Stumbled across this little backyard test. Was really surprised by the outcome, but at the same time it is to be expected from a degreaser... Anyways, this got me wondering... If Purple Power did no damage to the piston coating, unlike the oven cleaner, then it should be doable to use Purple Power as a piston soak. So sometime in the next week I will try this in my oil burning 2000 Honda CR-V, 5-speed AWD. Currently goes through a quart of oil in 500 miles of normal driving, or 300 miles of aggressive driving. From 5000rpm and until redline it smokes blue very bad, sometimes (rarely) smokes on start up, if it has been sitting for a week. Here is my plan:
- Drain oil and remove the drain plug, leave the pan under. (obviously)
- Get pistons in midstroke position and pour some Purple Power in the cylinders. Check and add more as needed for next 48hrs in 12hr intervals. This should clean up the chamber and ring lands, in theory.
- Keep the intervals, but switch Purple Power for Berryman B12. This should (again in theory) clean up the residual leftovers of Purple Power and anything Purple Power did not dissolve. Check and add more as needed for next 48hrs in 12hr intervals, or until I'm out of B12.
- After 2 bottles of B12 pour a pint of Marvel Mystery oil, to somewhat reestablish an oil film, until new oil can and coat everything up.
- Make sure cylinders are liquid free, install new plugs, re-install the drain plug, and fill with new oil. Probably a cheap 15W40 from the stash for a short OCI, and then M1 0w40.
This is a bit of a shotgun approach, but I have a limited amount of time when it comes to how long the car can sit. Really hope that my oil burning issue is from carboned up ringlands, and all this^^^ makes a positive difference. If not, then I tried, and now will know for sure that I need a new engine. It is possible that the engine is simply worn out due to the very short gears, and final drive. It's doing 3k RPM at 60mph and 4k RPM at 80mph. Redline is 6500-ish, so the engine definitely lives a high revving life (Honda, duh) just to keep up with traffic. Really shows how fast the econoboxes became in the last 20 years...
Anyways, does anyone have better ideas on the piston soak? Anything I should adjust/change? I happen to have all the products listed on hand already, from previous projects, so no out-of-pocket expenses need to be made for the listed procedure. Looking forward to your suggestions, let me know if I'm missing anything or mistaking in my assumptions. Yes, the rebuild is the ultimate solution, but if this piston soak does not work, I'll just get a used low mileage JDM engine. Now that would involve some expenses...