Just bought a 2013 Mazda 3 Grand Touring i for $5,500, and it has the 2.0 Skyactiv engine, which I have learned has direct injection, which seems to come with the major downside of having valve carbon buildup issues. Unfortunately that is on my mind now whenever I drive this car, as I do mostly city driving, which seems to be the worst for DI engines. There is only one place around that does Walnut Blasting, and it is costly. I read that you can remove the EGR valve, and that will stop the carbon build up, but can cause other issues such as engine code throwing, hotter exhaust and engine temps, and damage over the long run. Has anyone done an EGR delete? Or are there other ways to reduce the carbon build up issue? It's a very nice car, I just hate that it will have this issue. It has 148,000 on it, and runs well enough, so I don't think it has any immediate issues.
New 2013 Mazda3 Owner with some GDI Questions
- Thread starter Emerald
- Start date
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- Canada
Typically carbon build up takes a while to accumulate to the point that your car starts showing symptoms. A big contributor to excessive or premature carbon build up is your driving habits. If you regularly get the car to normal operating temps, and the car isn't subjected to short (less than 5 min) trips often, carbon build up is much slower to accumulate. An inspection would be warranted if the fuel economy drops, and the engine doesn't run as smoothly. If other basic maintenance is done as required (refer to the owner's manual), then it would be worth paying a mechanic to use a borescope to inspect the back of the intake valves to confirm carbon build up. If confirmed, you would then proceed with a walnut blasting.
Another option is adding a chemical intake valve cleaning to your maintenance schedule. CRC and Seafoam both sell products designed to help cleaning carbon build up, but they will not clean as well as walnut blasting, so if the build up is too severe, the chemical cleaning will not yield any noticeable results.
Another option is adding a chemical intake valve cleaning to your maintenance schedule. CRC and Seafoam both sell products designed to help cleaning carbon build up, but they will not clean as well as walnut blasting, so if the build up is too severe, the chemical cleaning will not yield any noticeable results.
I have seen that spray solutions that you squirt through the throttle body can possibly knock loose carbon deposits that could then get inside the engine and cause damage, as well as the spray can somewhat get past the piston rings and contaminate the oil, is that true?
