I'd just like to share with you guys what I've been up to this weekend. Many of you know I've had some strange issues with my engine i.e. trying to get it tuned correctly. I've had major detonation issues, both at low rpm and high rpm under boost, dyno tuners were quite puzzled. They retarded the timing so much the car was a slug to drive... Recently I pulled the spark plugs and looked into the cylinders, approx 1mm thick of carbon on each cylinder! Initially I tried the nulon upper engine foaming cleaner, removed spark plugs, blew foam into cylinders, let it sit overnight. This removed a very small amount... I then sprayed the Subaru upper engine cleaner into the vacuum ports under the throttle bodies. This again helped as the car felt a little better. This weekend I checked the cylinders again, they still had a substantial amount of carbon covering the pistons (looking through the spark plug holes)... Obviously my engine had way too much carbon for these products to fix up. After quite a lot of research, I found a few 'old school' methods online... Initially I parked the car in the garage whilst warm, removed the spark plugs and filled each cylinder up with Automatic transmission fluid!. I left the car to sit for 48 hours. After which I syphoned the ATF fluid out of the cylinders, put rags over the holes, turning the engine over to remove as much ATF as possible. Started the old girl up then went for a drive... The car had the biggest smoke screen ever! After giving the car a moderate amount of revving out on the roads, I took the car back home and then introduced water! into the throttle bodies at around 3000-4000 rpm, not too much as we don't want to hydro lock the engine. This is supposed to 'steam clean' the loosened carbon. I took the car for a drive, feels like a new one! much more responsive, ready for a proper tune. Checked the pistons by taking out the spark plugs yet again, all carbon had disappeared! Last of all, I changed the oil, as the old engine oil would have been contaminated due to some ATF leaking into the cylinders. This is quite an extreme method of cleaning out your cylinders, but It's much easier than stripping down your engine... *I take no responsibility for anyone trying this and destroying their engines!
Interesting. I've read about the sea foam method but never tried it. How much water did you feed into the throttle bodies and how did you do this / control the amount being fed in?
yeh the 'seafoam' method didn't seem to have much effect in my case. I connected two vac pipes to the vac connections under the throttle bodies, joined by a 'T' connection then a pipe to a small funnel (the kind used to top up ATF in an auto box through the ATF dipstick hole). Revved the engine to 3-4000 rpm, then dribbled water into the funnel until the revs dipped slightly and steam was seen exiting from the exhausts. Of course if done incorrectly it can be terminal. *I take no responsibility for anyone trying this and destroying their engines!
Take the car for a good flogging and that'll clean up a bit too. redline a day keeps the mechanics away.
Would have been a sight to see with a smoke screen coming out the back :rofl:. Outboard motors on the back of shark cats can take in up to 14 ltrs of water an hour and have no adverse long term affects on the motors. The thing is that it is over a hour not all at once. Feeding a mist in is the trick with any motor not a huge gulp.
We used to run walnut shells through the intakes on the Rolls Royce Gnome power plants on the Seaking helicopters. There used to be big flames out the jet pipe!
