Upkeep on Engine

I do not believe in those services. The owners manual says nothing about that. Todays engines are much beter at controling carbon and such becayse of fuel injection and better fuels. This top engine clean or what ever they call it is up to you. It will not hurt your car by any means, but probably not help anything either. I would not do it to my car. Scott

Decarb services are a generally good practice to any car, whether or not it spends much time on the highway. A lot of people say that carbon doesn't build up any more because of 'fuel injection and better fuels', but I still see plenty of carbon accumulated on the valves and pistons of the three or so engines I take apart every month. I do a BG decarb service to my personal car around every 20k miles, and I've verified carbon buildup depletion in my combustion chambers with a boroscope. I think these services generally run in the low 100s as far as cost.

Add a bottle of Chevron Techron FI cleaner next gas fill up. Modern oils if changed per owner manual keep the engine clean enough.

Please explain why putting a $10 can of cleaner in the intake or through a vacuum hose is worth $100 . We have them at our shop too. Scott

If you are not having a problem, don't waste your money.

Ed

$80 bucks where I was working...

Peace of mind...

Maintenance to keep your car running properly...

Good thing to do for your car...

Profit for the dealer...

All of the above - but especially the last one.

The companies that devise and build the equipment and supplies for these "power flushing" and "top-engine cleaning" services do not market them to the auto dealers and repair shops for their benefits to the customers' cars - that's what the printed consumer materials the distributors supply to the dealer says, and the logic that the dealer uses to sell it to YOU, the consumer.

The distributor pushes it to the garage owners that their system is a great added profit center with a very substantial mark-up and that's easy and quick for any junior technician to do with minimal training. They actually have two different sets of promotional materials printed up with the two widely disparate messages.

With the advances in fuel additive packages and modern lubricants, these services are not needed very often. Yet the companies selling the equipment urge you to do them at every intermediate service interval "to extend the life of your car". BULL.

This is the same unspoken economic motive that still has Jiffy Lube pushing all drivers to do 3,000 Mile Oil Changes - even when most auto makers are setting service intervals at 7500 miles or more. See, it's very simple: their way gets you to spend money twice as often.

If it was for my car, I'd spend the $40 or $60 (last time I checked) to buy the kit to inject the top engine cleaning stuff myself - after buying the kit, each subsequent use only costs you $10 for another can of the special cleaner. Go to a NAPA store, once they know you aren't the type to kill yourself doing it, they'll gladly sell you the mechanic-grade toolkits and supplies without the huge markup. ;-)

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I fix cars, man. I don't have anything to do with how the business is run. I'm astaounded that people keep paying $102.00 an hour for labor at the shop I work at. If you don't want to pay it, figure out how to do it yourself. But the fact still remains that decarb services do provide a benefit. What that benefit is worth is up to the owner.

Of course it provides a benefit, but then, polishing the fuel pump provides a benefit too.

I'm wondering if the 'benefit' of the service is actually worth the expense. Further, most owners aren't equipped with the knowledge to be able to judge. I'm one of those although engines aren't exactly foreign territory to me.