Are OTC fuel injector cleaners & gas treatments worth it?

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For the last five years or so, I've dumped a bottle of STP fuel injector cleaner/gas treatment or similar Gumout product in my Rangers' tank about every three months. This has mostly been as a preventative measure (and a habit) as opposed to trying to solve a F.I./engine ping/bad gas issue.

My question is, are these cheap (
Thanks.
 
Terry Dyson has said that the only two worthwhile gas additives he's seen are Fuel Power and Chevron Techron.
He favored Fuel Power based on price.
 
quote:

Originally posted by TomJones76:
Terry Dyson has said that the only two worthwhile gas additives he's seen are Fuel Power and Chevron Techron.
He favored Fuel Power based on price.


I agree, having used both (as well as a few others) the best results are with FP and Techron.
 
In reference to the Chevron Techron, are you talking about the gasoline or Techron Concentrate?

Also, what is "Fuel Power" and where can I find it?

[ October 19, 2005, 04:51 PM: Message edited by: Crack_Tan ]
 
I cringe when someone says "the only good products are xx and yy". My immediate reaction is. "So, you have tried everything in the world right?" Oh, you haven't. So, what have you tried? Oh, you tried zz and it didnt work. Oh, what else did you try.

Anyway, Terry may have said FP and Techron work, and he may know of some others that don't work. However, he definately does not know that FP and Techron are the ONLY two that work. (All due respect to Terry)

Oh, and Quest. Can you tell us more about Pintle vs. Pintleless fuel injectors. I heard a comment somewhere that the Pintleless fuel injectors are less likely to get clogged from deposites vs the Pintle type injectors. Is that true? If so why or why not?
 
Whether it works or not, I still love the smell of of MMO
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Here in Alabama, all grades of Chevron gas contain Techron, and, according to a local distributor, all the grades contain the same amount of it. He says you get no more Techron in premium than you do in regular.
 
I've cleaned my K-Jet and Toyota injectors several times while off the vehicle. So what you say? Well, I can tell you what worked when I hooked them up to a homemade injector cleaner and tried various solvents and chemicals.

What worked best is often the same ingredients found in OTC cleaners so it would seem there is a correlation unless diluting with fuel matters: straight toulene or xylene. I now use OTC cleaners that have one or both of these as major constituents. I plan on trying the Techron concentrate if I ever take them off again.

Be advised if you use them straight they're serious chemicals and must be handled carefully.
 
quote:

Originally posted by Winston:
I cringe when someone says "the only good products are xx and yy". My immediate reaction is. "So, you have tried everything in the world right?" Oh, you haven't. So, what have you tried? Oh, you tried zz and it didnt work. Oh, what else did you try.

Anyway, Terry may have said FP and Techron work, and he may know of some others that don't work. However, he definately does not know that FP and Techron are the ONLY two that work. (All due respect to Terry)

Oh, and Quest. Can you tell us more about Pintle vs. Pintleless fuel injectors. I heard a comment somewhere that the Pintleless fuel injectors are less likely to get clogged from deposites vs the Pintle type injectors. Is that true? If so why or why not?


The original poster asked for opinions and it looks like several people gave theirs. If you don't like it, don't read it. Or better yet offer up a better opinion backed with your experiences with other products. But don't belittle others opinions just because they don't fit your world.
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At least keep the post on topic.
 
Kang:

fuel injector cleaners that contains stoddard solvents or similar will smooth out the idling due to the stratification of the fuel during air mixing (atomisation) when fuel injectors spray. Depending on the charge temperature, the swirl of the air during intake stage and also many other factors, combined, as the F+A charge "tumbles" and mixes, some heavier aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon compounds may "statify" the charge, altering the flame propagation pattern during the ignition stage.

Some engine designs (combustion chamber and valving positioning, number of valves, intake air charge and spray pattern, compression ratio, "tumbling" effect of the F+A charge during intake and compression stage and more...) may benefit due to the slower propagation of the flame propagation pattern after the introduction of some sort of aliphatic/aromatic hydrocarbon compounds, leading to smoothing out of idle roughness, a slightly better acceleration due to "quenching" effect.

As a car ages and mileage accumulates, there shall always be some gasoline related deposits accumulation in the upper combustion chamber wall, piston top, top compression rings and ring lands, exhaust valves.

Intake valve deposits, on the other hand, comprised of mainly carbon deposits caused by (a) motor oil fumes introduced by PCV (closed crankcase air(fume) recirculation) and (b) coking to the fuel remains in the combustion chamber the moment the engine shut off. As time goes by, this "coking" of carbon will have a detrimental effect on the fuel+air charge pattern during intake stage, the heated (sometimes glowing hot) carbon will attribute to the tendency to pre-ignite of the charge, causing serious drivability problems.

So, unless you can afford to tear down the engine and do some combustion chamber cleaning and intake /exhaust valve cleaning to rid of all sorts of deposits, otherwise, you shall experience some form of mild drivability issues such as rougher than when new idling, sometimes even acceleration problems.

Nice cars with full computer control and compensation will have the ability to adjust to these changes with knock sensing, etc. to keep the situation under control. As a result: luxury cars seems to fair much better than some lower-priced counterparts (with less computer management controls).

As for pintle versus pintle-less injectors, yes, you are right. Pintleless injectors are introduced to specially oversome certain kinds of coking conditions (fuel remains when the engine shuts off will cause carbon formation on the injector tip(pintle-type), and as mileage accumulates and that deposits becomes bigger, it will alter your spray pattern causing driveability issues). The good news is that most German and Japanese made cars they delibrately positioned their fuel injectors to overcome the possibility of deposits due to coking, as a result: unless you are running some extremely crappy fuels with insufficient deposit controls and coking controls and/or oil burning issues (such as excessive valve stem to guide wear causing motor oil burning, PCV valve causing excessive introduction of motor oil on the intake manifold side, etc.) otherwise, most Japanese and German cars can live a fairly long life w/o the call for drasatic fuel injection cleaning.

Also: don't disregard the importance of replacing your fuel filter on EFI cars regularly. The life of your injectors are depending on it.
 
IMHO not really.While some OTC fuel injector cleaners such as Chevron Techron, Gumout Regaine, etc. worked out to be much better than many others (AssTeePee), the best cleaners I've found so far are the pierceable cans that you are supposed to hook up to your fuel rail (with gauges and such) and run it in the tuneup shops as a formal fuel injection cleaning package. OTC makes them so are safetykleen and 3M. Strong powerful stuff that will purge any carbon particles stuck at pintle-type injectors and some (not all) pintle-less type injectors. Also works extremely well in good ole Bosch mechanical gasoline fuel injectors common in Rabbits, Quantums, older Audii 5-cylinders and Fox.

All other fuel additives (with the exception of FP for I haven't tried it yet), are, IMHO, waste of money. The smoothing out of idling, etc. has more to do with foreign type of solvents such as stoddad solvents, some alcohols and/or kerosene and some other aliphatic hydrocarbons which tends to suppress any abnormal flame propagation inside the combustion chamber and little/nothing to do with it's ability to "clean" . Afterall, cleaning the intake valve/intake manifold portion using gasoline additives is a sloooowww process that a single shot of OTC gasoline additive will not(if any) do anything drastic.

While most lazy drivers (of course, not BITOG fanatic posters) are too lazy/cheap to deal with specific mechanical troubles by simply resorting to using cheep resolution (5 bucks OTC fuel injector cleaner) instead of getting a proper tuneup and diagnostics, my personal humble opinion is that granted that you religiously maintain your car with proper regular tuneups and also use good quality gasoline with sufficient cleaning additives in it (Chevron and Shell Vpower seems to be a desirable choice), your combustion chamber, intake valves and fuel injector shall be clean enough that it doesn't call for any additional OTC cleaners, if any.

my 2c's worth.
 
Interesting comments, Quest, especially this part:

quote:


The smoothing out of idling, etc. has more to do with foreign type of solvents such as stoddad solvents, some alcohols and/or kerosene and some other aliphatic hydrocarbons which tends to suppress any abnormal flame propagation inside the combustion chamber and little/nothing to do with it's ability to "clean.”

I’ve never heard this mentioned before. Can you elaborate? There seems to be a lot of good evidence that these products (the good ones at least, not the $1.99 cheap stuff), actually do clean. I’ve seen several third party web pages, where these products have been tested, that seem to state that gas doesn’t have quite enough cleaning additives for some cars and that these products fill the gap. Yes the process is slow and no, they are no miracle cure, but they do what they say.

“Suppress abnormal flame propagation” makes it sound almost like an octane booster. I’ve never heard this quality attributed to a cleaner. Also, if this is what they do, how come my car continues to run better over the next several tanks of gas that do not have the additive in them? I have recently run several tanks of gas in a row with these cleaners, and each tank is a continued improvement over the last. Again, it is a slow process. But if all they did was suppress abnormal flame propagation, why would I see continued improvement?

As for them being a waste of money, I disagree. The amount of improvement I’ve seen in one of my cars as been huge, and I consider it money very well spent. On the other hand, some cars don’t see much improvement. I don’t seem to notice any difference when I use them in a second car. The amount of cleaners already in the gas is probably enough for this car, so in this case, using them would be a waste of money. I use one bottle prior to each oil change in this car, just because it makes me happy.
 
quote:

Originally posted by Quest:
fuel injector cleaners that contains stoddard solvents or similar will smooth out the idling due to the stratification of the fuel during air mixing (atomisation) when fuel injectors spray. Depending on the charge temperature, the swirl of the air during intake stage and also many other factors, combined, as the F+A charge "tumbles" and mixes, some heavier aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbon compounds may "statify" the charge, altering the flame propagation pattern during the ignition stage.

I can see this happening with the cheaper injector cleaners, like those with kerosene, alcohol, light weight oils, etc. But what about the cleaners with the more exotic ingredients, like Techron, etc? I still maintain they actually clean up deposits. This “altering the flame propagation” doesn’t explain why my car keeps getting better with each tank of fuel system cleaner.
 
kang,

That's the difference between "ordinary" fuel injector cleaners and "REAL" fuel injector cleaners.

Here up north, we see things like CD-2, many "off-brands" FIC, STP, etc. and these, if you read their MSDS hazard material sheets, comprised of some alcohol, aliphatic compounds and kerosenes of some sort, + some "secretive" ingredients. How effective are these cleaners? Well, I've done enough engine overhaul (imports, such as Suzukis and Mazdas) to tell you my experience that most of these cleaners didn't do squat but to smooth out the idle for you, period. I've performed trials in running cases of FIC in engines that are soon to be rebuild and it didn't clean the intake valve's carbon deposits effectively to the point where I pretty much doubt the effectiveness of it. During the course of engine rebuilds, all valves are inspected, measured and then cleaned effectively with an ammonia-based combustion chamber cleaner soak then wire wheel.

P.S. I typically send sets of fuel injectors to specialty shops in Cali for ultrasonic-cleaning/spray pattern balancing+blueprinting. For on-board cleaning, I use canned pierceable cleaners such as 3M and SaftyKleen (OTC also makes one). I have had fairly good performance using Techron and Gumout Regaine for gas-tank type of additives. All others, IMHO, aren't worth the buck.

If you are mechanically competent in servicing your car, I would recommend you to take your injectors off and send them to one of those fuel injector specialty shops (I believe Jackson Racing does that too) to have them cleaned/checked/blueprinted and then put them back into your car. You'll be surprised by the immediate perceivable difference it makes (compared to using gasoline FIC).
 
years ago when techron was being tested, a family friend was the head of a "large automotive testing lab" (can't mention the name) that did the testing for Chevron.

stop here if you've heard this before....

He told us that it was the only thing that worked of whatever they tested, and it really worked; either as an additive pumped in or from a bottle into the tank. His data said that the bottled stuff was better for periodic cleaning of somewhat fouled injectors, while the blended version was better for keeping things from getting gunked up to begin with.

At the time, premium grades had higher concentrations of Techron but they had at least some in all grades.

Now, others may have come along by now that DO work, but he was 100% sold on Techron performing as advertised.

I've succumbed to the $1 store cleaners at times and found that throwing dollar bills from the car window was more satisfying.
 
I'm sure that they all do something ..whether it's effective for your level of need may be in question. Out of all the standard "mechanic in a can" fuel system cleaners that I've used, I would say that Seafoam and Regane have produced the best results. Regane being the most value in perceived difference. Seafoam was used only to eliminate an annoying ping for my wife. It did that. The Regane was used on another vehicle and for a few days until the fuel adaptives compensated, there was a substantial difference in open loop operation.
 
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