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I couldn't find much information about walnut blasting or cleaning carbon buildup for is250 engine (4grfse) so I decided to take on the task on my own. I bare no responsibility for anyone who is attempting this job and messing up their car.
Parts used or needed. 10mm, 12 mm, and 22mm sockets 5mm hex key Bmw Vacuum blaster adapter wand (pt#81292208033) Shop vac Air blow gun Air compressor Harbor Freight media blaster Harbor Freight walnut media (fine 24 grit) 1ft clear vinyl tubing 1-1/4 in. O.D. x 1 in. I.D. BrassCraft 1/4-in x 1/4-in x Threaded Coupling Fitting
These are some of the modification that you would have to make. Drill a hole about 1 inch above the end of the vinyl tubing to fit the blasting wand. Make sure you drill it big enough so that the wand could move around easily. Now with the threaded coupling fitting, attach one end to the tip of the media blasting gun and secure it down and screw the other end to the blasting wand. To start off this job you would have to take off the top intake manifold and take out the spark plugs. I would not cover this part because there are many forums and videos that shows you how remove to them and I want to try to make this short.
Upon removing the upper intake manifold you would have access to the lower intake manifold. To remove the lower intake manifold there 4 bolts and 4 screws which are all 12mm holding it down(orange circle). Also there is a clip that has to be unclip on the upper intake manifold(yellow circle). Once the lower intake manifold is off, set it to the side with the flap facing up. Now is the time to spray some throttle body cleaner and clean the carbon buildup off the flap. Be very careful when cleaning the buildup without moving the flaps. Now this is where you would be working from; intake valveports. Before starting the walnut blasting, make sure you tape up all the other intake ports that you will not be working on and make sure all the spark plugs are out because you do not want to build any compression in the piston chambers when turning over the engine. Shine a flashlight inside the port to check if the valves are completely closed. If not, turn the crankshaft clockwise at the front of the engine with a 22mm socket. Turn it a few times while looking inside the port to see that the valve is completely close. Now connect the vinyl tubing onto you vacuum hose and stick the other end into the intake port. Connect your air supply from your compressor to the media blasting gun. Start the vacuum and stick the blaster wand into the hole and start blasting. Remember to move the wand up and down and around to remove all the buildup from the sidewalls and valve. Stop after 1 to 2 minutes of blasting, stop the vacuum first before removing the wand. There would be some walnut media leftover at the bottom of the intake port. To remove the left over, insert the tube, turn on the vacuum while using the air blow gun to spray out the rest of the remaining media. Check how well the ports looks and if more cleaning is needed repeat the step all over until you are satisfied.
When finished, install the entire new gasket and install all the parts in reverse order. I also SeaFoam the engine one more time after the car got up to it's temp to clean out all the leftover carbon buildup in the ports and valves. This is how my bad my valves and intake port looks from carbon buildup. The photos don’t really show as much as in person. The side walls were covered in such a thick buildup which was reducing the circumference ofthe port. Before and After photos:
The results was awesome, the car had better acceleration from pickup and highway speed. Startups sounds crisp and less valve knocking. No more stinky fart smell at full throttle. I would say that this is a must do for every is250 as a maintenance routine. Maybe every 30,000 miles.
The results after the valve tops were hit with the blasting were incredible! The walls couldn't probably get the most benefit of the blasting due to the angle. But nonetheless, a worthwhile invest there!
Wow. Whenever I floor my 2007 IS250 I get that rotten egg smell. I didn't learn about this until a few months ago so there is no chance the dealer will cover this. About how much will this cost if I have to pay to get it done? I cannot do this on my own and thanks for posting this.
I'm glad I could share this with everyone. I believe all is250 that is out of the Lexus care package should do this. It really changed the car and now it drives like new again. Even my wife felt and notice the difference.
SQLnovice-dealers dont cover carbon buildup unless your car still under their care package warranty. I went to the dealer to get the car looked at and they said that the symptoms I was having was caused due to carbon buildup on my valves and pistons. I was out of the warranty date and they quoted me over $3000 for a top engine clean. I was like nope, I could floor the hell out the car with top grade gas and Seafoam to clean carbon buildup off the pistons but had to find a way to remove carbon off the valves, that when I thought about walnut blasting.
I don't think you could really find someone to do this for you unless they specify they do walnut blasting to remove carbon build up in engines. Overall diy cost me less than $150 for parts and tools. It's really time consuming though, took me about 4 1/2 hours.
Wow! How did you get clear photos of the valves? I had to bust out the SLR and still this was the best I could do.
I had a dealer "top engine clean" at 20K, new pistons at 95K, and then I cleaned the valves at 105K. I had the HF walnut blaster ready to go but as you can see from the pic, my valves weren't too bad so I decided to chemical scrub instead. I just poured some sea foam into each intake, scrubbed with a pipe cleaner, then sucked out the dirty soup with a turkey baster and hose extension. It took about 5 minutes per cylinder and around an hour total. Pic shows "before", valves were pretty clean after.
CRC makes an intake cleaner spray that would be ideal but I had an old can of sea foam so I used it. Don't use brake/carb cleaner as it might degrade the rubber valve seals.
Photo was taken from my phone which is an iPhone 6, didn't have a real camera. I had to take multiple takes just to get that one right photo.
JeremyT-your ports are shinny. I didn't have any kind of brushes which it would be even better when doing this job. I just ran Seafoam after I installed everything and got it up to normal temp. Riding it for almost a week now and no more fart smell, shaking, shuddering or idle dropping while stand still or coming to a stop.
Parsa- you do it yourself and you'll know the quality of the job. I rather spend the money and time on preventative maintenance than having something catastrophe happen in the long run and costing more money because I didn't take care of something that I could of. Just my .02.
I just did this to my IS250 @ 56,000 miles. The valves were in pretty rough shape. I wanted to add some info though that might help some people.
**MOST IMPORTANT** This is NOT a 3 hour job. Plan on spending a solid day doing this. I started at 7:00 am and didn't finish till about 5-6PM, so plan accordingly.
1st.. You should hit the valves with a carb cleaner and pick off the big chunks as best you can, then start blasting. The walnut blasting was not enough to get the big chunks off the valves, the carb cleaner helped soften the carbon so the walnut media could easily remove it.
2nd.. The brass adapter is a special fitting. You cannot go to home depot and get a brass fitting that fits the BMW wand, I actually had to drill out the brass fitting (from home depot) to get to mate to the BMW wand.
3rd .. That media blaster is a POS. It will constantly clog, what i did was cut the hose shorter which helped a lot. Also you should empty the hose after every use and once blasting keep holding it while doing the two valves, that way the media will not clog and it will work out pretty good. Then after you're done with that port, empty the hose and repeat.
4th... MAKE SURE TO REMOVE THE BATTERY CABLE. This will wipe out the fault codes and reset the ECU. I had a **** ton of faults from doing this and resetting the codes would have prevented some worries, that way if a code comes up you know it's a legit code and not a ghost code from you tinkering in the engine.
5th.. If your car is cold it's not going to start right away after the job is done, in fact mine took ten tries before the air got purged out of the cold start fuel injector. Yea, remember that fuel line you disconnected? Well that goes to a cold start injector and the cars not going to turn over cold until all the air is gone out of that line. This scared the **** out of me since this is a pretty scary job to begin with, don't panic though just keep cranking until she finally kicks over.
6th.. THIS IS A 4GR-FSE motor. This stupid car has like 5 motor models listed to it, I accidentally picked the 2G gaskets and was forced to reuse my old one. So when you're looking up the part #'s remember 4GR-FSE.
If these 6 items would have been listed in the DIY it would have saved me a lot of hassle and worries.
You should install a catch can system to reduce the carbon build up.
Good luck finding one!! I spent over an hour searching for a catch can kit for the IS250. Token solutions is the only one I could find specific for our car and they're MIA, I think they went out of business. So unless you're going to custom fabricate one, you're SOL. I even looked on EBAY to no avail, this almost makes me want to start manufacturing a kit for them.
I am half tempted to pull up some wiring prints because I am willing to bet that cold start injector runs off a 12 volt signal, wire in a little bypass switch and turn that sucker on while driving down the highway for 5-10 minutes each day. You might run rich for a bit but it would definitely coat all those valves with nice clean gas and stop any carbon deposits.... Just some food for thought. I'm surprised they just don't program the ECU to turn it on for 5 minutes each start. Easy fix to carbon problem and could be done with an easy ECU flash recall.
Good luck finding one!! I spent over an hour searching for a catch can kit for the IS250. Token solutions is the only one I could find specific for our car and they're MIA, I think they went out of business. So unless you're going to custom fabricate one, you're SOL. I even looked on EBAY to no avail, this almost makes me want to start manufacturing a kit for them.
I am half tempted to pull up some wiring prints because I am willing to bet that cold start injector runs off a 12 volt signal, wire in a little bypass switch and turn that sucker on while driving down the highway for 5-10 minutes each day. You might run rich for a bit but it would definitely coat all those valves with nice clean gas and stop any carbon deposits.... Just some food for thought. I'm surprised they just don't program the ECU to turn it on for 5 minutes each start. Easy fix to carbon problem and could be done with an easy ECU flash recall.
You can always custom an oil catch can, if you're pro you should know how oil separation works, most of cheap catch can on Ebay are directly inlet and outlet and that won't work, some prO says just put metal scrubs in there and it's fine hmm i don't think so, that's why you heard some oil catch can works for somebody and did not work for others, if you buy a 200$ oil catch can from a Professional Company you'll see it has a separator inside the can the tube should be in and out correct in order to holds up the gunk and dirt back from the Can and fresh air goes into intake system.
and It DOES HELP reduce carbon buildup for IS250 change new PCV valve too when you're there, 100% guarantee you'll feel the different ! PCV valve costs 10$ and only Lexus OEM PCV valve. there is a DIY how to install oil catch can on this forum, the different Ebay universal oil catch can compare to token is the bracket that you need to mount, just custom a bracket, you should be able to mount the bracket on right front of the car facing Alternator, pop up the plastic there plenty of holes, use Bolt and Nut with lock washer, don't use screw bolt, my friend he works at Machine Shop for a wheelchair company he has a ton of different kind of bracket without making one.
You can always custom an oil catch can, if you're pro you should know how oil separation works, most of cheap catch can on Ebay are directly inlet and outlet and that won't work, some prO says just put metal scrubs in there and it's fine hmm i don't think so, that's why you heard some oil catch can works for somebody and did not work for others, if you buy a 200$ oil catch can from a Professional Company you'll see it has a separator inside the can the tube should be in and out correct in order to holds up the gunk and dirt back from the Can and fresh air goes into intake system.
and It DOES HELP reduce carbon buildup for IS250 change new PCV valve too when you're there, 100% guarantee you'll feel the different ! PCV valve costs 10$ and only Lexus OEM PCV valve. there is a DIY how to install oil catch can on this forum, the different Ebay universal oil catch can compare to token is the bracket that you need to mount, just custom a bracket, you should be able to mount the bracket on right front of the car facing Alternator, pop up the plastic there plenty of holes, use Bolt and Nut with lock washer, don't use screw bolt, my friend he works at Machine Shop for a wheelchair company he has a ton of different kind of bracket without making one.
I know it does, I agree with you. I custom made one for the GTI and it sucked. It's a pain trying to figure out where to mount it and making a bracket for it and finding the right hose diameters and lengths. Also it sucks because you have to drain it once a weekish, which is fine but if you don't have a garage draining it in 15-17 degree weather sucks as*. Also if you forget to drain it the can will freeze and cause positive crank case pressure, something you don't want trust me I learned my lesson there haha.
This is an excellent write up! Thanks! I'll have to do this soon. The dealer previously "cleaned" the ports but the hesitation and misfiring are back.
On a side note, Saikou Michi in Arizona still makes the oil catch cans. They have been making them for a long time so you won't get a cheap eBay version that may or may not work. The Saikou Michi catch cans have been reviewed in several ClubLexus posts, I believe.
I ordered a generic version since they do not have brackets that are plug-and-play for the IS. Email them and they should be able to specify the correct model. The lead time is longer since they are made to order, usually about a month. It's worth the wait and will slow down the carbon buildup issue in the future. Unfortunately, I installed mine a little too late but it has delayed the inevitable.
05-09-16, 10:48 PM
IS250 Walnut Blasting Valves DIY
