Redex :-(

Thus spake Peter unto the assembled multitudes:

So how many litres of Redex did you put in each cylinder? ;-)

You're not meant to put much in - did you follow the instructions? I think you're also meant to leave it for a few minutes to soak in. Good job you didn't put the plugs straight back in otherwise you might have had a hydraulic lock and damaged your engine.

As opposed to a hydraulic sock presumably?

Giving it a good thrashing would get rid of the carbon and you wouldn't have a car covered in redex and oil :P...

I use a squeezy bottle with a length of rubber or plastic pipe over the nozzle so I can direct the contents into the holes. Haven't bothered in a long time.

I once used some carbon cleaner - designed to get burnt carbon off ovens - in this way, poured it into a Toyota's engine and left it overnight. I think it did some good, I siphoned most of it back out of the cylinders and there was plenty of black bits in the mix. The car was a little reluctant to start, to say the least, but once it got going and blew the remains out the exhaust, it was fine. I can't remember if it was any more powerful or economical though!

Less than 50ml. 50ml is supposed to be what you put in. I think I used about 160ml in total.

Yes.

I did, half an hour's what you're supposed to do.

What's that and how's it caused?

um, you *can* do one or two cylinders at a time, instead of all four. Use a drinking straw to put some in, if you haven't got a small oil can or pipette.

Place the straw in the bottle down to the bottom, place your thumb over the top, atmospheric pressure will hold enough in the straw long enough for you to drop it down into the plug hole, then release the thumb - repeat once or twice per cylinder.

The smelly white smoke bit is gooood, don't knock it - remember to drive by neighbours that you don't like ;-)

-- Ken Davidson

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out of interest, I wonder how much more effective that is over just thrashing the car with a tank or two of optimax....

Are you absolutely sure you're not out by a factor of 10? - last time I did this I put about a teaspoon full in each cylinder. Made loads of smoke on startup, too.

I suggest you adjust your valve clearances and adjust the mixture if you have a carb car or investigate why the engine is running rich on a fuel injection car. (Perhaps engine temperature sensor making the car think the engine is still cold all the time.)

He only drives it on very short journeys so it'll be running rich all the time. We've had all this in the pinking thread :).

Peter, trade the Fiat in for a diesel engined car, they warm up faster and can run all day at tickover, even in fifth gear. Redex is only good for doing a road based Red Arrows display in front of your neighbours and bringing traffic to a halt behind you.

Short journeys my arse try the guy at work who's exactly 7/10 of a mile from work and still comes in the car... nutcase... ;-)

Mark S.

Let's see now. 1.0 l engine, 4 cylinders - so 250cc per cylinder. 10:1 compression ratio (or thereabouts) - that leaves a 25cc gap at the top of the cylinder. No surprise then that you had Redex all over the place. BTW that's what a hydraulic lock is - when the cylinder has incompressible fluid in it, and is brought to a sudden and sometimes catastrophic halt on the compression stroke. That's why it's a bad idea to let water get into you air intake, especially when fording rivers etc.

Well, I take my car to visit my mate who is three houses along in a small cul-de-sac. It's an auto Volvo 740. I do it to annoy the neighbours in-between us. Rest of the time it's full bore though. At my last house I wound the wife up something rotten by going for the morning paper at the weekend in the car. We lived above the paper shop in a maisonette, but his door was at the front and my door was at the back, so I reversed round to the front of the building, walked in, bought my paper, drove forward to the back of the building, parked, said Hi to the shop owner as he came out his back door to collect his deliveries etc. and walked up my outside stairs. Lovely. Well, I thought it was fun.;-)

I know somebody who works at the bottom of the road, and he drives there :-o. What makes it worse is that it's a massive Vetra with a massive exhaust etc. He could walk it quicker and that's not an exageration!

I've got a mate who used to work across the road from where he lived. He drove there every morning. We used to reckon it was so that nobody thought they were going broke :P.

Nah, it's a 0.9, not a 1.0 :). So a 22.5cc combustion chamber with 10:1 compression, and at least 27.5 ml of redex shooting out of the spark plug holes :).

Diesel engines don't warm up faster than petrol, quite the opposite. They are more thermally efficient than petrols (i.e. give out less heat) and a lot still have cast iron blocks and are heavier than an equvililent all alloy petrol engine.

Peugeot 406 HDI has to have an electrical heater to supplement the heat output of the engine because in cold weather it can't provide enough waste heat to heat the cabin without its temperature dropping.

-- James

The redex hasn't done a lot. The engine may be slightly quieter at high revs but it is insignificant and may be psychological or something else such as the the weather.

When I looked at the spark plugs they had carbonaround the end of the screw thread. Could this cause pinking? I don't think it was cleaned of in the service although the service guy said that the gaps were slightly out but the plugs were OK.

I don't know whether I will be able to clean the plugs though because I've been banned from any form of car maintenance and I can't get anyone else to do it either :-(. As far as my mum's concered the car's working perfectly because it's just been serviced. My mum thinks that it'll do more harm than good to open the bonnet. Her car's almost two years old, has only done 4,000 miles and has only had one service :-o. She is getting is serviced soon though.

The oil leak that I had seems to have mysteriously disappeared though, everything seems to be dry on the engine and that's been about 2 or 3 weeks I think. I won't complain though :-D