Engine Sludge Resolved
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Happy Australia Day!
The feedback from TAT’s November article has been outstanding, with enquiries of excitement, curiosity, and even doubt. The BG Dynamic Engine Restoration Service certainly caught the eye of many of you readers. Such demand prompts an additional article. One that might find new interest in not just cleaning sludge, but rectifying DTC’s as well!
Many workshops as of late would encounter vehicles over the holiday that have seen extended or missing services, especially over the pandemic period. Ideally, many of these vehicles have been serviced recently and back on track to a regular maintenance routine. The effects of such extended or missing routine services may soon be presenting issues in your workshop.
I find that many independent workshops pride themselves in fixing problems from customers that take their car to them after dealership warranty periods end. Such a candidate was this 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe with 92,000 km. The vehicle is just outside the Hyundai warranty period of 5 years. Unfortunately, the vehicle missed service(s) over the pandemic period in excess of 20,000km. This resulted in a common DTC found in Hyundai V6 platforms that exceed their service interval.
P0391 Camshaft Position Sensor “B” (Exhaust) Circuit/Range Performance (Bank 2).
According to the owner, the car produced a bit of smoke, lacked economy performance, and sounded a bit noisy on start-up.
The vehicle had just been serviced a few days before with no resolution to the symptoms. Upon inspection of the valvetrain, a significant amount of sludge had formed and a possible cause of the DTC. Removing, cleaning, and reinstalling the sensor resulted in the DTC becoming intermittent but not completely resolved. Excess deposits in the engine may be encouraging the behaviour and possibly lead to additional issues later.
“This vehicle presented to our workshop with very poor service history, a sludged engine and blowing excessive blue smoke from the exhaust. The owner was stressed thinking they would be up for an engine replacement in excess of ten thousand dollars. We had been talking with the team from BG Australia about their Dynamic Engine Restoration Service and thought we would give it a try first. The workshop team and myself weren’t very confident that the the engine could be fixed without replacement. The process was very straight forward and to our surprise and the owners fixed the issue. After seeing this I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending BG Dynamic Engine Restoration Services.”
As a relatively newer vehicle with lower mileage, saving the engine early before major failure is desirable. The customer was offered and accepted the BG Dynamic EngineRestoration Service to clean the engine.The service requires less time and money than the option of manually cleaning and/or replacing components. After completion of the service, the vehicle was road tested, scanned for DTC’s, and valve train inspected.
The results of the service are visually significant in the removal of sludge from the valvetrain, and by indication, the engine itself. Additionally,the intermittent DTC was no longer prevalentand remained resolved. This was without theneed to replace any components such as thesensors themselves. Start-up noise had beensignificantly reduced, and smoke was no longerproduced from the exhaust.
Contamination continues to be the source ofissues in vehicles entering our workshops.Innovation in automotive engineeringcontinues to add sensors, while reducingtolerance in both metal components andelectrical values. For cars such as this SantaFe and others like it, consider making use ofthe BG Dynamic Engine Restoration Service.
