When using either seafoam or water to help break up carbon and clean it out of my engine, do I have to worry about carbon in my catalytic converter? I don't know how large the pieces of broken up deposits will be and if they could potentially harm the cat. Should I take it off while I do this?

 

i have used seafoam and gm top engine clean in cat .conv, cars with no problems . (probley at least 50 cars) it doesn't break it in chunks it softens it so you can burn it . it will SMOKE heavily when started and for up to 5 min. or more when first started

another mike s

 

Thanks other MikeS. If I've got time, I'll give it a shot today.

 

Well, I managed to make a lot of smoke! I can't say if it did anything more than that yet though. Few problems, but nothing big in the process. First, any vacuum line I pulled made the car shut off. So I pulled the PCV filter out of the valve cover and sucked in the seafoam through it. That worked fine, but then I realized I should be doing it through the plenum so I'd hit all 8 cyls. So, tried again, sucked up some more, let it sit, and then smoked up the state. Got a little less than half a can left so I'll put that in the gas tank. We'll see if this gets rid of some detonation or has any other noticable benefits...

 

and...how's it turning out?

 

Ha, you caught me! I thought about posting it the other day, but decided to wait a little longer. Driving it for the first time afterwards, it seemed like initial throttle application came in a bit smoother. I've since decided that was my mind playing tricks on me. One of the main reasons that I used the seafoam was to try to stop the detonation I was having. I actually spent yesterday going to, from, and running at the track with 93 octane. Didn't seem to have any problems there. Next fillup, I'm going to drop down a grade or two and see how it runs. Before I didn't even want to try driving it on regular (87 octane?). I'm going to try regular next time and see if the difference is noticable with it. Sorry I can't say a whole lot yet.