On Saturday, I used my Subaru Top Engine Cleaning Tool to run a bottle of Subaru Top Engine Cleaner in through a vacuum line (same one I've used before, seems to run to the center of the plenum as displayed in a helpful video I found that was posted by another newer FXT owner) and, hopefully, past the intake valves in my DIT engine. The whole process seemed to go well, I would run the car at idle with the cleaner running for maybe 30-45 seconds and then close the valve and rev the engine for a bit until it smoothed out again before opening the valve again and repeating. The instructions recommended running 1/3 of a bottle in each cycle...I have a hard time telling how much is left in the bottle and stalled the car the first time I attempted this process by running too much at once, so I probably was more like 1/4 to 1/6 of a bottle each time. I wanted to be conservative because it was a LONG crank to get the car started again when I screwed up and I'm sure it seemed even longer than it really was.
Everything seemed to go fine, the idle would drop a bit while the cleaner was running and the engine would be a bit rough when I first started revving it up and would then smooth out, just like the directions suggested. I started seeing (and smelling) white smoke not long after starting and hoped this was due to unwanted carbon being burned out. Once the bottle was empty, I revved it up until the smoke was gone as suggested by the instructions, let it go back to idle, shut it down, cleaned up the tool, and then took the car out for a long drive.
The car felt great the whole time, but it threw a CEL right when I restarted it. I had my dongle handy and there was one active code and one pending...one was for bank 1 running rich and I forgot the other despite trying hard to commit it to memory. Cleared the codes and everything has been A-OK since then.
I think the CEL must have been due to the cleaning process and was no big deal for me, but it sure would have sucked to have to take it to the dealer for that if I didn't have the dongle/Torque app and the codes had been persistent. I don't know if this state disabled my turbo like the CEL I got after trying a new PEA fuel injector cleaner some time ago, I didn't even try to move the car before clearing the codes.
Maybe this kind of preventive maintenance is more trouble than it's worth??
Everything seemed to go fine, the idle would drop a bit while the cleaner was running and the engine would be a bit rough when I first started revving it up and would then smooth out, just like the directions suggested. I started seeing (and smelling) white smoke not long after starting and hoped this was due to unwanted carbon being burned out. Once the bottle was empty, I revved it up until the smoke was gone as suggested by the instructions, let it go back to idle, shut it down, cleaned up the tool, and then took the car out for a long drive.
The car felt great the whole time, but it threw a CEL right when I restarted it. I had my dongle handy and there was one active code and one pending...one was for bank 1 running rich and I forgot the other despite trying hard to commit it to memory. Cleared the codes and everything has been A-OK since then.
I think the CEL must have been due to the cleaning process and was no big deal for me, but it sure would have sucked to have to take it to the dealer for that if I didn't have the dongle/Torque app and the codes had been persistent. I don't know if this state disabled my turbo like the CEL I got after trying a new PEA fuel injector cleaner some time ago, I didn't even try to move the car before clearing the codes.
Maybe this kind of preventive maintenance is more trouble than it's worth??
