Snake Oil or not?

It probably does work, but so does pouring water (in small doses) into your intake while gunning your engine to stop it stalling. Never used ecotek but plain water out of the tap makes it all shiny inside.:-)

The message from "Stuart Gray" contains these words:

Anyway - modern cars don't get coked up like old bangers do/used to.

Well you could just buy a plant sprayer, remove the air filter & spray

50/50 water/meths into the inlet. It almost certainly works better than the ecotek valve but that's not even damning it with faint praise.

No, and i suppose these gadgets and sprays are more suitable to 10 + uears old motors... Brand new modern motor most defenetly don´t need such "improvements".

Mike

This isn't the ecotek valve (which IMO is a load of bollocks), it's a foam that is sprayed down the inlet and supposedly reacts with the heat to remove deposits and crud built up. There's reviews on the site from many of the top car mags and newspapers, supposedly with figures to back them up. Was thinking of giving it a go on my 1984 185K miles Saab 900.. but I probably won't..

Cheers Mike

If you do a quick trawl through US newsgroups there's plenty of instructions on how to achieve the same effect with some water & a bit of inlet vacuum :-)

Very sensible. Why should you suppose that there is any great build up of 'deposits and crud' anyway? I'm old enough to have lived through the period when it was normal to remove the cylinder head every couple of years, scrape off all the carbon build-up and do a valve re-grind (very tedious job!!). Modern technology in terms of advance metallurgy, engine design, fuel technology, etc, means that this just isn't necessary any more (thank the Lord because removing the cylinder head on a modern car is not like it was on my Austin A35 and Triumph Herald !!). There will always be snake-oil salesmen seeking to part the foolish from their money - don't be taken in!

Kev

Yeah, but the site has plenty of reviews from "top mags" that back up the ecotek valve too!

I think it's interesting to see differing views on the valve. Most folk in this group would say it's a load of old tosh, yet pay a visit to something like

and you'll find plenty of chaps saying they've fitted it and it works. Mind you, they also recommend Dyson-like bodykits for their cars.

Anything with 'ecotek' or similar in the title is a waste of money.

In message , DocDelete writes

I think you will find the "review" on this site rather more authoritative:-

It seems that plenty of Saab 900 (I've got one) owners claim to have fitted it and it works too. A friend has one on his 900 16V n/a and swears his car is getting an extra 50-60 miles from a tankful from every tank. Most C900 Saabs have a dyson-like "bodykit" as standard. Is this a good sign or not?

Mike

Cracking stuff - thanks. It seems to suggest that the only fuel-saving benefit to be had is during over-run, and then only on older cars without over-run fuel shut off / metering. So, maybe the thing would help with my Triumph 2.5 PI but only during throttle-shut - better find a few downhill slopes then!

See also this review:

Tony

An excellent analysis. This Ecotek nonsense has gone on far too long.

Having said that I think you're a bit off base in the sections on general performance upgrades and chipping. I'd say all engines can stand a considerable performance upgrade without needing internal modifications and if the mods are selected wisely it certainly doesn't cost £50 to £100 per bhp although cost depends very much on the engine in question. Long term reliability depends very much on how well the fueling and ignition is set up and how hard the engine is driven but a 20% to 30% increase in power doesn't necessarily mean any great reduction in engine life.

There are many high performance std engines which don't use piston oil cooling jets or any other obvious modifications over the base model engines in the range. For example the Ford CVH 1.6 is available normally aspirated in 96PS to

115PS variants but the crank, oil pump, pistons, block and rods stay basically the same. Built right they operate perfectly happily long term at 140 bhp or more on the same components.

I'm certainly no great fan of 'chips' and the power claims are of course very excessive but I've never heard of 'uncontrolled acceleration' from any of them.

Your site is a worthy resource to help those in danger of sucked in by the snake oil vendors but in parts it comes across a bit as though ' only the OE manufacturer knows best' which is a bit condescending and very often untrue. The OE manufacturer has design constraints which generally do not involve getting the most power (or at least the most reliably obtainable power) out of the engine. Properly ported cylinder heads, sympathetically modified induction and exhaust systems, correctly chosen increases in cam duration and lift, increases in compression ratio can obtain significant power increases with no great loss of reliability or fuel consumption.

Sadly much of the tuning industry sells utter tat which doesn't come close to fulfilling the claims made on its behalf. That isn't to say there aren't bona fide tuners out there who can deliver value for money.

The message from snipped-for-privacy@aol.comNoEmails (Dave Baker) contains these words:

That's the trouble - sorting the wheat from the chaff!

Hint Hint?? :-) | V

Pete.

I'm not disagreeing with you, Dave, but aren't those all internal mods? It's the claims for pure chipping etc on a normally aspirated petrol engine that are usually OTT. Especially with more recent designs. Of course there are examples where it cures a design fault.

There's probably more than a little truth in that, Dave - I wouldn't claim to be an expert on tuning, though I have been involved in the development of some seriously powerful OE engines.

As far as naturally aspirated engines are concerned, the figure of 50

- 100 pounds per bhp is based on items such as induction kits and exhaust upgrades. I guess you could get more if the OE part is particularly crap, but otherwise it seems reasonable. Many quoted bhp gains are way above what is realistic, especially when people measure dyno bhp at the wheel and apply some outrageously high correction factor to get flywheel bhp.

Modified cams and altered porting probably does give more bhp/£, but tends to have downsides as well such as reduced low end torque or worse economy/emissions.

The reference to insufficiently strong internals on upgraded engines refers to turbo (chipped) engines in particular, where the increases in power and (especially) torque are much more significant. I would agree that many engines can stand a lot more boost than standard, but it does annoy me when people say (for example) "It's fine to chip a

150ps VAG 1.8T engine to 225ps, since it does that in the TT" - ignoring the very significant mechanical changes.

"Uncontrolled acceleration" almost certainly doesn't happen, but I know the OE ECUs contain multiple layers of independent monitoring systems to avoid even the tiny risk that exists. Chipped ECUs almost certainly do not.

You are right that I am rather "OE knows best", but to a large extent that's because I believe the OE generally _does_ know best! Not best ultimate power, obviously, but best compromise between power, driveability and cost. Which is my point - if you want more power it is probably better to buy a slighly pricier standard engine, than to start with a cheap low-power engine and add expensive components and modifications to bring it to the same level. I am speaking here from a perspective of post-1992 cars, which have very much better engine management systems and so give less room for improvement than the crude carburettors and distributors that went before.

Additionally, of course many mods make emissions worse - very much so in the case of de-catting. It annoys me that I have to work very very hard to reduce emissions of new cars (for sound public health reasons), only to have this undone by an aftermarket tuner. To my mind it is unfair to cause greatly increased pollution (often noise as well as toxic emissions) for the sake of a modest increase in performance.

I set these pages up as an "anti snake-oil" resource for fuel saving gadgets, but added sections on chipping and performance upgrades in response to frequent queries - and to debunk the tat which, as you say, is all too commonly sold by "tuners". Feedback, especially from people as obviously experienced as yourself, is always welcome. Email adress is on the site.

Cheers,

Tony