleaner treatment so that it can be seen more easily in a proper thread.

ruthrj said:

I did a CRC Intake valve cleaner treatment. Followed the directions and sprayed the cleaner through the throttle body. Took others warnings to heart: the engine bogged down with spirited acceleration after letting it heatsoak. Light rattling could be heard when revving over 3k rpm at highway speeds. I got a couple of good smoke clouds the first few times. The CEL started flashing by the fourth time. Came to a stop and restarted the car. Drives fine now.

I physically cleaned my valves with B12 Chemtool with 68k miles. The CRC treatment was done at 80k. I’ll probably keep doing this every other oil change to keep things tidy.

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AVC said:

I too used CRC DGI valave cleaner and it did improve throttle response and drivability. After soaking for that hour after application, mine too blew a huge puff of smoke and went into limp mode. While the limp mode cleared after a "key cycle", it continued to have light pinging for the next 30 min of driving. After having the intake manifold off recently to manually clean the valves (more on that later),
I now know why it blew the smoke and pinged; the manifold air path it horizontal, then DOWN runners then back up into the engine.

This allows some of the spray to collect in the bottom of the runners, which then get's transported up under moderate to hard acceleration, Thus a big load of CRC is ingested, which causes it to stumble, misfire and burn incompletely, and then ping until the residual liquid gets cleared.

While it didn't appear to do any damage, it is probably wise with these Skyactiv engines to go really easy on the throttle and keep RPM below 2000 during the first 15 min of driving, directly after CRC (or any other heavily sprayed treatment). I drove mine for about 30 min after treatment, gradually increasing max RPM from about 2000 to about 4000, listening for pinging.

Click to expand...

So where did you spray the CRC into the throttle body? Did you remove the air filter box entirely, or find a PCV T connector and spray CRC into the PVC hose?

I used the purge valve connection at the throttle body--to the left of the throttle body.

When I had the intake manifold off, I removed the U-shaped PCV hose, and replaced with two 12" lengths of 1/2" PCV rated hose; one hose at the PCV nipple and the other at the intake manifold nipple. Joined by a 90 degree barb fitting. The hoses are long enough to extend near the air cleaner box, so in the future I can easily either spray cleaner into the PCV valve to clean it, or into the intake manifold (and largely avoiding spray puddling in the runners).

I own a 2019 KIA Sorento 3.3L GDI engine and the service schedule for GDI cleaning is once a year. I use CRC GDI valve cleaner on this vehicle and change the oil the following week.

Do we suppose to do this service yearly with CX-5 2.5L engine? I think the yearly schedule may work on light accumulation of carbon deposits rather than doing it after 30K miles.

SilverCX-5 said:

I own a 2019 KIA Sorento 3.3L GDI engine and the service schedule for GDI cleaning is once a year. I use CRC GDI valve cleaner on this vehicle and change the oil the following week.

Do we suppose to do this service yearly with CX-5 2.5L engine? I think the yearly schedule may work on light accumulation of carbon deposits rather than doing it after 30K miles.

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I think yearly would be the way to go. That’s the schedule I’ve been keeping up with over the last 30k miles.