First thing I did was to replace air cleaner. Old one was pretty clean. Might have helped a bit. Hard to tell. Car is a wonderful 2021 I bought brand new only has 12,200 miles on it. I have appointment with Lexus service in a couple of weeks. Will go from there.

 

Will they top of your gas tank for that $290 fee?

I'm not putting any additive to my car, I don't trust any of that. If it is crucial, those gas companies will include them to their gas and make a headline advertising out of it etc. they don't because they will get sued for lying

 

Then you should feel pretty good about Techron. It's the additive package Chevron includes in its gas and makes a headline advertising out of it.

 

No. Do not ever pay for a fuel system cleaning. Actually, I take that back. If you have an old car that's sat for 20+ years and has a carburetor, then go ahead. Otherwise, total waste of money. As other have said, Seafoam, BG44k, Gumout Regane, Techron, Berryman B12 or whatever other flavor of fuel/valve cleaner you want to spring for. And in most cases, even that isn't necessary. Little trade secret - that's all the dealer does anyways. Adds a can of whatever to your tank. It's not as if they're going to take your injectors out and flush them or remove your fuel pump and lines and clean them out with a steel wire tube cleaner .

I use some of those additives on occasion but top tier fuel combined with driving the car frequently and/or the occasional Italian tune-up (repeated high-rev, high-load on the engine) is going to take care of any significant buildup you might have on the piston heads and valves. And as far as the "fuel system", if we're talking fuel lines or pump - it's just simply not needed. Those things don't really get "dirty" to begin with. The fuel pump usually has a mesh type filter to prevent large chunks of contamination getting through but even if you have some of that, the dealers "fuel system" cleaner isn't going to magically make it go away. And fuel injectors rarely get any real tarnish buildup if you use good fuel.

So yeah....no.

 

Agree on most points, with one exception: Direct injection systems that don't also use port injection to rinse the valves can get carbon buildup. Fortunately for us, Lexus designs engines more conscientiously than that.

 

Agreed. The only problem is that even a good fuel cleaner won't help with that, since the inner valve surfaces of a GDI only engine are constantly getting pelted with EGR gasses (often combined with a turbo which makes it worse) and will never see any fuel pass by to clean them. In that case you're left with running that direct injection cleaner from from CRG through the intake as a regular maintenance item or having to do something crazy like walnut blasting after a few years. Be prepared for that if you get a VW, Hyundai or Kia with a GDI only engine.

I bought a 2016 Honda Pilot with direct injection at 60K miles and the valves looked pretty ugly. Not terrible, but not great. I removed the intake runners then poured seafoam into the head (with the valves closed), let it soak for a few hours, then sucked it up with a thin attachment on a shop vac. I only did it that way because I already had to replace the fuel injectors due to a TSB on Honda's part where some fuel lines weren't fully cleaned of metal shavings from their supplier which resulted in some of the injectors getting clogged. Not very convenient. I gained an appreciation of Seafoam however. I tried two other solvents and Seafoam blew them both out of the water on carbon and oil residue on the valves. They looked shiny clean afterward. I'm glad I don't have to do anything like that with the Lexus.

Here's my thread on Piloteers.org if anyone wants to see:

https://www.piloteers.org/threads/va....166233/page-1

Before and after seafoam:

 

Impressive, losiglow, and a very informative thread. You're far beyond my knowledge level on this topic; thanks for sharing.

 

Must be popular Lexus/Toyota dealership scam, I have yet to hear “fuel system cleaning” recommendations from Acura dealers.

 

Nothing from my second car Audi dealership, either.

 

Probably has more to do with the dealer chain's ownership than with this dealer's affiliation with Lexus.

 

i would just use the techron stuff every once in a while. doesn't the manual allow for it? i dunno about seafoam. i used to use it back in the day, but it seems consensus on the enthusiast oil/solvent forums is: don't.

 

I've used both and found that Seafoam really works. My Infiniti M35x had what they called saddle gas tanks in the rear and the leveler between the two tanks would get clogged. How I knew it was happening is when I knew that my fuel tank was low, the tank would only take half of it's normal capacity and I couldn't get a full fill-up. I would add a can of Seaform and it was cleared within less than a hundred miles of driving. I ended up adding a can whenever I changed the oil and it ran great to 165,000 miles when I sold it. I've honestly never seen a difference in anything after adding a bottle of Techron, but have almost always seen a difference after using Seafoam. I don't know if Lexus recommends it one way or the other.

The product that many dealers use for cleaning the system comes from Wynns. A good friend of mine was their distributor in the Portland area. He always recommended that I first run a can of one of their professional products through a full tank of gas. After that I would hook up a pressurized can to the fuel system and run it through while the engine was running. He let me borrow his fuel injection cleaning kit after showing me the first time how to do it. It made a difference. You can buy the kit and the chemicals online and there is a chance that you'll be doing exactly what the dealer would do using the kit.

 

https://slickdeals.net/f/16913440-12...?src=frontpage

never used any type of cleaner before but picked up 2 this weekend because it was on sale. why not?

 

Wonder if Lexus would use it as an excuse to deny warranty coverage for an engine related issue?

 

Our dealership uses BG products but they don't use it in a can, they run it through the fuel rails/log. It does a Great job at cleaning the injectors. We just had it done on our 2009 LS460 and it was only $125 around here. I thought that it was expensive but after hearing $290 for you, I think that we got a deal!

I do agree with the other's though that in a newer car, I'd run top tier gas and a can of Sea Foam/Techron/BG/Whatever your preference is and that should be good. That's the plan for the ES.