Fuel System SERVICE

[A.C. ED]

Does anyone have an opinon on these fuel system service routines offered at most service crnters. Is it basically an external cleaning of throtle body and is it worth $90. T.I.A. A.C.ED

[shorod]

If you are comfortable reading directions and know what a vacuum line looks like, buy a $7 can of SeaFoam and follow the instructions for performing a cylinder decarb. Put the other 2/3 of the can into the fuel tank and you'll likely be more pleased with the results.

-Rod

[A.C. ED]

Hi Shorod Just went on seafoam website . I dont have a shop manual yet so I think I'll bite the bullet and have this service done. Do you recomend this as as a gas additive as per their 2-5k recomendation? How about their recomendation as a crankcase additive any experience? Seems like a very interesting product. Is this what prof mechs. use? T.I.A. A.C.ED

[shorod]

I haven't used this in the crankcase, and I use fuel injector cleaners regularly enough (every oil change) that I don't know how effective it is in crankcase, but I can speak to how well it works as a cylinder decarb chemical. On my wife's LS I used a borescope to look into a couple of the cylinders prior to a SeaFoam decarb. There was a fair amount of carbon build up. I couldn't see the valves, so I don't know how they looked. I then performed a decarb per the can and got A LOT of smoke from the exhaust. I walked out of the garage for probably 30 minutes with the door open and my vent fan going. It took that long for the cloud to dissipate enough so I could see across the garage. I shut the car down and let it cool. Wondering if the smoke was a product of the SeaFoam, I tried the decarb again the next day and got no smoke from the exhaust. I tried the borescope again in the same cylinders and they were noticeably cleaner. Unfortunately, this process didn't fix the problem which turned out to be a collapsed PCV elbow. However, in the process or replacing the elbow I was able to get a look at half the valves which looked very clean.

I believe many of the professionals use BG44K rather than SeaFoam. I'm not sure that it works any better than SeaFoam. When they do the professional fuel system treatment, often they will disable the fuel pump and run the car off of a can filled with chemicals until the car stalls. I don't know if they use BG44K for that or something else.

-Rod