well, i was sittin here at work watchin a guy here dump these bottles of stuff into his 91' oldsmobile... so i asked him what it was, he showed me the bottle, "prestone fuel injector cleaner and 0-60 octane boost" one bottle is supposed to treat 16 gallons.. he said he dumped 6 in his tank (16 gallons) and when it got to half he was puttin 3 more in...

 

of course i laughed, told him he was gonna melt somethin..

 

so a couple days later i see him, ask him how is cars doin.. he says, the miss is gone, and runs better than it ever has.

 

so i went down to wal-mart that night, and bought 3 bottles (not brave enough for 6, at $4 a bottle) so i filled up the ole soob with a tank of super. dumped all 3 bottles in.. exhaust smelled a littel funny for that tank of gas... but it ran a hole lot better (feel the difference).. and that annoying surge the turbo soobs have went away.. here it is 4 tanks later and whala, still no surge, haven't used any of the stuff since the first tank, and i'm just runnin regular gas now.. i still notice the difference in power, smoothness, ease of starting, etc also..

 

so just wanted to tell ya that this stuff really works...

 

the guys oldsmobile has 335K original on it

my turbo wagons only got 289k original

 

sorry for the bana, had to do it

Hmmm.. got rid of that irritating turbo surge huh?... hmmmm

Would that work on a carb too???

Did it improve your gas mileage?

I used the prestone stuff on all my cars and it made a difference in all 3 vehicles, specially the ER27 that had been sitting on a wrecking yard shelf for 4 years. I would reccomend it if your haveing small fuel system problems. Also the 0-60 octane booster, works good too, I would have a little pinging towards the upper end of my boost (12psi), and this stuff stopped it all together, it's good!

I am interested.

 

I have a surge at light throttle. espically when cold. everything else is good.

I will try a good injector cleaning too. after 203,000mi it probably needs it. thanks for the tip.

I read an article on injector / fuel cleaners a couple of years ago, and this was the philosophy:

They work. But they also clean the dirt out of the fuel tank, fuel line, etc... and send it all to the injectors and cylinder as well. The best thing to do really is to take it in for a cleaning. Barring that, using multiple bottles I assume will work well, but I would change the fuel filter immediately after that tank of gas.

 

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely HATE taking my car in . There are only 2 things I take my car in for, front end alignments, and fuel system cleaning. And that's only because I don't have the necessaries to do it myself. I just don't trust anyone to do anything serious. But I've always noticed immediate improvement.

 

J

Maybe it was just teh STP stuff I used but STP fuel injector cleaner did NOTHING for my dirty injectors. I ran 2 tanks of it over the suggested concentration level. Pulled the injectors later that week and they were still just coverd in black carbon.

 

Just my experience with the stuff. Guess Prestone's formula is better?

Nobody seems to be able to tell me HOW these "Engine-rebuild in a can" products work, other than cleaning out float bowls, injectors etc that get goo in them after sitting for a long time, which sounds like what Adam used it for. I can also see octane booster working.

The Techron fuel system cleaner made by Chevron is the bomb.

 

With one bottle, my mom's carbed 87 wagon went from absolutely horrible fuel economy (it was BAD) to around 30mpg.

 

That convinced me, and now I use the stuff religiously at every oil change.

ok so here is my results. I used 3 bottles of the prestone stuff on a almost empt tank. drove it a little way then filled the tank. so far so good. surging is still present but not nearly as bad as before. I definatly saw an improvement. I dont usually go for wonder in a can stuff but this seems to have helped. as for the crap in the tank theory.I dont think most tanks really have that much crap in them if the vehicle is used regularly and has not sat for years.

A normal tank that has not sit has a lot of gunk (especially a vehicle 10+ years old). Where do you think the crap that gunks up injectors come from? It all goes through the tank, the fuel line, etc...

Glad to hear you've seen some improvement!

J

Im only using my personal observations from work and home. I have pulled verry few fuel tanks that had crap in them. those that did were nasty. I took one out of a newer s10 that had both dirt and water in it. funny thing the fuel pump had gone out:rolleyes:

 

yeah you have a good point about having the injectors cleaned seperatly that is the correct fix for them any how. I guess its just tempting to take the easy fix and risk disturbing the rest of the fuel system.

 

I think what I will do is pull the injectors . have them professionally cleaned and flow checked as soon as time and money allow.:-\

rallyruss: if you suspect any of them to be troublesome do a quick OHMs resistance test on all 4. Thats how I found out one of mine was hosed on my old EJ22.

thats a valid quicky test to try to isolate an injector with a bad coil. but cloging problems wont show up that way.

resistance is not quite as good as a voltage drop test. measuring voltage drop on a running engine can tell you a lot or better yet use a scope or graphing meter.

I love my snap on vantage:headbang:

Ermm, here's my comments:

 

STP doesn't work.

 

RedeX works. Very well.

 

Haven't tried Prestone.

 

About crud in the tank: The whole point of a good "engine cleaner" is that it dissolves the carbon build. The fluid takes it into solution. You will not get chunks of carbon from the tank and lines flooding the filter, instead the carbon should be in relavtively small molecules. Some will stick in the filter, others will flow further down the system and out the exhaust pipe. In theory, at least.

 

The stuff that won't dissolve - like water, rust, leaves... - tends to float on top the gas in the tank, so my advice is don't run dry!

Gas is lighter than water.

 

I used lucas injector cleaner in my jag (on a whim) and it's irritating off-idle stumble vanished.

What about taking the Texaco 5-tank challenge!

:lol:

 

J

Originally posted by snotrocket

Gas is lighter than water.

 

Back from my flying days, we'd check for the presence of water in our fuel tanks by draining the sump that was on the bottom of the tank. Basically, you'd drain a bit of liquid off the bottom of the tank into a clear vial... if the stuff was tinted blue (110 octane AVGas is dyed blue), you were fine. If it was clear, you had water in your tank. Following that logic, water ought to be sitting at the bottom of your gas tank, assuming 87 octane has a density closer to 110 octane than water.

 

Ya worry about things like that when you're several thousand feet above the ground

 

Edit: One of these days I'm gonna learn how to spell... but it won't be today...