[Pelicn]

The kit looks awesome good effort

[dude04]

good job and thank you for sharing your experience
i will be doing this job soon so your comments will help guide me
cheers

[naynay]

how much sir?

[turtleman]

great job on creating this walnut blasting kit. That's some serious effort!!!

[JJH]

Awesome effort man - you'll have N54 owners lining up in your driveway and down your street soon, just from the responses of Melb members so far .....

[vtl]

Thanks guys appreciate it!

[Socket]

Mine was walnut blasted a few months ago, make me wanna get em done again

[vtl]

Made an improvement to the nozzle, the one I have works pretty good but some of the cylinder 1 and cylinder 6 are a little bit tricky to access. You can clean the valves pretty good but you can't get enough angle to clean the walls easily.

I found a cheapo long air duster with a bend from bunnings:

http://www.bunnings.com.au/ozito-270...-gun-_p5810653

Smashed it with a hammer to get the nozzle haha. Much to my surprise the end bit is actually metric M6 threaded. Drilled out an airduster nozzle I had lying around and tapped it for M6:





Nozzle:


Is really long and has a bend in it so it can access the walls better. This nozzle is actually a bit bigger and thicker than my current one so its more rigid and will flow shells better.

Originally Posted by Socket

Mine was walnut blasted a few months ago, make me wanna get em done again

Haha probably a bit too soon, even for sockets premium maintenance plan

I am actually going to walnut blast my car in 1 years time after 10,000kms. Will just be interesting to see how fast the N54 accumulates carbon buildup. If its significant I will probably add it as an annual task, will only cost me $25 in shells to do it.

[vtl]

Did some more walnut blasting this weekend, 3 cars in 1 day:

Did two e92 335is and a Citroen DS3 (BMW N13 engine)

iliketurtl3s car (e92 335i) >160k kms

Each port required 2 passes of walnut blasting. 1 pass to clean most of the gunk off, some scraping to break up the hard chunks and another pass to clean up the rest.

Very heavy buildup:



After 2 passes of walnut blasting:



Mfp's car (e92 335i):

Had a lot less kms, (60,000) but still had a fair amount of buildup. Most cylinders required 1 pass of walnut blasting, only a few required manual scraping.

Before:


After:


Godder's car: (Citroen DS3)

I had no idea Citroens had bmw engines until Godders contacted me about walnut blasting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_engine

Long story short, the engine has the same carbon build up issues as the N54 engine. The N54 cylinder head is obviously different and he had to fabricate his own intake adapter. This consisted of a rubber hose on a PVC elbow with a hole drilled into it. The rubber hose would deform into the shape of the cylinder port and the other end goes on the shop vac. A hole is drilled into the PVC elbow for the walnut blasting wand.


Pics to updated later


I would say that its definitely a good idea to clean valves regularly. The higher the mileage, the harder it is to clean off. Once you get the hard buildup behind the valves it will be very difficult to clean (some angles might not be accessible with a scraper), even with the blasting tools. If you do it sooner, all the crud just comes off with the walnut shells and doesn't require much manual cleaning.

[Socket]

Very nice work Vt, great stuff

[DR-JEKL]

iliketurtl3s will see a masive improvement!! when you think of all the extra weight of that carbon buildup at high rpm and it would have been detrimental to air flow also at high rpm

Great job vince

[vtl]

Originally Posted by DR-JEKL

iliketurtl3s will see a masive improvement!! when you think of all the extra weight of that carbon buildup at high rpm and it would have been detrimental to air flow also at high rpm

Great job vince

Thanks mate,

Also while I was bumping the starter motor on my car, I noticed that bits of carbon were flaking off as the valves moved up and down. Its doubtful these chunks will be fully incinerated during combustion and these carbon pellets cant be good for the exhaust turbine on the turbo!

[iliketurtl3s]

Originally Posted by DR-JEKL

iliketurtl3s will see a masive improvement!! when you think of all the extra weight of that carbon buildup at high rpm and it would have been detrimental to air flow also at high rpm

Great job vince

oh yeah! massive difference.

[Asps91]

may be a stupid question, but on a 335i steptronic... how do you spin the crank to turn the valves if the motor cant be stopped in neutral? Or can it be?

[vtl]

Originally Posted by Asps91

may be a stupid question, but on a 335i steptronic... how do you spin the crank to turn the valves if the motor cant be stopped in neutral? Or can it be?

I use an alligator clip to activate the starter solenoid. The motor can spin freely in P.

Its really easy to tell when the valves shut. They dance around a bit when open and then slam shut for a large portion of the crank cycle

[Asps91]

Originally Posted by vtl

I use an alligator clip to activate the starter solenoid. The motor can spin freely in P.

Itscrrally easy to tell when the valves shut. They dance around a bit when open and then slam shut for a large portion of the crank cycle

Really good idea! So this way you don't even have to touch the crank and remove the radiator shroud etc. just pull of the intake mani and clean. Thanks mate!

[vtl]

Finally got around to uploading the pics for the valve photos from the Citroen DS3. Was pretty low milage (~50k if i remember correctly) but the N13 engine looks like it accumulate carbon pretty heavily. The walls look pretty clean but the valves look really gunked up, which is what will affect performance the most.

Much more difficult on this transverse engine. The intake manifold is inbetween the engine and the firewall. So only a boroscope camera can be used for checking progress! Props to Godders for getting the thing all apart and back together. Definitely an all day job on one of these things

[vtl]

Did Carbonara's car last weekend. The vehicle only had 67k kms but actually had a fair amount of carbon build up accumulated. Also had a Stett intake which was a major pain to refit. Dropped a few screws in the engine bay which slowed us down, but luckily recovered everything.

Lucky I always include a charge pipe seal when I do this service because this car was actually driving without a charge pipe seal! Have no idea how it drove properly.

[Carbonara]

Originally Posted by vtl

Did Carbonara's car last weekend. The vehicle only had 67k kms but actually had a fair amount of carbon build up accumulated. Also had a Stett intake which was a major pain to refit. Dropped a few screws in the engine bay which slowed us down, but luckily recovered everything.

Lucky I always include a charge pipe seal when I do this service because this car was actually driving without a charge pipe seal! Have no idea how it drove properly.

Thank's buddy!
Have no idea how that was even possible, but pwahh what a difference it made in the end!

[Baker335]

Vtl - can you Pm me your number?

[vtl]

Got some minor updates to the blasting tool.

Fitted a swivel fitting to allow the bent nozzle to rotate. This allows you to rotate the nozzle while blasting and means you can clean all the sides of the intake walls really easily. Also mounted the tank on a trolley to allow easier transportation.

[vtl]

Did turtleman's car on the weekend. E90 335i steptronic.

Average buildup, wasn't too hard to clean the valves. Had a few issues with reassembly, some of the braided vacuum lines were really worn out. Its a real weak point of these engines and should really be proactively replaced.