Snake oil? Spray cleaners for intake systems.

From a banner ad on GRM...........

http://crcindustries.com/gdi/

And the one most talked about on forums.......

http://seafoamsales.com/how-to-use-sea-foam-spray-to-clean-gasoline-induction-systems/

I'd really like this stuff to work, but not sure if I want to spray stuff down the intake system of my turbo charged Mini. I use to have some Yamaha combustion chamber cleaner that was marketed to clean 2 stroke outboards by spaying down the carb. It was a discontinued product and the shop I worked at gave the last few cans to the service department. I used to spray it on stubborn carbon when I was doing head work. It really cleaned stuff up. I don't think I ever sprayed it through a running engine, but chances are it would have worked okay.

We have stuff at work we spray into turbine engines to clean them, every 100 hours. But, turbines are a totally different thing.

Will these products cause big chunks of carbon to fall off into the engine? Possible causing a valve to start leaking, or worse?

I have read a lot of threads on the Mini forums about having to have the ports cleaned by nutshell blasting. BMW/Mini dealers have some way to do that with the head on the car. The tool looks like a sand baster combined with a shop vac. My Mini Cooper S (R56, N18 engine) hardly sees traffic and is usually flogged pretty hard. I may not have as much carbon as city dwellers, so I may or may not benefit from these products.

Experiences and opinions? 

I'm interested in the CRC Intake/Turbo cleaner as well.  Have 8K miles on my 2017 Eantra Turbo 1.6--thinking about using at next oil change.  Not doing oil catch can--as I don't want any potential warranty issues.

FSP_ZX2 said:

I'm interested in the CRC Intake/Turbo cleaner as well.  Have 8K miles on my 2017 Eantra Turbo 1.6--thinking about using at next oil change.  Not doing oil catch can--as I don't want any potential warranty issues.

I am planning on a catch can, but it's went 60K without one. I'll pull the intake and look into the ports myself eventually, but if I can use a spray product to reduce the carbon, and prevent future carbon, I'll do it.

I think it needs the intake cleaned, but I would like the Mini to not need anything until my Comanche pickup is done, the Wrangler JK has about a weeks worth of stuff done, my shop gets some improvements before winter, and my home projects are done. So like not major work until spring. Unlikely, but I can hope.

I have some for a Mazda Speed3, but I am a bit reluctant to feed it through the turbo.  I guess at high idle it should not be too bad.

Are you supposed to feed this through the turbo?  I am not sure there are any post turbo ports that could be used (they would be under pressure under boost of course)

I was going to start using this every oil change on my GTI once I had the valves cleaned. I doubt this stuff could actually hurt the turbo when applied at idle.

As an aside, catch cans don't do anything for the oil that runs down the valve stems to lubricate them.