Fuel injection cleaners

I've heard good things about Chevron Techron Concentrate, BG 44K, Red Line Fuel System Cleaner, Amsoil P.I., and Berryman B-12 Chemtool. These all go into the fuel tank.

Ken

1 Of The Masses schrieb:

You may want to try Iso-Propane-Alcohol (IPA). Eats water, gives more power (try it) and solves residues.

Tecron is one of the few approved by Porsche, I've used it to good results

Thanks everyone for there time and thoughts , Ken named a few that for the most part are kerosene with Stoddard's solvent and their "proprietary chemical additives" mix. Axel, the stabilizer additive for Techron, Valvoline and Redline is isopropanol aka isopropyl alcohol aka IPA, CAS

67-63-0. In reality, IPA, an aliphatic alcohol hydrocarbon, also contains at any one time methanol, ethanol and ethylene glycol. All scavenge water quite well. I'm making a big guess and think the others use IPA, too.

My point is this; the injector cleaners all seem to be the roughly the same formulation. If this is indeed true, then Techron is the best deal at Costco with a four pack for $10. That said, I'm seriously tempted to mix up some kerosene, Stoddard's solvent and isopropyl alcohol and add a bit to each tank a few times a year. Valvoline was nice enough to actually give me range of each constituent in the mix ratio.

Second question is this: what specifically is in the the pressurized solvent used by let's say Toyota? I'm wondering if it's the 3M product line? Any thoughts?

Thanks again to everyone for there time and thoughts

What about the chemicals in regular gasoline which are advertised as detergents? Do they do any good at keeping injectors clean?

Bearman

Sounds something like WD-40...

I have never run anything but Amoco "white" (93 octane) in my '88. It has just under 300K on it and I recently had the injectors out and they are as clean as the day the truck left the factory. There is a little fine mesh screen inside each injector and each of these screens looks brand new. Also, the spray patterns look very good on the injectors.

I have never run any injector cleaner of any type through the system. Ever.

Obviously, I think that running this high grade of gasoline has something to do with the FI system being so clean. But, then again, I need to somehow justify all that extra money I have spent on gas over the years. ;^)

BTW, a couple of folks have told me the secret to cleaning injectors is to dump a quart of transmission fluid into the tank and burn this. Anybody else heard this?

Luther

Not quite, but close. There's no isopropyl alcohol in WD-40. The WD-40 is about half Stoddard's, a third different oils in the C6-C8 range, 10% kerosene and 10% their magic mystery ingredient. So what do you think, whip up some stuff and see what happens?

Great info Bearman! I've been told in my researching this question that gas is the culprit, that injectors are affected by either water, gunk, out of specification and/or regulatory compliance batches ("Bad gas"), turn-over rates, rust and other solid contaminants, etc.

Forgive me for rambling, but here's a case in point in San Diego about gas in general. About 65% of the gas (all octane ratings) is trucked out of the tank farm in the Mission Gorge area, the remaining 35% is trucked out of the Tenth Avenue Terminal tank farm. Both are connected to a pipe that runs from the Arco refinery in Carson, located in the LA area. Linked to the Arco refinery are smaller lines from a few independents and Shell and Exxon's mid-sized refineries however, Arco is the big one in production. Crude oil from Alaska is landed at LA and Long Beach terminals, as well as crudes from the Hondo federal field offshore from Gaviota (west of Santa Barbara), Santa Barbara offshore fields in California waters, the federal and state field offshore from Carpinteria and Ventura, and the many on-shore fields from Ventura south to Huntington, in fact, the big field under the Ports of LA and Long Beach. All of those crude oils are asphaltic sour crudes (Alaska and Hondo are really loaded with sulfur). Federal law requires the addition of detergents and oxidizers, and in high impact areas, methanol and some other additives that are regulated by both Sate and federal requirements. There's "summer" gas and there's "winter" gas (related solely on air-quality standards), and all go to every gas station around regardless of the company name.

So my point is that there's sour crudes being made into gas, piped down in steel pipes to be stored for under 72 hours in steel tanks, some being really old and leaky, turned over rapidly, and consumed. So where would the fouling happen? From water? If there were mechanisms and temperature extremes to allow water to enter the gas, the additive packages would take care of that. But then again, I've chatted with many who have had fouled injectors replaced or serviced. So what gives here? Could it be a bad batch or batches of gas? Low rate of turn-over? Condensation in the gas tanks, the ghost of Elvis Pressely?

Over many years I've religiously replaced the industo-sized steel gas filter and in interest of what's in there, I've let them air out under the Sun, and sawn them open to see the filter. Guess what, aside from the fresh metal from sawing, all removed with a magnet, all I've seen is a few blobs after examining the filter element using my Triplett hand lens. So I've stopped changing that expensive filter every 30K and all is still fine.

The truth is that the vast majority of cars and trucks depend solely on the detergents and additives to gas and seem to do just fine, yet there are small proportion of vehicles that are affected daily with injector issues, usually some build-up on the pintles or partial plugging by a build-up, affecting the aerosolizing of the fuel stream. So it seems that something causes this and should be avoided, right? Anybody have any insights on this line of reasoning?

Now on the idea of adding ATF, I know that a quart of ATF added to clean oil and allowed to sit was and is used to dissolve sludges and varnishes in the engine caused by dino oil fractionization and recombination under heat and pressure. In other words, ATF used as a solvent. Now ATF itself is made up of a widely varying mix of light and heavy fraction paraffin mineral oils all hydrogenated and dewaxed using solvents in refining, added to that a slew of additives ranging from detergents like the ever-popular magnesium alkylaryl (in gas and oil), to zinc salts like zinc dithio phosphate and zinc dialkyl dithiophosphate, to plastics like ploymethacrylates. In other words, all sorts of s----! So what does it do when burned? I would hazard a guess that the zinc salts and plastics would foul the pintles...maybe...

I'm looking forward to other's thoughts on this. Maybe the solution is that there isn't a problem?

All fuel injector cleaners are basically the same (except one). They use solvents of one sort or another. The only one that doesn't is Redline SL-1. It uses detergents which do the job tremendously well. It's the only stuff I will use.

Later.