Hey guys, so a while ago when i was installing my intake manifold spacer the whole top end of the engine was open and when i was looking at it the ports looked really dirty, so dirty that my friend who was familiar with cars couldnt even scrape a little off. What exactly does this mean for my car? and is there any simple way i can fix it? as in the foam thing that people do or any other way.

 

if you took off the intake manifold cover, you'll find that it'll be a golden bronze color.
which is normal and shows that the PVC valve and EGR valve are doing its job

 

I know that is normal it is what below which scared me. I took of the whole intake manifold and in the six little offset holes where the manifold spacer is placed the inside of the holes were covered with alot of "stuff". Excuse my lack of engine knowledge ive only recently began to look into engine work haha.

 

Intake runners* i did my manifold spacer a few days ago and it was really dirty aswell. Probably shouldnt just scrape it off... Itll just fall into your engine. Wich cant be good.

 

the carbon will just burn off into the engine and out the exhaust.

our dear member Swoosh sold me a blue painted intake manifold which I took a grinder too. some of the paint particles which survived my cleaning got burnt up into the engine, when I first started her up!




i might have seen flames shoot out my exhaust.

 

Sorry off topic. Did u feel gains with spacer bro? Which one did u get? P2r metal spacer?

 

i got the p2r 1 inch spacer with the thermal gasket for the manifold and the throttle body. As for gains i could feel a torque bump and going back up against my friends mercedes i was able to pull just a tad harder on him...still lost but worth a try haha.

 

so then would you just say take a grinder to it!? seems a bit drastic haha

 

You don't want to get carbon into the combustion chambers if you can help it. It can damage cylinder walls and rings. It's ok if the runners are black, it won't affect engine performance until it becomes actual buildup where you could scrape it off. If you were to pull the lower runners off and look into the intake ports in the heads, they should be clean where the injectors spray into the ports.

If it's really that bad you might consider restricting or eliminating the EGR and using an oil with a lower NOACK spec. My whole intake tract at 113,000 miles was a light tan color with no oil in the usual places and the head ports looked like the engine had never been started.

Eliminating the EGR will give a CEL. I used a piece of aluminum to block it off and left it plugged in electrically but it still threw a CEL which I knew it would but it was worth a try. Some cars will ping when you remove the EGR but the TL does not. Once it realizes there's no flow, I'm guessing it falls back on a non EGR timing table instead of bumping the timing when there's EGR flow to make up for the power loss of EGR.

 

didn't really feel any gains. Besides the cooling factor I can literally put my face against the manifold after a drive. And I got 2 of the thermal gaskets, don't think there metal though they are white. Only things that bother me is my AEM v2 doesn't quite fit flush against the TB anymore. ive gotta pull the bracket off and relocate a hole, im nervous having the rubber coupler like not fully on lol.