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I am new to this topic, thought I would post a question about carbon build up on the valves in a direct injection engine. Does anyone have any information on if this will be a problem in the future with these new engines? If so is there anything that can be done to prevent it or limit its impact? I read stories of other companies with direct injection engines and problems showing up after 50,000 miles. Does anyone have any information on how Mercedes is addressing the potential problem down the road?
There hasn't been a pattern of carbon build-up with the M274 engine, which by the way is not a "new" engine by any means. It's been around since 2011 and millions have been built globally. If there was a problem, it seems like it would have appeared by now. There are a few threads in this forum about carbon issues in some other engines with DI.
My E90 era BMW had this issue and at 50k miles needed heads taken off and media blasting to clean it out. There was a specialist in the area who did it with crushed walnut shells - so none of the metals were affected. They had a special rig just so they could blast in and evacuate the waste to a vacuum. Crazy process and the before and after was night and day. Since then, I believe many manufacturers have gone to a split DI/standard cycle engine so that the standard part of the intake could burn-off the gunk. I don't know if ours has that or not though, but I recall that pure DI was the root cause of that issue for many marques.
Y'know I was wondering about this too. I also come from an E92 335i and am all too familiar with the carbon build up issues. I'm glad no one's had issues with the GLC yet.
Hey y'all doing a walnut blast now. My intake manifold grenaded when I was on a trip with my family so I developed a misfire on 1 with bad idle. Took it to dealer they said failed digital compression test needs new heads $36,259. Took car back did manual compression which was fine. Took intake manifold off and saw cracked manifold. Lot of diagnostic steps in between. To answer your question I don't think so because I can't find a vacuum adapter so I had to modify my N54 with cardboard and weather seal.
2013 GL550 x166 109,000 miles and almost due for oil change.
There hasn't been a pattern of carbon build-up with the M274 engine, which by the way is not a "new" engine by any means. It's been around since 2011 and millions have been built globally. If there was a problem, it seems like it would have appeared by now. There are a few threads in this forum about carbon issues in some other engines with DI.
Yeah I haven't heard anything about carbon buildup, I know a few people that have this engine M274,, in Germany and in the USA.
I've heard of many issues in the Hyundai's Volkswagens and Audis DI engines.
I have a 2017 E300 2.0 broke it down not too long ago and it's clean as a whistle!
Last edited by Roman living; Sep 26, 2024 at 10:18 PM.
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Direct Injection & Carbon Buildup
