Engine flushing

Personally I always drain off the necessary amount before I start. Messy, but I'm happier that way.

Yes just guess a fast idle. Put a stick between the seat and the pedal. Fiddlely but it works.

HTH

E-mail address, hopefully self-explanatory Andy Pandy

Just the same as driving, surely? :-/

Normal driving must be a real problem for you.

--Nick.

No. Fast no load idle uses far less power and produces far less heat than 1500rpm in any gear. Also makes the water pump work and cools the engine. The idea is to circulate the flushing oil not cook it and boil it off.

Trap the blade (metal bit not the plastic) of a spare fuse under the throttle stop to hold it open and lift the revs. Or fold a piece of paper over 2 or 3 times and trap that.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

I'd just stick a CD on with 3 or 4 of my favourite tunes, and sit in the car with my foot in a set position on the pedal so as to rev it to around

2000rpm.

Well I say 3 or 4 of mt favourite tunes, in fact I might well go for the option of the last 2 tracks from Supertramp's "Even in the quietest moments", namely 'From now on' and 'Fools overture'. Superb music to use as a backing track to an engine at fast idle.

Peter

I'd just stick a CD on with 3 or 4 of my favourite tunes, and sit in the car with my foot in a set position on the pedal so as to rev it to around

2000rpm.

Well I say 3 or 4 of mt favourite tunes, in fact I might well go for the option of the last 2 tracks from Supertramp's "Even in the quietest moments", namely 'From now on' and 'Fools overture'. Superb music to use as a backing track to an engine at fast idle. 17 minutes 16 seconds if anyone was wondering.

Peter

Normal driving's certainly more interesting and it's a lot easier to judge the engine speed.

No, no, sorry not the fast idle with regards to the engine, but the holding-the-accelerator-pedal for a whole fifteen minutes... :)

What? In the absence of a tacho and just your ears - which must be hearing all sorts of mechanical problems in your engine and everybody elses - it must be a bloody nightmare.

I held Kermit's throttle between 29% and 36% for one hundred and twenty seven minutes on the M6 yesterday. The movement between 29% and 36% isn't much. The point we're making is that if you are unable to hold the accelerator down for fifteen minutes, without finding it very tiring, how do you cruise at 30 / 34 / 40 mph? :-/

Ah I see. He wants to do what I do. Put the throttle on the floor then lift off, floor, lift off...brake! Hold a steady throttle? I'ld either not get anywhere at all or be doing 140+ if I did that.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

The message from "DervMan" contains these words:

Very badly, I suspect.

140 in a Siecento sounds about right - kph of course! :)

In any one instance, one can be cruising, because if the time gap is small enough... :)

The message from "DervMan" contains these words:

Ah, the integral approach to speed control.

By looking at my surroundings I can quite easily sense whether my speed's increased by much. If I look at the speedo I can get my exact speed and work out the rpm to a few rpm. When the car's stationary all I have is my ears. If my foot gradually goes down slightly over

15mins (say 100rpm extra per minute) then it could be hard to notice it until it's too high.

Heheh - I recall the "trick" my old Physics master used to demonstrate that the fly did stop the car when it hit the windscreen. Just for that instant.

Erm, I don't think you mean that - because in the city if you're on the move, your surroundings are _constantly_ changing. Yes, it's possible to tell if they're changing more frequently, but this is just as much based on noise (or rather the subtle changes in noise).

I think you're referring to "acceleration sense," which one can use to determine when to lift off so as to let the car decelerate, thus reaching the top of the motorway slip road at a suitable speed, or whatever.

But surely you strive to maintain a certain speed, be it 30 mph or up to 40, or whatever, rather than try not to accelerate too much?

Okay - why would you need to work out the engine speed in your head whilst driving along?

If you know that the manual recommends the minimum speeds in third, fourth and fifth gear are 17, 25 and 37 mph, then is there any need to think, "oooh I'm at nineteen miles per hour in third, that's nineteen divided by eight spot one nine, which is, ohh carry the one, erm, two spot three two, so multiply this by one thousand and I get two thousand, three hundred and twenty revs per minute" whilst driving along? You just need to know, "ooh, over seventeen, this is acceptable." Bosh. That's it done.

Tachometers are not all that useful such that you have to study them all of the time, but they look pretty and probably give people the impression that they are driving a powerful car :) when the redline is at a whopping 6,500 rpm, but in my experience they're only really useful for an easier way of working out the change up points when accelerating as hard as possible (Crail Raceway, Santa Pod, M25, whatever). For other driving, such as ascending a steep hill, they tell you what you already (should) know or can extrapolate from the noise - it's not going to pull up the hill at 20 mph in third.

For some cars, one can "feel" a difference in engine speeds but not all. As I recall from my Cinquecento days, there's a change in the tiny vibrations in the car when one applies power ready to take up the drive.

Have you tried listening to 2,500 rpm rather than 1,500 rpm? There's a big difference. Have you tried this whilst sat at the lights? A relatively small difference in throttle pressure with no load on the engine causes a pretty significant difference in engine speed. A slight squeezing of the throttle pedal makes some difference - you're able to tell.

The above is providing you can remember the tone and quality of the noise in the first place.

Moreover, I think the point is that the idle speed isn't that critical for engine flushing (in the context of the original question).

Instead of saying "hold at 1500rpm" should it not say "elevate the idle revs slightly for a 10-15mins"?

On the basis that all we're doing is making sure we're mixing up the flushing chemical with the oil properly, at a nice temperature, and getting it into all those nooks and crannies where sludge may have built up.

The message from petermcmillan snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Peter) contains these words:

Right - well - be sure to drop by and let us know when you get your first speeding ticket, won't you.