Rep Power: 194

Anyone on here have a direct injection engine Civic? I'm looking to buy a new car soon, and I've seen since 2012, Honda has unfortunately jumped on the GDI bandwagon. I'm wondering what people's experiences on here are like with it. Has performance / mileage suffered over time? How is the intake valves holding up?

 
Rep Power: 243

If you do a Google search you will find that it is not really an issue with Honda's. It seems the way that they have designed it allows the valve to still be hit with some fuel so it gets cleaned.

I also do not think it is unfortunate that they have gone with GDI. GDI offers so many benefits over port injection. So your timing belt interval has now been replaced with a walnut blasting. Better performance, better MPG, better emissions.

 
Rep Power: 518

Haven't seen issues on my side of the planet. But I don't see it all, lol

Maybe I should say I personally haven't encountered customer complaints or running issues related to, nor caused by buildup. So far, anyway.
Heard of it occasionally on hondas, but not consistently. IDK any details tho.

Haven't been issued any walnut shell bj equipment (FFS some other brands had so many problems they issued dealers that equipment 30+ years ago, long before Direct Injection)

And
Seems like when someone talks about it (especially on owner forums) it's almost never clear just how much buildup there really was, nor how much of a factor that really was in correcting the original driveability complaint or symptom. Because almost everyone is gonna try a bunch of other things before they decide to remove an intake manifold. Right? Right.
And we all know that parts are never ever bad (especially brand new parts), nor poorly installed. .

 
Rep Power: 243

Yeah German manufactures have been battling it for a while now. The Japanese manufactures were slower to adopt DI it seems and they have less issues with it. Well Subaru has problems with it but Boxer engines have their own issues all together. I can see the German companies basically saying that is the way it is just walnut blast them every 60k-100k miles and move on. It's part of the engine maintenance to keep it at optimal performance. Small shops will do the service for $300-$500.

These are my valves from my GTI with 50k miles on it. These were considered good for that mileage. Car runs and idles smooth still.