Are GDI's crap? HELP!!!

[the great one]

am a little confused as to how a lean burn engine is prone to cokeing up,i would of thought if you use the car hard now and then and use fuel with a cleaning aditive you should be ok

that because it injects the fuel stright in to the cylinder so you get no wash on the valves from the fuel. putting fuel cleaner does nothing but maybe cleans the injectors as does driving it hard. the problem is it cokes up the valves with carbon deposits so much so it cant breath resulting in uneven running and stalling

[jamie28]

If you warmed the engine up, revved it to say 4k then atomised some redex maybe with a spray bottle into the inlet manifold i/e air filter box surely that would clear most of the carbon of the valves ??

Similar principle to pouring redex down the carburettor like you did in the old days.

Just a thought!

Originally Posted by jamie28

Similar principle to pouring redex down the carburettor like you did in the old days.

LOL! You've just reminded me of a guy with an old cavalier (old Y-reg) I knew who did either that or put some down the spark plug holes and yes it cleaned his engine but for ages he was blowing out so much white smoke everyone following would've needed their fog lights on!! Highly embarrasing!

[alsner]

Originally Posted by peteS40

LOL! You've just reminded me of a guy with an old cavalier (old Y-reg) I knew who did either that or put some down the spark plug holes and yes it cleaned his engine but for ages he was blowing out so much white smoke everyone following would've needed their fog lights on!! Highly embarrasing!

I did the same to a X reg Cortina 2.0litre back in 1991 never again. As you said highly embarrasing.

ALi

[DavidMarron]

The car's in for a decoke at the minute. I took it in one week ago (tuesday am) and on Friday they hadn't finished. I was given a loan car over the weekend and took the opportunity to look at the engine in bits when I picked the car up.

The service manager said that he'd never seen such crap in an engine before. (previous owner lady with kids) It looked like coffee grounds and there was 1/4 " of coke on the valves.

He recomends a thrash once a week and running on premium fuel. Also adding a fuel cleaner type stuff at the service. I'm bloody glad I'm not paying for the repair! The dealer who sold me the car agreed to foot the bill. I'm paying for a cam belt change a little early but while it's in bits it'll save several hundred quid later.

I was lent a new S40 over the weekend (1.6) and he told me that mine should respond like that once the work was done. I hope that's true as the loan car was quite nippy.

I didn't like the V50 when it first came out but maybe would consider one in a couple of years

[mengland]

I bought a GDI (unaware of associated problems at the time) just over a year ago. The only problem I've had is that after about 8 months one of the injectors broke (think it was an electriacl problem rather than mechanical). I got that replaced and it's been fine. It does idle irratically, but it doesn't bother me anymore. Have been using fuel additive or Premium fuel (currently using premium fuel due to lower fuel prices, but use additive when fuel is very expensive). Premium fuel seems to work better.

Economy is very good for a car this size. I am also doing a lot of miles (about 22000 a year) but it copes really well.

Just out of interest, does anyone know how much de-coking costs (previous cost of £2K seems a lot), though it would be less than £1K. DavidMarron - maybe you could let me know when you pick up your car - and if its worth doing or not!

Apparently the GDI can be a good engine if looked after - very reliable and economical, and is quite powerful for 1.8.

Parts can be more awkard to get (and slightly more costly) as they are more rare and normally have to be imported from Sweden or Holland.

[DavidMarron]

I'll let you know about performence when I pick up the car

Volvo time the job at 14 hours but mine has been much longer. They didn't expect the coking to be so bad

[johnswlondon]

i agree that only fully synthetic oil should be used and a fuel additive from halfords etc.
you come here for honest opinions and mine is the fuel saving will be less than the extra service costs over it life,so the deisel doesnt make sense if your aim is to save money

[DavidMarron]

The decoke was carried out at Stratstone Volvo who charge £115 per hour. This was paid by the Network Q dealer who sold the car.

The decoke cost £2k and while the top end was off I paid for the bits parts to change the cam belt. They renmoved tons of gunk which the showed me in the workshop.

This didn't solve the problem and they replaced an injector, still the same problem so they replaced all the injectors at a total cost of £1100 (inc 2 hours labour)

The car is miles better but was pretty bad before it went in. The idle was alll over the place and now and again it felt like it'd stall.

At the end of the day, I didn't pay for the decoke but did for the injectors and wish that maybe I'd had the option to hand the car back.

On a plus note, the whole top end's nearly new and although I paid £6K plus an extra £1.1k for the car (Y /20001/50k) It should last me ages and I'll just have to hang on to it longer than I expected.

Ironically, my previous car was a Nissan that I owned from 6 months old to the age of 16. It never put a foot wrong and I only got rid of it because old age meant that things like electric windows stuck down and were beyond economic repair.

I'm tempted to write a note to Volvo as the car had a full service history and I thought I was buying in to a superior brand. I doubt it'd have any effect other than make me feel better.

Originally Posted by morphinemitt

Thanks all, a mixed bag of replies there then.
I did however speak to the service manager at my local main dealer and he basically told me about the de-coke/mot emissions problem and the poor idling etc. (he actually advised me to steer clear of GDI's)
Bit of a tip here too: if the car is a volvo engine it has a different box to the GDI, and a surefire way to tell is by the location of reverse, ie with a volvo it's left and lift, whereas a GDi is right and push. Hope this helps future buyers/owners.
Thanks again all.

Also if it says for example 1.8 its the standard Volvo lump, if its says 1.8i its the GDi version.

I have a 1.8 GDi and my reverse is right and back.