Intake manifold/vacuum system cleaning tip question

[alkemist]

Hey,

I have cleaNED the vacuum system in my car just like the article specified:
http://www.geocities.com/rivieraresource/

However, I poured 2 cans of Seafoam into my engine and I never got the amount of smoke described. I only had a little bit of smoke after I started the car up to drive it and have that stuff burn off the carbon. The only performance increase I noticed is easier/quicker cold starts.

Now this brings up a question. Is the smoke not coming out because I did something wrong or was the engine clean?

Motor has >70k on it.


Thank you/

[Racincc85]

wow, talk about a small world, or should I say internet. I actually wrote that article and submitted it to a buick lesabre web site about 4 years ago. I completely forgot that I did it and when I was reading it I thought it sounded familiar. When I saw the creator was Matt H I almost fell out of my chair. It's cool to see it on a riviera forum now and to see that people are benefiting from it. Looks like I'm moving up in the world . If you didn't get a lot of smoke(specifically blue) then your engine was not gummed up with carbon. Many factors go into the development of carbon in an engine. Driving style, type of fuel used (some have higher levels of detergent), driving conditions, etc. I've seafoamed cars with 150k on them that hardly smoke and have done cars with only 40k on them smoke like they are on fire.

The smoking usually happens in two stages with the seafoam: Once you initially start the car after the cleaning you'll get white smoke which is the excess seafoam being burned off. After you start driving the car, you should start to notice blue smoke coming out. The blue smoke is the carbon being burned off. If all you got was a bunch of brief white smoke and hardly any blue that means that your engine was clean to begin with. Hope this helps!

[alkemist]

Originally Posted by Racincc85

wow, talk about a small world, or should I say internet. I actually wrote that article and submitted it to a buick lesabre web site about 4 years ago. I completely forgot that I did it and when I was reading it I thought it sounded familiar. When I saw the creator was Matt H I almost fell out of my chair. It's cool to see it on a riviera forum now and to see that people are benefiting from it. Looks like I'm moving up in the world . If you didn't get a lot of smoke(specifically blue) then your engine was not gummed up with carbon. Many factors go into the development of carbon in an engine. Driving style, type of fuel used (some have higher levels of detergent), driving conditions, etc. I've seafoamed cars with 150k on them that hardly smoke and have done cars with only 40k on them smoke like they are on fire.

The smoking usually happens in two stages with the seafoam: Once you initially start the car after the cleaning you'll get white smoke which is the excess seafoam being burned off. After you start driving the car, you should start to notice blue smoke coming out. The blue smoke is the carbon being burned off. If all you got was a bunch of brief white smoke and hardly any blue that means that your engine was clean to begin with. Hope this helps!

Great to hear that. I guess there is no need to take throttle body apart to clean it, or is there? The article did say procedure should be done 1-2 times every 2 yrs. So should proceed with the cleaning of throttle bo0dy INSIDE?



BTW, thank you very much for those articles.

[Racincc85]

I wouldn't bother with cleaning the throttle body if you hardly got any smoke when you used the seafoam. Thats just me though; if you've got some free time and would like to do it just so it's done it wouldn't hurt anything, but it's not a priority.

[Akira13126]

Never did it like that.... I would think it would hydro-lock the engine. I normally just undo the brake booster line and with the engine running about 3k I would pour 1/3 of the can down. It normally just spits out white smoke for a while. Is the way I've been doing this bad for the engine?? I've done it on my car 3 times within the last year and on a few other cars. So far I haven't had a problem with any of the cars. Afterwards then run even better.


As for cleaning the intake... Get a can of carb cleaner and spray down the throttle plate and intake, then whip it down afterwards. I also spray it into the intake while the car is running.


Akira

[dave92cherokee]

If you want the best cleaning don't use seafoam go to a dealer or reputable repair shop and have them do an upper intake cleaning on it. It's a pressurized cleaning that cleans the throttle body, intake manifold, intake and exhaust valves and seats, cylinders, and piston heads and only takes about an hour.