"Hot soaking" for improved mileage.

[Casey]

Originally Posted by Christ

You could always follow the directions on the seafoam can, as well. Something tells me that those directions are there for a reason.

Not bashing you, but using the whole can doesn't get you any better result than doing what they tell you on the can, unless you have a seriously messed up engine, in which case you should be repairing whatever caused the problem, not putting a band-aid over it.

There has also been discussion here before about the idea that seafoam has never really been empirically proven to work, since noone has ever taken before/after pictures of the piston tops and combustion chambers. The smoke could merely be a by-product of the chemical in the can. Pour ATF down your carb throat, you get smoke. Same principle.

Lastly, solidified carbon is resistant to chemical solvents. It's like plastic, basically. It can be removed with abrasive cleansers, and with heat/cooling cycles, or with peening techniques, such as water spray into the intake. SeaFoam will not remove solidified carbon deposits, unless they're already loose.

Pictures I don't have, simply results and my own experience opening up the engine.

As for the results, when I first bought the Red Storm in '04, it was getting a very precise 14mpg city. Changing up to 93 octane brought it to 17mpg. The first hot soak brought it to 20mpg, with no changes in driving habit. I'd say 3mpg is worth having.

When opening the engine, I have stripped it down to replace the timing chain and tensioners. The inside of that engine is cleaner than my old Taurus was, even though the maintenance program was the same and the Taurus was 50,000 miles newer.

[user removed]

We used to use a Binks #7 commercial spray gun (for painting cars) and water to remove the carbon in Nissan Z car engines. The 81-83 models had a combustion chamber design that had about 33% of the piston top (flat top piston) within 1 MM of the cylinder head. When enough carbon accumulated there it would sound like the engine was coming apart.

Used vice grips to set the throttle at 2k RPM and sprayed the atomized water into the intake. I know it worked and many of my customers did not have to get it done again for years.

No need to change the oil, although we usually did it after we had confirmed the carbon knock was gone. We could look through the spark plug holes to see the piston tops, but the carbon knock was the reason we did the procedure.

I once towed a car 180 miles with the customers approval to replace the engine, and fixed it with this process in less than an hour, without disassembling any part of the engine other than the air cleaner assembly.

I do use BG 44K, but only about once a year. Newer design fuel injectors seem to have minimized the old spray pattern issues with the early pintle type injectors. Ethanol probably helps some also.

regards
Mech