Cleaning carbon deposits in engine - Terraclean?

[Garth]

Have a fair build up of carbon on top of my pistons which I am keen to get rid of! Came across this product recently. Does anybody know if it works?

Thanks

Garth

[Roadsport06]

Edd China will post up shortly

[Garth]

Do high octane fuels tend to leave more carbon deposits?

[Jonathan Kay]

Are you thinking of them doing this once or occasionally, or some sort of additive that would be used all the time it's running?

Which engine and configuration?

Jonathan

PS: it's always difficult to be sure it's the right product, but there's a safety data sheet with this composition:

[ScottR400D]

Looks like petrol with small amounts of organic solvents, some of which are probably in regular petrol in any case. Hard to see how it could do much either way.

 

 

[aerobod - near CYYC]

Carbon can be removed to some degree with water spraying. Basically take the engine to a hot operating state, remove the air filter and idle it at 3000RPM by inserting a piece of folded cardboard of the right thickness under the throttle stop. Take a spray bottle with a fine mist nozzle of about 1 litre capacity filled with distilled water and pump the water spray into the throttle opening at a steady rate that drops the idle to 2000RPM, but not lower. If the idle drops too much, just stop spraying until the revs come back to 3000RPM again. It will take 10 mins or more to spray a litre into the engine, so no risk of hydro lock.

Water / steam seems to work as well as any carbon solvent product, as seen in engines that have a coolant leak from a head gasket failure, leading to a carbon free combustion chamber. Best to remove the lambda sensor to avoid any fine carbon clogging while doing this and change the oil afterwards.

Try at your own risk! I have done this several times (before each of the last 3 oil changes) and have seen a slow removal of carbon on the piston crown below the inlet valves, as viewed with a light through the spark plug holes.

[Garth]

Two aims I guess. First is to get rid of the deposits and then secondly try to keep it running clean.

I would like a better understanding of the implications of having carbon deposits on the piston heads etc and how to keep them clean! My gut says it should perform better if the combustion chamber is clean?

Running a Sigma on throttle bodies at about 200 bhp. Engine builder said Tesco Momentum 98 was good. Ran it for a while on that, but then moved to Shell V-power as easier to find Shell stations! Have done several thousand miles in Europe, so used high octane fuel there.

Would like to see a test with Terraclean where they check the condition of the combustion chambers etc. before and after the test with a borescope. Tempted to see if Terraclean would let me check the condition after the clean and only pay if it is clean in there!

Have always been skeptical about these sorts of products, but used Redex on an 8 year old Honda CR-V I bought (after seeing Jason Plato's 5th Gear video about trying to regain some of the power from an old Carrado). After using it on 4 tanks of petrol my fuel consumption had improved by 40 to 50 miles a tank! 

Garth