EtherNut
Veteran Member
I thought I'd post a couple of pics of my Intake before I cleaned it. I did it last weekend, my 97 Passat had 166347 miles on it. To my knowledge it had never been done.. Looks like I was only getting about 30 percent of airflow through... When I would accelerate my car would seem like it hit an acceleration brick wall at about 3000-3500 RPMs and would just spew black SSSSSSSMOKE like a freight train. I guess this was because it was so restricted that the turbo could not force any more air into the cylinders as the input from the injectors increased. All of that smoke was unburned deisel wasted out the rear end of my car....
Enjoy!
All in all I spent about 8 hours doing this... I went VERY slow. The whole job wasnt too bad, and I actually ENJOYED it. Just a quiet day with the radio off and my tools.. ahh good for the soul..... /images/graemlins/laugh.gif
After I scraped all the crud I could with a screw driver I took the Intake to the car wash and spent about 7 bucks spraying the crud out. It did a great job on everything I could get sprayer nozzle on. What was left was the cavity of the intake. I could feel the crud still in there with my fingers. I took it home and filled it full of diesel fuel (the only solvent I had on hand, I'd use something different if I had it to do over) and let it sit for about 2 hours. Then I filled it full of old nuts (ala DieselGeek ), plugged up the holes with rags then shook the crap out of it. It loosened everything, then I flushed it with water, and redid the diesel/nut treatment. One area you really need to pay attention to is the neck of the intake where it turns down to cavity of the intake then on to the ports. This can be a huge bottle neck of it's not cleaned out. The car wash sprayer couldn't reach it effectively, so don't depend on that. That's where the nuts came into place. I also had a long circular wire brush on hand that I hooked to my drill and ran it stright up through the middle port to the turn in the neck to clean it out. I kept having to remove the wire brush and clean it in solvent as it kept getting built up with crud.
Take a look at your intake, it may be causing you more grief that you know...
Enjoy!
All in all I spent about 8 hours doing this... I went VERY slow. The whole job wasnt too bad, and I actually ENJOYED it. Just a quiet day with the radio off and my tools.. ahh good for the soul..... /images/graemlins/laugh.gif
After I scraped all the crud I could with a screw driver I took the Intake to the car wash and spent about 7 bucks spraying the crud out. It did a great job on everything I could get sprayer nozzle on. What was left was the cavity of the intake. I could feel the crud still in there with my fingers. I took it home and filled it full of diesel fuel (the only solvent I had on hand, I'd use something different if I had it to do over) and let it sit for about 2 hours. Then I filled it full of old nuts (ala DieselGeek ), plugged up the holes with rags then shook the crap out of it. It loosened everything, then I flushed it with water, and redid the diesel/nut treatment. One area you really need to pay attention to is the neck of the intake where it turns down to cavity of the intake then on to the ports. This can be a huge bottle neck of it's not cleaned out. The car wash sprayer couldn't reach it effectively, so don't depend on that. That's where the nuts came into place. I also had a long circular wire brush on hand that I hooked to my drill and ran it stright up through the middle port to the turn in the neck to clean it out. I kept having to remove the wire brush and clean it in solvent as it kept getting built up with crud.
Take a look at your intake, it may be causing you more grief that you know...