DIY inlet valve cleaning Mk5 GTI - Picture Heavy!!

[ducman77]

Well men....

As promised please find below a DIY and "how to guide" for manual inlet valve cleaning on your Mk5 GTI. Hope people will find this lot helpful,,,,

To start with myself and my buddy used this guide from YouTube.

The video is long but very comprehensive.

Unfortunately my car has an AXX engine so we were about two hours trying to figure out how to remove the fuel rail assembly as the AXX inlet manifold has a totally different setup to the one in the video. But for most of you guys your engines will be similar to the one in the video.

The tools I selected for the job were,,,,

A chemical product from BG for the actual cleaning. This stuff is not for sale to the public but a local Indy garage sold me it for €50


Then some long handled picks and an assortment of Nylon, Brass and Metal brushes which attach to your drill which both came from Amazon.
Also you'll see in the picture a suction pump I bought of eBay. It was very handy and a key piece of kit.....


Then from your local VW dealership you'll need...
1) Inlet manifold gasket
2) Throttle body gasket
3) Injector seals and rebuild kit

So far my costs were
€50 for the chemical cleaner
€90 for the parts from VW
€55 for the stuff from eBay and Amazon

I'd had a quote from an Indy garage to clean the valves for €350. So far I'd already spent €200! When you add in the time it took us (12hrs) this is definitely not an efficient way to save money But it was never about the money. It's all about the learning and the adventure

So......
We whipped it all apart and this is what greeted us.....

Cylinder 1


Cylinder 2


Cylinder 3


Cylinder 4 (the valves are open)


We did a leak down test with petrol on cylinders 1, 2 and 3. The valves were seating well and not leaking. So we taped off cylinder number 4 (whose valves were open) to make sure no crud and crap would get down into the cylinder.

We removed all four injectors and cleaned and taped off their inlet tracts.

We followed the instructions for the BG inlet valve cleaning product.

This involves soaking the valves with the first chemical for 30 minutes. We agitated the valves with the chemical and the nylon and brass brushes attached to our drill. Then we sucked the whole lot out with the pump pictured above.

We did not use the metal brushes as we thought they looked to aggressive.

Then we added chemical number two which we left for just a few minutes and sucked out again.

We also had an old Hoover to hand which was very valuable! I'm not sure you would want to use your everyday household Hoover. But if you have an old one lying around it's a good thing to have!

In hindsight; we should have spent much more time scraping the carbon off the valves by hand when it was dry (and before adding the chemical). We did this on cylinder four and we had a much quicker and better result.

The valve cleaning chemical is good, but it makes the carbon Gooey and hard to suck out/remove. Scraping it off when it is dry and sucking it out with a hoover is definitely the way to go before adding any liquid chemicals.

We had hoped to have time to clean and test each injector. But with the faffing of removing the inlet manifold we ran out of time. So we had to settle for just giving the tips and shafts a good clean with carb cleaner.

Cleaning the air dividing plates was very easy in the bench vice with just some carb cleaner and a wire brush.

Anyways,,, feast your eyes below for the finished product!!

Dirty air divider plates and injectors  before being rebuilt with new seals.....


Air divider plates all cleaned up! And injectors rebuilt and ready to go back in!


Cylinder one clean!


Cylinder two clean!


Cylinder three clean!


Cylinder four clean!


And here is a little YouTube video to show you in a bit better detail!!

We flung everything back together and breathed a major sigh of relief when the car fired up pretty much straight away and ran perfect.

So..... Was it worth it????

It was a really satisfying job to do, and it is very nice to know that the inlet valve are now clean. 

But if I am honest I have noticed virtually no difference in how the car drives.

Throttle response and induction note are possibly a little sharper and louder respectively. But it is pretty subtle stuff!

Either way I'm just really pleased to know they are clean. The car has 75,000 miles on it and they've obviously never been done before.

Hope this extremely long post will be of some value to somebody out there

I want to especially say a HUGE thank you to my good buddy Mark who helped me out with this. He's a Peugeot Master Technician so firstly I have to apologise for forcing him to work on a filthy VW Without his garage, tools, knowledge, patience and Red Bull this job never woulda been completed. So... Thanks Mark

Please feel free to fire questions at me as I'm sure I have left lots and lots of stuff out.

Regards,
Dave

[r5gtt]

That video I posted up ages back lol 

I have the exact same brush set as you   

I would love to strip the head off and uathave it dipped in acid for a proper clean TBH but that'll be a long process and I don't have a garage otherwise I would have had it done my way.

Job well done and injectors look spanking did you replace all seals? shame you're not satisfied anything has changed where as others say it runs better.

[bigeyd]

Good to know no difference at all.
Cheers for posting

[v4rley]

Well done. 
As a fellow axx owner can you give a brief advice regarding the rail difference?
Also how did you remove / replace the injectors as I see there is a tool but guess no required.

[ducman77]

That video I posted up ages back lol 

I have the exact same brush set as you   

I would love to strip the head off and uathave it dipped in acid for a proper clean TBH but that'll be a long process and I don't have a garage otherwise I would have had it done my way.

Job well done and injectors look spanking did you replace all seals? shame you're not satisfied anything has changed where as others say it runs better.

Cheers buddy! I'm pretty sure it was you who pointed me to the video alright

The brush set is hilarious. One good use and all the brass ones are foooked! Nylon ones are reusable and steel ones unused. But would need a fresh set of brass brushes if doing the job again

Stripping and dipping the head would be the proper job

Injectors wise the only bit we didn't replace was the Teflon seal at the end/tip of the injector. You need a special tool to install the seal and then another one to size it. So we thought we best leave it alone

Car is definitely running great and throttle response seems crisper which would make sense as have removed TONS of crap. It must be flowing ??cm of more air.

I wouldn't hesitate to do the job again as it is very satisfying.

Only reason I'm a bit disappointed is that it hasn't helped my poor fuel economy (which I think may well just be a function of my heavy right foot and ridiculous bumper to bumper traffic on my commute to work) or made a gazillion unicorn powers

Good to know no difference at all.
Cheers for posting

Cheers buddy I wouldn't say it's made no difference. Just not "night and day" which I was hoping for. It's always the high expectations that catch us out in life eh

Well done. 
As a fellow axx owner can you give a brief advice regarding the rail difference?
Also how did you remove / replace the injectors as I see there is a tool but guess no required.

Cheers v4rley. I appreciate that mate

Removing the manifold is not that bad at all compared to the later model cars.

It's just that we spent ages scratching our heads as we REALLY didn't want to break anything

So hopefully my experience can make it a non head scratching event for you

Basically, in the video, he just...

1) Unbolts the rubber fuel line from the top of the manifold
2) Detaches the fuel hard line from the fuel pump and
3) Pushes the rubber fuel line out of the way

On an AXX engine you need to
1) Detach the two rubber fuel lines from the two metal hard lines at the top left side of the inlet manifold (be ready to block or clamp the rubber hoses as fuel will leak)
2) Detach both the banjo bolt and the 17mm hard line nut a the fuel pump
3) The inlet manifold can then come away with the hard lines and fuel rail still attached to it

I could take a couple of photos later of what I'm talking about if that would be a help??

Believe it or not that's more or less all the difference there is

My buddy and I couldn't believe we'd wasted two hours trying to figure it out. But, I suppose you live and learn (slowly )

There is a slide hammer type of tool for removing the injectors alright, and no doubt it would make the job easier. But we just carefully prised them out and back in by hand. Making sure not to clobber the tips/shafts on the way in and out.

There are little plastic or metal tabs on the side of the injector seats (depending on if you have metal or plastic seats). You might need to break off or bend the little tabs out of the way to get the injector to come out.

It's not a big deal. Bit does mean I wouldn't dream of doing the job without a full injector seals kit from your VW dealership. The seals kit comes with new seats and the little tabs/arms that you just broke off or bent on the old ones

As noted above we did not change the Teflon seals at the injector tips as I wasn't confident you can do that job without the two specialised sizing tools.

Cheers all,
Dave

[lukemk5gti]

Very good work @ducman77 

I figured you would see no gain from doing the work considering the coating is probably less than 1mm thick so the pipe throughput is still fine.

Might notice it more on heavily modified cars I suppose.

[ducman77]

Very good work @ducman77 

I figured you would see no gain from doing the work considering the coating is probably less than 1mm thick so the pipe throughput is still fine.

Might notice it more on heavily modified cars I suppose.

Cheers luke. I appreciate the feedback

I think you're spot on mate. Although the stuff looks awful, the car seems to be designed to run quite well despite it

I'm going Loba fuel pump, Peron intercooler and K04 over the winter so hopefully then the clean inlets will allow me to hit my target of Eleventy Million Horsepowers

I'll be stripping it all back again to fit S3 injectors. I'll post up some more pictures then.

Will be interesting to see how much gunk accumulates in what will probably be 6 months and circa 5k kilometres 

Also, I might do a bit more cleaning as the finished product was not as good as we were hoping for. It was 1am and we were wrecked!! If I'd had more time I'd have gone over all four cylinders again!!

[v4rley]

Great thanks for the advice! Don't worry about the additional photos the explanation seems good enough.

Hoping to take a look at mine somewhen just for a good clean and think the injectors need some tlc so if I get stuck no doubt you'll be about on here.

Also have a k04 and s3 injectors in the garage but cannot decide whether to fit or not  I'll be keeping an eye on you progress 

[ducman77]

Great thanks for the advice! Don't worry about the additional photos the explanation seems good enough.

Hoping to take a look at mine somewhen just for a good clean and think the injectors need some tlc so if I get stuck no doubt you'll be about on here.

Also have a k04 and s3 injectors in the garage but cannot decide whether to fit or not  I'll be keeping an eye on you progress 

Nice one buddy

We are very much in the same boat plans wise! Have you upgraded your intercooler?

If you do decide to go K04 that'll be the perfect time to clean the inlets

If by any chance you're not going K04 I'm in the market for some S3 injectors so keep me in mind

Personally though I think you should go mad and go K04 Not that I'm biased or anything 

[v4rley]

Kind of upgraded the intercooler, have got the s3 alloys mainly as I didn't like the fittings of the standard GTI one. Have also already relocated the DV and got 3" tbe 

Just cannot make a final decision as want a remap from r-tech, so don't know if to stick with 2+ or go all out

Biggest issue I have fitting the k04 is the mapping. R-tech would require the car for a week, which show their dedication but not easy when they are 200miles away and is our main daily car.

[ducman77]

wow! I didn't know that about the mapping. I must ask my tuner about that!

You could always go hybrid K03, wth the tbe and S3 intercooler you could just add your S3 injectors and make some lovely power with a hybrid

Would you consider doing the pump too?

I've a peron intercooler on order. Will do a bit of a write up when it lands in and we fit it

[AJP]

Niki has mapped a hybrid k03 to 360bhp on bwa/axx injectors. I'd imagine he could do the same with a k04 but worth checking.

[99hagued]

Nice write up mate  got the bits to do this myself, bought a cheap media blaster and got some crushed walnuts but after reading it makes no difference I might just leave it

[ducman77]

Niki has mapped a hybrid k03 to 360bhp on bwa/axx injectors. I'd imagine he could do the same with a k04 but worth checking.

Sounds promising

Nice write up mate  got the bits to do this myself, bought a cheap media blaster and got some crushed walnuts but after reading it makes no difference I might just leave it

Cheers for the comments. I appreciate it

Walnut blasting is definitely the proper way to do this job

I've been pootling around in brutal traffic ever since I did the clean. I'm gonna try and take her for a bit of a rip this weekend to see if maybe the clean has made more of a difference in the higher rev range and on WOT. I'll report back

[v4rley]

wow! I didn't know that about the mapping. I must ask my tuner about that!

You could always go hybrid K03, wth the tbe and S3 intercooler you could just add your S3 injectors and make some lovely power with a hybrid

Would you consider doing the pump too?

Yes I spoken to them as wasn't sure about driving without a specific map but said it's fine with the n75 unplugged. I should imagine a hybrid k03 would require as much dedication when it comes to mapping.

Yeah got a hpfp with autotech install in the garage too