Edit: 2014 Sierra 5.3
I was surprised how clean everything was for being direct injection. I've been worried about the carbon buildup with direct injection and watching a ton of videos of people cleaning them with walnuts or spray cleaner. I really thought mine would look a lot worse than this.

I went and talked to a guy that's the service manager at the local GM dealer and he said they really don't see any problems from buildup, that's before I took these pics. So considering how mine looks and what he said, we may not need to worry about the buildup causing problems like on some other DI motors.

I did do an induction cleaning 3k miles ago by misting a cleaner into the throttle body but I doubt it really did much.

I know at least a few of you are curious about this so I took some pics while replacing my injector seals last week.

 

Nice pictures. I wish I took pictures while I had my intake off to run the fuel line for my flex fuel sensor.

 

Qas afm tuned out?

 

About 200 miles before the pics it was turned off. I got it tuned on a Saturday and I pulled the intake the following Thursday.

So this is 117k miles of AFM, stock tune, no catch can, no nothing, just a stock truck with a K&N

 

Yeah I'd like to see the difference at your lower mileage.

 

I think I posted mine when I put the blower on in Jan '16. Looked virtually identical at 14k. Great to see it doesn't get worse.

 

Wow this is encouraging for sure! Everything looks great.

 

I had it built up in my head that there was gonna be straw sized ports due to all the buildup, I was really happy to see this.

 

Thanks for the pics, I'm not even a player in the K2XX game as I'm pretty happy with my GMT800 and still getting used to being away from GMT400's. I'd heard all those same horror stories about GDI engines and was worried these trucks would have those same problems but it's kind of looking like for whatever reason they aren't nearly as bad about it as other brands/designs.

Richard

 

No problem and I hear ya, I bought my truck and the fear set in, the DI and the weird noises they make drove me crazy for about a week. They make strange sounds and I thought I had several issues going on, turns out it's all normal for these motors.

I was first surprised when the service manager at the local dealership looked at me funny when I asked how often they are having to do valve cleanings due to the build up from DI. He gave me a "whatttt" look. Then I pulled the intake and now see why he gave me that reaction. Apparently GM did a really good job with the PCV system baffling etc to keep the buildup at bay.

When you're ready to take the plunge on a newer DI truck, do it.