I doubt anything they could do for 65 bucks would be worthwhile.
I'm fully expecting to have to clean the intake on my GTI at some point. From what I understand, it's about a $700 job at the dealer or maybe $3-500 at an indie shop. It's a bit of a process to do it properly: the intake has to come off so you can access the valves, then the carbon is actually blasted off with compressed air and grit. Then everything has to be vacuumed up so it's spic and span, then put back together. It's a labour-intensive process to do it properly.
Wouldn't the valvecover have to be removed to access the valves? Yes a lot of work for a bit better power and fuel economy, that will be short lived with the carbon build up.
I'm not sold on DI.I think a lot of the recent models sold with this ,will have problems in the future. This maybe Kias way of minimizing the carbon build up to hammy's car in the future. Just my thoughts
I should have said the intake
manifold needs to come off to access the valves, but no, the valve cover doesn't need to come off too (on my car, anyway). You just need to access the top of the valves and the intake runners.
The cleaning itself is probably an easy DIY job - you could do it with scrapers and parts cleaner if you don't have a blast cleaner - but you need to be very careful not to let any junk fall into a cylinder. And there's a lot of incidental stuff to disconnect before you can even get started on the cleaning. Then you have to remember where it all went when it's time to put it back together.
My car seems fine, so far, but I've only got 61,000 kms on it. There's probably some build up there, but I haven't noticed any adverse affects (first thing people seem to complain about is a drop in fuel economy, then maybe a loss of power, then maybe rough running or stumbling, then finally you'll get a CEL when it's really bad).
It's a great little engine, so I can put up with the extra maintenance that the DI requires.
