Loving my New to me S6

A6 All/ S6 All
#1

Howdy folks,

New member here, am very thrilled to be posting on here. I have been trying to register for the last couple of weeks and the site has been on the fritz but now it looks like things are better than ever.

I recently acquired a 2008 S6 and immediately I went ahead and did an oil service, changing over to rotella t-6, I also ordered a two pack of K&N air filters and about to swap them out this weekend once they arrive.

Post this my plan is to do a Carbon Cleaning of the intake valves, install intake spacers and follow that up by replacing the valve cover gaskets.

Couple of questions around this.

  1. What else should i focus on initially in terms of maintenance?
  2. Is it preferable to do a walnut blast or use a chemical solution like the one JHM sells along with a brush?

Thanks

#2

Welcome!

I’d consider replacing the oil/air separator, that will go hand in hand with the carbon clean; coil packs and plugs are never a bad thing to look over as well.

I’ve done both the walnut blasting and the chemical solution on Audi FSI engines (my 5.2 I did chemical; my 3.2FSI i did walnut blasting) Both work well, walnut blasting was quicker, but you need the blaster and a good sized compressor along with a strong vacuum and the port attachment (my buddy has the equipment so that’s why I did it) so if you have access to it, then by all means do it.

The chemical method took me about 40mins per cylinder to get it cleaned to my satisfaction, there is a great write up on it in the forum. I used Easy Off Oven cleaner (pump spray not the aerosol) and it worked great. I rotated the engine easily with all the plugs removed and cranking on the alternator pulley.

I used starting fluid to spray in each cylinder to make sure they were completely closed before spraying the oven cleaner, and let it sit for about 20mins. Then used the brush kit and a drill; teamed with a dental pick set. I then rinsed with washer fluid that I sucked out with a shop vac that I taped a straw to the hose, made it super easy to clean out.

#3

Thanks a lot for this great info. Have a couple of audis at home and friends who like working on audis, might convince them to go halfsies on the tools needed for the blast, else brush and chemicals it is.

#4

Welcome noob.

I posted this in the other thread but you have the right idea. Brush style CC is by far going to be the best bnb results wise. If you do it right. Definitely check the pcv system and intake manifold for damage.

The JHM CC kit has a great brush and its something you can get when you get the intake spacers.

#5

Thank you sir.

I just read and re-read the carbon cleaning thread and took down a bunch of notes and questions for you guys

  1. Two approaches to removing the carbon
    a. Media blasting
    a. General consensus seems to be that this is extremely messy and requires some speciality tools although some people got this to work well.
    b. Chemical
    a. Majority of the folks seem to prefer this approach.

  2. Tips from Folks
    a. After getting the intake off and inspecting the state of the carbon you need to determine which cylinders you can work on first.
    b. A good way to determine if a cylinder is fully closed out is to spray some starter fluid into each cylinder that looks fully closed. If the starter fluid pools then this is an indication that the cylinder is fully closed, this is important since you don’t want the cleaning fluid and carbon to fall into the cylinder.
    c. An issue that folks have encountered after a carbon cleaning is that the O2 sensors failing, this happens because of chemical leakage into the cylinder and when the car starts up the leakage gets into the cats and the O2 sensors. In order to avoid this use a strong vacuum to pull out all gunk with a vacuum.
    d. It is important that the cleaning is thorough since otherwise leftover carbon can potentially get into the cylinder.
    e. Always use the brush with the fluid still in the valve shoot.

  3. Questions
    a. Is there a comprehensive list of tools needed for chemical cleaning? Given that we need to remove the front end. There is a mention of the tools but most of the links have expired.
    b. Is there a pointer to the fuel system cleaner? The link in the original thread expired.
    Somewhat related but is it possible to determine if the intake manifold is functioning properly? Using the rosstech?

#6

Yes chemical is better. Think about it. Your soaking the carbon. The carbon is submerged in chemical cleaner. So even the carbon you can’t see will get clean

A few tips. Once you have found the cylinders that are closed and that your going to start soaking with the chemical cleaner. Soak all of them at once. Don’t do them one at a time when soaking them.

Also to prevent and chemicals getting into the cat’s that might have seeped past the valves. Pull out the spark plugs pull the fuel pump fuse and dry fire the motor to push or anything that might be in the cylinders

Good kit. One pf the best brushes for CC
https://jhmotorsports.com/carbon-cleaning-tool-kit-jhm-for-all-fsi-tsi-and-tfsi-direct-injection-engines.html

https://jhmotorsports.com/carbon-cleaning-solution-or-solvent-lubro-moly-for-fsi-direct-injection-engines.html

I use general oven cleaner but if you want specific cleaner lubro moly is good stuff

#7

I know oven cleaner usually contains sodium hydroxide (lye). From some reason it seems like sodium hydroxide reacts with aluminum and forms hydrogen gas. I assume you haven’t seen any bad side effects from using oven cleaner?

#8

No issues. Obviously it’s in a garage that has plenty of room but no never any issues.

#9

You can use the output test that rosstech has. But even if you do that you will need to be looking into the intake.

Countvohn had a video on how to take apart the intake and also how to see what is wrong. But it was on the other site. I don’t know if we can still link to it.

#10

Thanks for the pointer, just went over his video - great stuff.

#11

I know I found it helpful. There is a lot of good info in there. Not just the solid points on how to split the intake.