High RPM to Remove Carbon

buster

buster

Joined
Nov 16, 2002
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The Italian Tune-Up. I took this from another group where a guy had great success using the method described below. The images below are before/after I believe. Not the greatest images. This method is more than just WOT though. As you can see, he drove `15 mins with sustained RPMs at 4k.

  • Step 1. Fill up with premium, Top Tier, non-ethanol fuel if you have it in your area. Drive for half a tank.
  • Step 2. Drive at highway speeds, and using the manual mode, shift down to 4th. RPM should be around 4k rpm. Keep driving for 15 minutes. This builds up the oil, coolant and engine temps, as well as in your CAT. Then accelerate to redline (6500rpm). Decelerate down to normal speeds. The fuel cut during decel will cool the engine and the high vacuum will pull residues and carbon out.
  • Step 3. Repeat Acceleration/Deceleration 4-5 times. Do this once a week.

"As Jason mentions the occasional hard acceleration, like on a highway entrance ramp is not enough. Prolonged higher temps is needed. Hard acceleration also supplies additional fuel to the engine, and using Premium fuel, with the added detergents improves the carbon removal. Getting the oil and transmission temps up is good, especially in cold temps. My oil temps reached 220F, normally around 170F. My transmission temps got up to 205, normally 160F. Both quickly cooled down."

1742400975052.webp
 
buster said:
The Italian Tune-Up. I took this from another group where a guy had great success using the method described below. The images below are before/after I believe. Not the greatest images. This method is more than just WOT though. As you can see, he drove `15 mins with sustained RPMs at 4k.

  • Step 1. Fill up with premium, Top Tier, non-ethanol fuel if you have it in your area. Drive for half a tank.
  • Step 2. Drive at highway speeds, and using the manual mode, shift down to 4th. RPM should be around 4k rpm. Keep driving for 15 minutes. This builds up the oil, coolant and engine temps, as well as in your CAT. Then accelerate to redline (6500rpm). Decelerate down to normal speeds. The fuel cut during decel will cool the engine and the high vacuum will pull residues and carbon out.
  • Step 3. Repeat Acceleration/Deceleration 4-5 times. Do this once a week.

"As Jason mentions the occasional hard acceleration, like on a highway entrance ramp is not enough. Prolonged higher temps is needed. Hard acceleration also supplies additional fuel to the engine, and using Premium fuel, with the added detergents improves the carbon removal. Getting the oil and transmission temps up is good, especially in cold temps. My oil temps reached 220F, normally around 170F. My transmission temps got up to 205, normally 160F. Both quickly cooled down."
Click to expand...
Ya. No way am I doing that in my ticking time bomb. Last thing I need is a broken charge pipe, PCV failure, or seized accessory.
 
Last edited:
I’d be very curious what the oil temps would be like after those 15 minutes. For fun, in my last vehicle, I put the transmission into manual mode so that the revs were right around 4k at about 70mph. Not heavily loaded, just going down the highway. After only a minute or two, oil temp had gone up a lot (I had a temp gauge). Like 220f already. It was around 200f before that I believe. It was a minivan with an NA V6, 5.5 qt sump for reference.
 
Klutch9 said:
With rare exception, premium fuel does not have added detergents. Just higher octane.
Click to expand...
Is that true for Shell and BP? They market that their premium fuel has more detergents. They could be using marketing tricks to say that, but I was under the impression it was true. I don't use premium much, but curious.
 
brandon9715 said:
Is that true for Shell and BP? They market that their premium fuel has more detergents. They could be using marketing tricks to say that, but I was under the impression it was true. I don't use premium much, but curious.
Click to expand...

if they attach a marketing name to it, like V-power, synergy, ultimate etc... they have extra setergents in it that the other fuels don't get
 
To OP,
Nope. According to a GM (Northstar) engineer, that's NOT what you are trying to accomplish with the WOT procedure.
The act of getting the engine to high rpm for a short period is fine, if the engine will take it. BUT what you are really trying to do is free up the ring pack, especially the oil rings for those of us wishing to reduce oil consumption.
In the case of the WOT, it's the high vacuum of DE-celeration that works the magic on the rings. The high vacuum decel causes the rings to flutter in the piston grooves, breaking up carbon deposits therein.
I had a Northstar with "some" oil consumption, not really bad, like 1/2 qt in 5000 miles. It was determined then (2000 or so) that the VII's were not up to handling the high heat. They also called for regular dino oil mostly back then.

The procedure I used was switching to synthetic Mobil1, and using the WOT. I can only imagine that using a product like VRP along with the WOT might result in a much better outcome. That fixed the problem and resulted in 0 consumption!

Ultimately, it really doesn't matter much what the top deck of your pistons look like, as long as there is no interference with valve operation, etc. It's the rings that keep oil in the pan and compression in the combustion chamber.
 
JohnnyG said:
To OP,
Nope. According to a GM (Northstar) engineer, that's NOT what you are trying to accomplish with the WOT procedure.
The act of getting the engine to high rpm for a short period is fine, if the engine will take it. BUT what you are really trying to do is free up the ring pack, especially the oil rings for those of us wishing to reduce oil consumption.
In the case of the WOT, it's the high vacuum of DE-celeration that works the magic on the rings. The high vacuum decel causes the rings to flutter in the piston grooves, breaking up carbon deposits therein.
I had a Northstar with "some" oil consumption, not really bad, like 1/2 qt in 5000 miles. It was determined then (2000 or so) that the VII's were not up to handling the high heat. They also called for regular dino oil mostly back then.

The procedure I used was switching to synthetic Mobil1, and using the WOT. I can only imagine that using a product like VRP along with the WOT might result in a much better outcome.

Ultimately, it really doesn't matter much what the top deck of your pistons look like, as long as there is no interference with valve operation, etc. It's the rings that keep oil in the pan and compression in the combustion chamber.
Click to expand...
Thanks. (y) He was also saying that sustained high rpms will help with intake valve deposits too. He modified his results compared to what Jason from EE was saying.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=engineering+explained+redline

"What is an Italian Tune Up?
In my younger days we would take the old V-8 muscle cars out on the highway and drive and accelerate at high speeds. The old timers then said we were blowing the carbon out. Still holds true today, and even more important with EGR systems, Turbo Charged, and Gas Direct Injection. The Italian Tune Up is basically bringing the entire engine and specifically the combustion chamber up to high temps and through acceleration, more fuel is injected and will burn off carbon in you engine. At lower temps carbon builds up, but at higher temps, carbon is burned off and removed. This is a continuous process, these tune ups help stay ahead, keep carbon at bay.
I have linked to a video on Engineering Explained YT channel discussing this method. He cites ASE articles and studies demonstrating carbon removal at higher temps. I have documented significant carbon reduction in my Ecotec engine using this method several times. You dont need to drive all day at the track, just find an open highway, with no State Troopers around.
Easy going, conservative driving definitely saves gas, but carbon builds up over time. The before pictures are after a month of driving, and 300 mile highway trip. The high temp/rpm speeds reduces carbon on the piston, piston rings, on the injector tip and removes built up oil and blowby gases in the intake. It also cleans up the sparkplug tips."

"As Jason mentions the occasional hard acceleration, like on a highway entrance ramp is not enough. Prolonged higher temps is needed. Hard acceleration also supplies additional fuel to the engine, and using Premium fuel, with the added detergents improves the carbon removal. Getting the oil and transmission temps up is good, especially in cold temps. My oil temps reached 220F, normally around 170F. My transmission temps got up to 205, normally 160F. Both quickly cooled down.
I provided some BEFORE and AFTER pics of the intake, piston, injector tip and sparkplug."
 
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