How many miles were the plugs in use? If they were covered in black goo then they probably needed to be changed. Sounds like the engine needs a good cleaning. Use some ARX or if you want faster results pour in a can of seafoam or marvel mystery oil and drive it for a couple hundred miles and change the oil.
Sea Foam
- Thread starter stogiedude
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I bough the car a month ago... It had a "tuneup"
Sparkplug wires and spark plugs were replaced about 2 months ago.
I didnt pull them out and look at them before the seafoam. And I ran the seafoam to clean the combustion chambers and vavles.
I dont know what piston crowns are I was looking at the middle section of the piston, thats all I could see through the spark plug hole, ill probably get a borescope.
I couldnt tell the difference after doing sea-foam, but then again the spark plugs were compeltey messed up and nasty. After I replaced the sparkplugs with some Autolite Coppers (dont belive in platinum or irridium) I could REALLY feel the difference, idled smooth accelerated smooth etc.
I dont know if my engine has sludge problems I only changed the oil one when I got the car and it was pitch black.
Sparkplug wires and spark plugs were replaced about 2 months ago.
I didnt pull them out and look at them before the seafoam. And I ran the seafoam to clean the combustion chambers and vavles.
I dont know what piston crowns are I was looking at the middle section of the piston, thats all I could see through the spark plug hole, ill probably get a borescope.
I couldnt tell the difference after doing sea-foam, but then again the spark plugs were compeltey messed up and nasty. After I replaced the sparkplugs with some Autolite Coppers (dont belive in platinum or irridium) I could REALLY feel the difference, idled smooth accelerated smooth etc.
I dont know if my engine has sludge problems I only changed the oil one when I got the car and it was pitch black.
Ran sea foam through my 2.0 DOHC Eclipse engine 136k miles. Pulled spark plugs they were covered in black nasty gunk. The pistons were nice grey metallic color like they came out of the factory except for a couple of small what looks to be rust or caron spots.
Sucked in 2/3 rd's of the bottle torugh the brake vacum line then shut off the car for an hour and restarted, created a whole lot of white smoke.
Sucked in 2/3 rd's of the bottle torugh the brake vacum line then shut off the car for an hour and restarted, created a whole lot of white smoke.
MolaKule
Staff member
Were the sparkplugs still covered with gunk after the Sea Foam application, and were the piston crowns cleaned off back to factory condition?
A little before and after information would be helpful.
A little before and after information would be helpful.
did you just dump the seafoam directly into the crankcase? rock on.
Seaafoam in the crankcase wouldn't do much for sparkplugs or piston crowns. I just remove the plugs and pour it or mainly chemtool down them. Let it sit a few minutes and then crank it up. It helps save the cat if you pull the fuse and depressurize the fuel pump so that you don't have too much gas and seafoam soaking into the cat. My piston crowns are spotless. I just let chemtool in the gas tank take care of the valves.
Don't believe in platinum or iridium? I assure you, they exist.
I wouldn't recommend them for every car, certainly. But Autolite copper plugs aren't OE for ANY car, and are cheap for a reason. Don't get me wrong, they beat fouled plugs. But, even if you feel platinum plugs are the devil, you can still buy better standard plugs.
slightly off topic, but i put in ngk iridium ix plugs into my 94 civic, previously running factory spec'd ngk v-powers(less than 5k miles on the v-powers), and I noticed an imporovement. Pulls better, revs smoother.
I've used autolite, bosch, delco, NGK, and champion on my 97 saab 900 and never detected a bit of differece in things like fuel econ, ping, etc. Saabs are supposed to be extremely picky about needing ngk plugs and everyone thinks I am a nut for not using them. But, they don't work any better than any other copper plug. Perhaps one copper plug is better than others in some form or fashion. But I haven't seen it payoff in real world differences.
Copper standard and v-power NGKs are cheap too. $1.68 at my work. Not exactly bank-breaking difference between that and Autolites, which in any motor I've used them in have proved inferior and lived shorter lives. This isn't always the case! They worked great in my brother's previous car (Kia Sephia 1.8), and it burned oil anyway. But they're still cheap plugs. Also, most cleaners won't "ruin" plugs, though I suppose they *might* shorten their life a bit. Never had that issue. Some additives might coat the plugs.
I run nothing but factory platinums in my engine, based on what I've seen with standard plugs or cheap platinums in other Series II NA 3800s. Especially with it being a PITA to replace the rear 3. I didn't change the first set until 95k, could have gone longer, but they didn't burn as well as they did new. Next change won't be for some time.
Anyway... Seafoam. Most of the time it doesn't clean pistons off really well, though it does ok elsewhere. Some people like to do a "hot soak" with it, where they actually suck most of it in at higher RPMs to keep it running, and then when they're reaching the bottom they let it suck it in freely and don't stop it from stalling. Let it soak for an hour, and then fire it back up. I would say that with an engine like this if you wanted to soak the pistons there are probably easier ways. Again, if you wanted to... I usually am happy enough with a decently strong in-tank solution.
I run nothing but factory platinums in my engine, based on what I've seen with standard plugs or cheap platinums in other Series II NA 3800s. Especially with it being a PITA to replace the rear 3. I didn't change the first set until 95k, could have gone longer, but they didn't burn as well as they did new. Next change won't be for some time.
Anyway... Seafoam. Most of the time it doesn't clean pistons off really well, though it does ok elsewhere. Some people like to do a "hot soak" with it, where they actually suck most of it in at higher RPMs to keep it running, and then when they're reaching the bottom they let it suck it in freely and don't stop it from stalling. Let it soak for an hour, and then fire it back up. I would say that with an engine like this if you wanted to soak the pistons there are probably easier ways. Again, if you wanted to... I usually am happy enough with a decently strong in-tank solution.
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