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Just................No............


Don't do it. Period. Don't.

 

Ive heard of people misting water into engines with a spray bottle. But not pouring.

Supposedly it breaks up carbon...I tried it on my 305 and it didnt do anything at all.

 

There has been a lot of discussion on this before and the concensus seems to be as long as you don't use so much water that you bog the engine that it's beneficial to blow out carbon because the water instantly vaporizes and cracks it. Use a spray bottle and give it a little gas while you do it. Do a search for the earlier posts on this topic.

 

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the way you do it:


take off the air cleaner assembly


use a small spray bottle with plain clean water in it.. nothing else.


using your hand on the throttle arm(wear gloves if its hot ) give it some gas, and spray the water straight down into the engine..have the tip on a "mist" pattern, not a straight squirt.

you may actually have to pump it fast to get the effect, but pump it enough that the engine bogs a little... keep it there but give it a bit more gas....


once youve done that a bit, give it a few good revs, and it should blow everything out...

this wont do much unless you have caked on deposits from running rich or somthing...

but if you do, it makes a good diff



also it wouldnt be a bad idea to disconnect your cat before you do this if you do have alot of deposits.

 

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yes, into the throttle body.


using a vac line is a BAD idea. you want the water to mist in. not pour or drip in.


and yes the water will reach all the cyls... the fuel spraying from there does...

 

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you dont have to disconnect anything. your car doesnt have a MAF. but if it did, you dont wanna spray water thru it because it would damage the wire.

GM makes a top engine cleaner. its in a spray bottle. it does the same thing.

i dont know what seafoam is.

TBI cleaner is the same as carb cleaner. not only will it not work, but it isnt good to spray into your engine like that. it does work as a starting fluid though. and btw, dont spray it into a running engine. the chance of a backfire is HUGE and with the aircleaner off, you probly will be burned.

ive heard of people doing it with ATF. ive never tried it, and i dont know anyone first hand who has. so i cant permote that idea.

 

you add atf to your oil.. you dont put it in the tb.. that would be a really bad idea..

 

You put the water through the PCV valve. Pull it out of the grommet in the valve cover and use a cup of water. Dip the valve in the water for a second. Literally a second. Then pull it out and let the engine idle for 10 seconds and repeat. It will break up all the carbon. Spraying it through the TBI won't get enough water in there to do any good. I've done it dozens of times this way and it hurts nothing as long as you only put in a little at a time.

 

if you really want to break up the crap, you have to pour in the water in a large enough quantity that it actually makes it into the cylinders in liquid form. A light mist or drip will do nothing, the water will probably jsut vaporize before it even comes into contact with anything. When i did it, i poured water down each of the barrels, not so much that it killed it but enough so that it complained. And it got alot of garbage out, which brings up another good point, disconect the exaust so you dont plug up the cat with all the garbage that will come out.

 

did you take off the heads to see the top of the pistons :-D i do that with water before i rip apart the motor... makes the pistons like brand new.

 

i just take off the y-pipe

 

This is a debatable subject because a lot of people will disagree with this method of "cleaning" an engine.. I'm one of the people who disagree with it. Something about water and combustion chambers just doesn't make me feel comfortable.

 

I asked a mechanic about using top end cleaner, this is what he recommended me doing. Only tried it once, but seemed to work pretty good.

 

Isnt a water injection system (used to prevent engine knock) known to kinda "steam-clean" the internals of an engine?

 

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i learned that trick from my old auto "proffesor" in college, he worked as an engine engineer for ford for about 20 years.

But anyway, he just got a glass of water and poured it down the throttle body or carburator slowly. Your engine has to be at operating temperature, and idealy a little overheated. taking a vacuum line loose and putting it in water does the exact same thing as just pouring it down the tb. And if you pour it you get a little better idea of how much you're putting in. Of course if you have a tpi then you'd have to use the vacuum line.

Now obviously you dont want to pour a gallon of water down the intake as it will fill the cylinder up. Water dosnt compress (for all technical purposes) so as your piston heads up it will hit that water and bend a rod or shoot the head off or such.

But i've seen literal clouds of black soot shooting out the tailpipe from doing this.

Now the real thing you have to be carefull of is clogging your cat with all that carbon you're blowing out. I'm not saying it will happen....but it's always a possibility. Which is just another reason why i use a straight pipe.

 

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Pull the whole thing out of the valve cover and dip it in the water. As for the exhaust, removing it right before the cat would be easier.

It will make more sense when you do it, so get you butt outside and get dirty!! The best way to learn is by just doing it, not asking every question imaginable on a message board then still being confused.

 

what cat, i only have manifolds and a Y-pipe

 

Simple chemistry should make you feel right at home with water in the combustion chamber. Water (H20), in addition to carbon dioxide, is the primary by-product of the combustion (oxidation) reaction.

2CH4 + 302 -> 2CO2 + 2H20 + heat

The P47, in addition to other WWII piston-engined fighters, used water injection to produce extra "emergency" horsepower, since it increased cylinder pressures because water itself is not compressible. The only time water in the combustion chamber is detrimental is when you have too much to the point that it hydro-locks the motor, or if it is sitting in there when the motor is not being run. Many turbo set-ups on cars (both factory and aftermarket) incorporate some kind of water injection, because the water, while artificially increasing compression a tad, helps prevent knock because of its cooling effect.

 

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You'll know you're administering too much water if hte rate exceeds 5cc/S on a 350 or smaller V-8. Size the tubing so the rate is about 2-3cc/S at normal idle RPM.

 

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the motor instantly stops and stuff bends. you would know if it happened.

 

im wondering if u really need to do this? id rather pour some atf in the oil at an oil change like someone else said, rather then mist water down the intake.

if it aint broke, dont fix it

 

maybe I a completely wrong here but....

ATF in your oil isn't gonna clean carbon deposits off your valves is it? Wouldn't your valve guide seals stop most of the ATF from reaching the valves?


I read in hot rod magazine a good way to clean your is pour top end cleaner in through the spark plug holes, let the engine sit for one hour then turn the engine over with the spark plugs removed to clean the solution out.

This eliminates carbon deposits on the tops of the pistons and eliminates "piston slap" on engines with thinner pistons skirts thay are prone to carbon building that causes the piston to become unbalanced. Appearantly LS1s, Gen 3 small blocks and the 3.1 Liter V6 have this problem and using this technique ever 40,000 miles will stop the slapping noise and clean the carbon out of the engine.

I would assume you could adapt this technique to clean your valves as well by spraying the top end cleaner into the intake manifold as well as in through the spark plug holes.

This method was mailed into GM by a Dealer service manager, the whole letter can be read in the January 2003 addition of Hot Rod magazine pg 86.

 

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you are 100% correct sir.



half the replies in this thread are about doing somthing totally unrelated.... we're talking about cleaning where the air flows in the engine, not the oil people!

and yes it does work.

and anyone who says it doesnt... ask them if they tried it.

 

What would happen if I used a pressure washer to get rid of the mud deposits on my fender wells?

I don't think we were ever told why you want to do this at all. What kind of problems are you having? GM makes a top end cleaner that works well and they sell it at any dealership. Try it out.

 

i dont get it? umm.. your wheel wells would be clean... unless you cranked the pressure up sky high and put the nossle to it.. lol..


id like to know too...

yea, i mentioned that... but to be honest.. it looks the same after using that as it does when you use water.... *shrug*

 

the only thing it'd really fix that i can think of off the top of my head is detonation problems. And you may notice slightly better cooling performance.

The valves themselves are self-cleaning. The conical shape of them cleans the valve and valve seats. The actual face of the face is what collects carbon, which dosnt really matter. But if you got heavy carbon deposits in the combustion chamber it very well could cause pinging.

 

Self Cleaning eh?

Mine were covered in a thick layer of carbon when I tore down my engine. Significant enough that when just messing around trying to remove the carbon I had to use a metal pick to get it to come off.


Its easy to see how this kind of significant carbon build up could inhibit air flow into or out of the engine

 

Figured I would include this one too just cause it had a stolen GM flashlight that my grandfather brought home when he used to work in the Tonawanda engine plant.

 

thanks for illustrating my point, if you look the part that actualy comes in contact with the valve seat is clean while the rest of the the valve is dirty.

did you actualy read what i said....?

 

ok Ive got a question.
I tryed doing the water thing yesterday afternoon. Id say I ended up pouring about 2 cups of water into the engine.
I dont know if I used enough, because all I got out the tail pipe was some steam, no black gunk at all.
also I got some steam from the pass side of the engine, looked to be comeing from the aria where the exhaust manafold and y-pipe are. would that indicate I have an exhaust leak?

 

Yeap, when I pulled the heads off of my 22,000 mile LS1 the pistons and valves were coverer in carbon. A couple of the valve actually had some crustyness to them. I also had the so called "piston slap." But all that is gone now

 

if steam came out anywhere in the exhaust but the tailpipe, yea, its a leak...


and you didnt answer.... what makes you think you needed to do it?

 

Hmmm thanx for confirming that I probably have an exhaust leak. may be a good excuse for me to finaly get headers lol

Honestly I tryed it because I was guessing as bad of condition as my heads and probably bottom end are I figured the top was bound to be just as bad but with carbon build up rather than old oil gunk.
unless about 2cups wasnt enough I guess I was wrong, cause like I said nothing but a little steam came out!

 

Keep going. Put close to 1/2 gallon through it. You'll be ok.

 

RJR99SS: Performance valves have undercut valve stems for a reason no? Are you trying to say that carbon build up on the umbrealla and valve stem have no effect on engine performance?

 

Throw my 2 cents in here....


Not to be a dick but I have to laugh at the people who are so set on the idea of water in an intake is a "bad idea", and who suggest anything more than misting will seize your motor. I have done it on all my cars and never had any problems what so ever. I simply had a cup full of water and would pour it in at a steady rate while someone inside the car kept the RPMs up (4k+). Like it was mentioned before, simply misting water in the intake will prove nowhere as effective as pouring it in.

I did this on my grandmas car a few months ago and was astounted by the amount of gunk that came out. She hardly puts any miles on the car (like all old people), only to and from the grocery store or whatever, so the car had never been run hard or for long periods of time. After a good 10 cups of water (total) there was a soot mark on my driveway w/ about a 4 foot diameter, and layered pretty thick.

Just go easy with it (meaning don't pour a whole cup down the TB in an instant) and make sure to keep your RPMs up so it doesn't bog and you'll be fine.

 

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it really doesnt matter the size of the cup just as long as you do a steady but slow rate. I have TPI on my firebird now, but had TBI on my camaro. Just start out slow and make sure you keep the RPMs up.

 

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I have a messed up ring on my number one piston and it destroys a plug every two to three weeks. I have checked the plug, done the water thing and rechecked again. You would not believe the difference it can make. After you run the motor and mist the water in, pull all your plugs, lay paper towel next to the motor and spin the motor over for a minute. You end up with some pretty nasty splotches on the towels.

If you really want to do some cleaning, look for a can of stuff from Amzoil. Its called Power Foam. It worked really, really well. I even soaked my bad plug in a little bit of it and it cleaned it right up.

Mark