Fuel system cleaner or fuel injector cleaner

[Chasse]

What is the difference between a fuel system cleaner and a fuel injector cleaner? I keep seeing these fuel additives for sale and the same company will make these two different cleaners on the same shelf, one will say it's for cleaning the whole system (injectors included) and the other will say it's just for the injectors.

What would be the difference in formulas for the two types of products? Would one necessarily clean injectors better than the other? Would it be a bad idea to run both additives at the same time in the same tank of gas?

 

[HTSS_TR]

Fuel system cleaner works on complete fuel system including injectors, fuel injector cleaner is effective only on injectors.

 

[Chasse]

Thank you, now that we have that out of the way,
1)what does the fuel system cleaner have in it that will clean the injectors as well as other things?
2)What does the injector cleaner have in it that only cleans the injectors?
3)Why would a manufacturer (such as Chevron) sell a product that only cleans injectors when they also have a product that cleans the injectors as well as the whole system? (and strangely enough, Chevron's injector only product also contains PEA which is supposed to clean the whole system)
4)Why would a consumer actually buy the injector cleaner when a whole system cleaner is on the shelf?

 

[OilNerd]

1) PEA - polyether amines
2) Some: Mineral spirits, Stoddard solvent
3) Market saturation.
4) Cost.

 

[StevieC]

IMO, Fuel System cleaner will do a better job at cleaning the fuel injectors than just standard injector cleaner because of the "Extras" it usually has.

 

[Chasse]

Originally Posted By: OilNerd
1) PEA - polyether amines
2) Some: Mineral spirits, Stoddard solvent
3) Market saturation.
4) Cost.

So you are saying one is a detergent and one is a solvent?

 

[Chasse]

That would make sense because a solvant is going to be better at removing deposits (and thus cleaning partially clogged injectors) while detergents will be better at cleaning the system (except for deposits.) It would also explain why kerosene is used in injector cleaners.

Nobody seems to know how polyether amines work. The Ether part of it seems to be a mild solvant and the amine part seems to be a mild detergent from what I can gather.

I reject the idea that some people are willing to clean only the injectors just to save a couple bucks.

 

[Chasse]

While reading this from examiner.com:
"Chevron admits that a specialized product may do one thing better than Techron, but no other additive that they know about does so many things, so well."

You can see by looking at the chemical structure of PEA that there are going to be stronger detergents out there and there are going to be better solvents out there, but not many that act as both. You might get a formulated product with both a strong detergent and a strong solvent that works better than PEA alone though.

No offense guys but since this is the very basics of what this forum is about I was expecting some better informed posts, not just "one is for the system and one is for the injectors." Nobody seems to know how or why.

 

[Samilcar]

Originally Posted By: Chasse
What is the difference between a fuel system cleaner and a fuel injector cleaner?


At least for the Chevron products, the only difference between the two is the percentage of PEA cleaner contained in the two products, with the "system" cleaner having a higher percentage (50% IIRC).