Hi all,

I came across this thread in the Acura MDX forums. (Can you tell we are an Acura family?)

It describes as well as shows some pictures of what the intake air plenum can look like on higher mileage engines. In addition, there is a claim that cleaning it out will improve performance and fuel consumption.

Given that the MDX has the same J series engine as the CL, I wonder if anyone here has any experience with this? Care to share any comments one way or another? All that oil in the intake track cannot be good anyway.

Thanks!

http://www.acuramdx.org/forums/showt...threadid=25024

 

Hey...I just cleaned this when I installed the p2r manifold spacer. Mine was full of caked on debris and oil. I used 2.5 bottles of throttle body cleaner to get the crud off. Afterwards I experienced better throttle response, I can't say for gas mileage thourh.

 

Is it a pretty easy thing to remove and reinstall? I assume we should replace the gasket while we are at it? Do we need just the uppper cover gasket or also the front and back cover gaskets?

Any tips and/or appreciated.

Thanks

 

It can never hurt to take off the IM and clean it out. My stock IM and Plenums had a nice amount of crude in it at ~70k. I also like cleaning out the throttle body every so often with some TB cleaner such as Valvoline SynPower or some Sea Foam Deep Creep with an old soft tooth brush.

It has always helped a bit with throttle response and gas mileage (especially on my friend's older vehicles)

 

It is not too complicated, there is a good DIY thread over here or in the 2G TL forum with instructions on how to clean out the EGR and everything.

The service manual recomends replacing all the gaskets, there should be four. The service manual also states to replace the stock plenums, intake manifold, and/or upper cover (the rectangular cap on the top of the engine) IF "it is cracked or if the mating surface is damaged."

You might as well replace the intake manifold gasket with a thermal one while you are at it.

 

Completely normal. It doesn't effect anything because that area is outside the manifold runners. Cleaning it out would have zero effect on the engine other them making it look better.

 

https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...2&page=1&pp=40

 

When I pulled mine apart at 70000 miles it was worse than the MDX shown. Some of the ports were clogged. once all was cleand and put back together their was a noticable difference in how much smoother the engine ran and idled. There was a noticable improvement in acceleration as well. There is a TSB about this from acura also for older models where the main EGR port gets completely blocked because the main port is smaller. It really does make a huge difference when it is clean.

 

Very easy to do. They plug up easy and when completely clogged it will throw a code. To clean it properly you should take off the upper intake manifold as well. A old tooth brush and some carb cleaner and 1 hr or less of your time and you can clean it very easy

 

On the type-s (J32A2), the plenums can be taken off, correct? when putting them back on do they have to be torque down to a certain spec?

 

Exactly what I was thinking. The link provided in one of the earlier posts (https://acurazine.com/forums/showthr...2&page=1&pp=40) showed a non Type-S engine best as I can tell. Given the variable plenums in the type-S, I wonder if there is a difference between cleaning and not cleaning ...

I'm going to find some time over the next couple weekends and see if I can do this and document it too.

 

It's pretty similar, and as you said stated, the plenums can come off in the type S making a thorough cleaning easier.