Clean My Injector, Baby
January 29, 2012 1:59 PM Subscribe
Do those bottles of fuel injector cleaner fuel additive actually do anything?
My 2001 Chevy Metro seems like it could use a bit of a boost, and I was going to start with pouring a bottle of that fuel injector cleaner into the gas tank and work my way up to more complicated things as the weather got warmer. But I don't want to bother with buying one if it's not actually a productive thing to do. So what does that stuff supposedly do, and does it actually work?
My 2001 Chevy Metro seems like it could use a bit of a boost, and I was going to start with pouring a bottle of that fuel injector cleaner into the gas tank and work my way up to more complicated things as the weather got warmer. But I don't want to bother with buying one if it's not actually a productive thing to do. So what does that stuff supposedly do, and does it actually work?
I have friends who swear by Sea Foam. Your chevy likely has a 4-cycle gasoline engine. Check out some of those pictures of deposits getting loosened up and burned off.
posted by itheearl at 2:18 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by itheearl at 2:18 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
If your car "needs a boost", it may or may not have anything to do with your fuel injectors. When was the last time you changed the spark plugs, distributor cap/rotor, and wires? How about the air filter? Do you potentially have an exhaust leak somewhere, or is an O2 sensor perhaps failing and causing the engine to run rich/lean?
Generally speaking, additives don't restore power and are questionable at best. The only exception I'd make to that is Sea Foam, which can be used safely in both the fuel tank and brake booster hose.
posted by ellF at 2:18 PM on January 29, 2012
Generally speaking, additives don't restore power and are questionable at best. The only exception I'd make to that is Sea Foam, which can be used safely in both the fuel tank and brake booster hose.
posted by ellF at 2:18 PM on January 29, 2012
I love me some Sea Foam, both straight into the intake manifold and dumped into the gas tank. I really can't tell if it does much, but $40 for a couple cans every 6 months can't hurt, and it's the least expensive thing I do to get performance out of my car.
ellF is right, though, there are things that probably need doing on your car that you would feel a larger effect from. For ease of doing and low cost, I would go ahead and get the Sea Foam for now.
posted by InsanePenguin at 3:17 PM on January 29, 2012
ellF is right, though, there are things that probably need doing on your car that you would feel a larger effect from. For ease of doing and low cost, I would go ahead and get the Sea Foam for now.
posted by InsanePenguin at 3:17 PM on January 29, 2012
I love me some Sea Foam, both straight into the intake manifold and dumped into the gas tank. I really can't tell if it does much, but $40 for a couple cans every 6 months can't hurt, and it's the least expensive thing I do to get performance out of my car.
Putting Sea Foam in your car every 6 months, if you can't really tell if it does much, is frankly, in my opinion, retarded.
Gasoline has detergents in it which, if you drive your car regularly, should do an adequate job of keeping junk out of your fuel system. Sea Foam and other fuel system additives are something I would use if a car had been sitting around for awhile, but otherwise I wouldn't expect them to have any noticeable affect whatsoever.
Seconding ellF's suggestion. Check your plugs, wires, and distributor (or ignition coils if your car has those), and replace the air filter.
posted by autojack at 3:40 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
Putting Sea Foam in your car every 6 months, if you can't really tell if it does much, is frankly, in my opinion, retarded.
Gasoline has detergents in it which, if you drive your car regularly, should do an adequate job of keeping junk out of your fuel system. Sea Foam and other fuel system additives are something I would use if a car had been sitting around for awhile, but otherwise I wouldn't expect them to have any noticeable affect whatsoever.
Seconding ellF's suggestion. Check your plugs, wires, and distributor (or ignition coils if your car has those), and replace the air filter.
posted by autojack at 3:40 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
I've used the Chevron Techron (or something similar-sounding) black bottles for cleaning carbon off valves during a rebuild. It was a considerably better solvent for such things than anything else we tried. So, yes, they do something, but that doesn't mean they do anything for your application. :/
posted by introp at 3:52 PM on January 29, 2012
posted by introp at 3:52 PM on January 29, 2012
It can't hurt to add a bottle of fuel-injector cleaner (like Techron) to a tank of gas, just to see if it makes a difference. Your Metro is fairly small, not very powerful engine, in the first place. The best thing you can do for it is to make sure you give it regular oil changes, as well as replacing all the filters. You could very well have a dirty air filter that is restricting airflow.
I'd avoid the Sea Foam thing like the plague. For one thing, the people who use and swear by Sea Foam tend to not use it strictly as a fuel system cleaner and, rather, use it in severely bizarre ways (sucked into the engine via the brake booster vacuum line, for instance) that intentionally produce a ton of white smoke out the exhaust with, frankly, dubious benefits.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:54 PM on January 29, 2012
I'd avoid the Sea Foam thing like the plague. For one thing, the people who use and swear by Sea Foam tend to not use it strictly as a fuel system cleaner and, rather, use it in severely bizarre ways (sucked into the engine via the brake booster vacuum line, for instance) that intentionally produce a ton of white smoke out the exhaust with, frankly, dubious benefits.
posted by Thorzdad at 3:54 PM on January 29, 2012
The Car Talk guys get an easy half hour of laughs, jokes, and other hilarity every time somebody calls in with one these questions - especially SeaFoam. You might want to browse their forums a bit. Proving (or disproving) the efficacy of fuel additives seems to be very Rumsfeldian.
posted by webhund at 5:29 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by webhund at 5:29 PM on January 29, 2012 [1 favorite]
Some anecdata - my mechanic (from a grandfather-father-son garage that has been around for at least 60 years) told me to never bother to "clean" the injectors at all since they very very rarely need it. The point being that nowadays fuel already has the additives added by the oil companies to keep your injectors clean and that the "injection clean" is just standard ripoff policy with every company that services cars for a living. Prior to finding this guy, every time I took any car I owned to be serviced, they always offered to "clean and flush" the injectors - for a nice fee of course!
I trust this guy completely and he has never asked me to clean any of the injectors on any of my various cars. This is in Australia though so YMMV.
I agree with upthread, everything depends on how your car has been serviced over the years. It's hard to find a good mechanic, one who won't just push the moneymaking line - "You need new wiper blades!". Best if you can find a *non-franchised* mechanic that has a bit of history behind it and has been around a while. Let them have a look and see what they recommend. But putting weird additives in your fuel tank - wouldn't do it!
posted by humpy at 5:55 PM on January 29, 2012
I trust this guy completely and he has never asked me to clean any of the injectors on any of my various cars. This is in Australia though so YMMV.
I agree with upthread, everything depends on how your car has been serviced over the years. It's hard to find a good mechanic, one who won't just push the moneymaking line - "You need new wiper blades!". Best if you can find a *non-franchised* mechanic that has a bit of history behind it and has been around a while. Let them have a look and see what they recommend. But putting weird additives in your fuel tank - wouldn't do it!
posted by humpy at 5:55 PM on January 29, 2012
2nding new sparkplugs. I've used various fuel injector cleaners every once in a while in my old saab, it seemed to help. One time my engine light came on and I went to an auto parts store to put it on their computer to see what it was for. It was an oxygen sensor fault. The autoparts guy told me I should try putting some additive in the tank because sometimes the sensor gets dirty. I don't know if that's true or not, but I did what he said and the alarm went away on it's own the day after I put the stuff in the tank. But then one day I got new spark plugs and the performance difference was shocking. (haha) Anyway, both are extremely cheap. Change your plugs every 50k miles.
posted by j03 at 12:25 AM on January 30, 2012
posted by j03 at 12:25 AM on January 30, 2012
I also like the Lucas treatment, but I'm not sure it actually does anything. Gas is a solvent, and so is the ethanol that's in most gas. The only thing about the Lucas that seems to make any kind of sense is that it's thick, and in my imagination, this changes the viscosity of the gas slightly so that when the fuel sprays out it possibly sprays out in a slightly different pattern, hitting portions of the injector tip that don't normally get hit with gas.
I happened to pull the injectors out of a couple of old (identical) engines one time, and they were pretty darn clean. One car was given a steady diet of the stuff, and the other most likely never had any of the stuff. There was no difference between the two.
You can probably get just as much benefit by simply rotating between different brands of gas to take advantage of the different detergent additives that the different brands use.
What you might well benefit from is cleaning the throttle body. I find that when a car starts running funny, that' usually dirty.
posted by gjc at 6:53 AM on January 30, 2012
I happened to pull the injectors out of a couple of old (identical) engines one time, and they were pretty darn clean. One car was given a steady diet of the stuff, and the other most likely never had any of the stuff. There was no difference between the two.
You can probably get just as much benefit by simply rotating between different brands of gas to take advantage of the different detergent additives that the different brands use.
What you might well benefit from is cleaning the throttle body. I find that when a car starts running funny, that' usually dirty.
posted by gjc at 6:53 AM on January 30, 2012
I love me some Sea Foam,...
I really can't tell if it does much, ...
but $40 for a couple cans every 6 months can't hurt, ...
it's the least expensive thing I do to get performance out of my car.
Gaah. "Logic" like this is how shysters make their money.
Pro Tip: If you can't tell if it's working, stop using it, and save yourself $40 every 6 months! Or better yet, send it to me via PayPal (email in profile), and I'll sprinkle Magic Car Dust over the intertubes on your vehicle. Please include your VIN, to be sure I get the right car.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:40 AM on January 30, 2012 [2 favorites]
I really can't tell if it does much, ...
but $40 for a couple cans every 6 months can't hurt, ...
it's the least expensive thing I do to get performance out of my car.
Gaah. "Logic" like this is how shysters make their money.
Pro Tip: If you can't tell if it's working, stop using it, and save yourself $40 every 6 months! Or better yet, send it to me via PayPal (email in profile), and I'll sprinkle Magic Car Dust over the intertubes on your vehicle. Please include your VIN, to be sure I get the right car.
posted by IAmBroom at 9:40 AM on January 30, 2012 [2 favorites]
This thread is closed to new comments.
On a recent cross-country trip in a Trailblazer, it may have given us slightly better mileage, but it was so slight that the difference could have just been due to the terrain.
It his dad's Plymouth minivan, however, it makes a huge difference. When the van is fully loaded down and has the additive, it will usually get better mileage that when it's empty and doesn't have the additive.
Beyond that, it's hard to say. You can buy a small bottle of the Lucas stuff for under 4 bucks, so it might be worth just adding in for a tank and seeing how it works for your vehicle.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 2:16 PM on January 29, 2012