Fuel additives and MSDS sheets and marketing

[Mr. Demeanor]

I wanted to start this thread as its own discussion. The question of fuel additives often comes up and opinions vary greatly. Many people will swear by an additive claiming they have "never had any problems". I am of the belief that a lack of problems is meaningless as so many of us (myself included) use nothing and have had zero issues.

I always like to mention that there have never been any valid, independent, verifiable tests that show any of these products work as advertised. I recently listened to part of a radio discussion that mentioned a class action lawsuit against these companies (Techron was specifically mentioned) charing that the claims made by the producers are false.

I have been a gear-head of sorts all my life. A little more than a shade-tree mechanic as I do all my own rebuilding except for machine work. I spent a long time racing motorcycles at the sportsman level and 100's of hours dyno testing combination of fuels, oils, and yes...additives in search of a few extra HP.

I owned one street bike that had particularly bad carbon deposits on the intake valves. This was an engine that was built to make a lot of HP at very high RPM. The problem was that in order to achieve the desired top end performance, the low end drivability suffered. This is a picture of the intake valves and a result of fuel pooling on the intake runner surfaces then running down and burning on the hot valve. This is not blow-by on the valve seat. This engine had a very low leakdown number and this was a common problem with particular engine set up like this (Suzuki Hayabusa). I tried EVERY additive known to man and not only did these deposits remain, they became worse and worse over time. The head was eventually removed, valve pulled, and carbon mechanically removed. It came of very easy. These valves are not nearly as bad as the before and after pics Techron puts on their bottles!

In the other thread I mentioned the use of straight water lightly misted into the intake of a hot running engine. I also did this to the same engine and the results were dramatic. Almost all of the carbon was removed but I went ahead and pulled the head off to do some other work anyway There was very little carbon, only coloring on the piston tops. Before you knock it, do a little Google research. If I can find some more pics I will get them hosted and posted.

If anyone is interested in the ingredients in these additives or any other chemical products, just do a search for the MSDS for the product. You will see that most of the additives contain the same basic ingredients which are solvents and light oils.

Any solvents added to your fuel are so diluted that the possibility of having an adverse reaction (washing the oil from the cylinder walls and bearings) is negligible but then so is their effectiveness at cleaning. This is something else I have tested by taking some fuel that had been treated and soaking a dirty fuel bowl for a few days. The result was absolutely no cleaning of the bowl....nothing. Even used straight/full strength, the cleaning was marginal at best and the same bowl was easily cleaned with a quick squirt of carb cleaner. Like I said above, in order to make these solvents work, they would also wash down cylinder walls and bearings. We have seen this very problem in engines designed to run on flex fuels which have a very high ethanol (ethanol is strong solvent) content.

So...in my humble opinion, save your money, put it in a jar, and use it when you need a repair. There is no such thing as a mechanic in a bottle.

What ever happened to Slick50

[-Joe-]

I don't know about removing the stuff from the backs of valves, but I know it works on pistons and combustion chambers. I've seen it.

Years ago I had a Scout 185 with a premix 2 stroke Yamaha C115. I ran it for a about a year before I ever even thought of needing to use a product like ring free. By the advice of a friend I tried it, but (accidentally) added it in the "shock" treatment concentrate and not the "constant" treatment mixture.

After going out in the boat, I remember when returning I flushed it on the earmuffs as usual, all of these little black "rocks" were in my driveway in the water wash behind the prop. I had never seen these before and had flushed that motor in the exact same spot every time I returned. I picked one of these "rocks" up and it crushed in my hand--it was all oily and smelled like gasoline and oil. At that point, it kind of all came together and made sense.

I kept using ringfree (after figuring out I only needed to do a "constant" treatment) and noticed that the next 2-3 times of flushing, the oily black rocks got smaller and less, and by about the fourth time flushing it only looked like pepper in my driveway.

When I sold that boat the motor had about 5-600 hours on it. Three of the four cylinders compression were exactly 140 psi, and the fourth was 141 psi. After seeing that on a carbureted premix two stroke, I just can't see it as a concidence.

[Mr. Demeanor]

I should add that I have seen good results from using a direct application of seafoam in the same manner I described above as used with water. I have also sprayed it directly into the cylinders, let it soak overnight, and then sprayed it into the engine intake once warmed up. Of course that is a much higher concentration and I have been told that the carbon removal is likely a mechanical cleaning, just like the water, rather than an action of the solvent. A spark plug soaked in straight Seafoam does nothing...Ive tried.

The diluted mixtures added to fuel just dont cut it IMO. Truth be told, with ethanol in our fuel we should be seeing much less carbon issues.

Not rying to change anyones mind...just stating my observations.

[welder]

Yes Ethanol is a cleaner but it also attracts water and when mixed with other fuel turns to snot .

Maybe these motors are burning up due to running to lean due to the filters slowly clogging up ?

[Beaubeau]

I'm glad that we all agree that carbon is an issue and will have to be delt with at some point.

Carbon itself cannot be broken down anymore than it already is. All that can be done is to break its bond that holds it together.

Two types of carbon exsist in an engine, hard and soft. Their are several ways and techniuqes to remove it. But before I get intuit, I would like to point out a few variables. Like who you are you getting the fuel from(are you buying the cheapest fuel you can find?), what are the conditions and how do you drive the vehicle.

Yes, water will remove carbon with almost instant results. Thats fine if you have enough tolerance for huge chunks of carbon to pass through and out of the engine. But if their are tighter tolerances like any new or failry new engine, esp with emission devices. You are looking for trouble.

When you are in a situation where large chunks are too risky, its better to remove it slowly. Meaning if it takes 60k miles to get evil gunk in your engine, it will take more than one tank full of fuel to clean it out.

You can either not allow carbon to build up in the first place, or let it build up and then knock it down.

[Flot]

As far as adding more cost to an already exspensive activity. Its like anything else, pay now or pay later. Like, do you use a stabilizer? Contemporary fuel goes bad in 60 days. Unless you use your boat alot, you risk having endless problems. Like a severe drop in octane and tarnish.

Beau, I copied this snippet from the other thread.

I occasionally use a stabilizer. When I do, I use it because I feel like "maybe I should have" like in my generator, lawnmower, etc. Then I feel bad and throw some in the boat just because it makes me feel better. I boat almost year round so that's not such a big deal.

I have a used truck that I bought around Nov 2006. I have put around 250-350 miles on it since I bought it. I remember I filled it up on the drive home. Then I filled it up one more time around late 2007, both times non-ethanol. Then, summer 08 I filled it up with $4.25 ethanol-improved fuel. I start it up once a month or so when I can and drive it around the block for 10-15 mins. I do perform other maintenance on it, but there's not much I can do with the fuel in between uses.

Despite the fact that the truck is hardly used, and the fact that I mixed half a tank of ethanol fuel with non-ethanol fuel, it continues to start and run just fine, or at least I should say just as well as it did the day I bought it.

I may have put some techron or something like that in the very first tank (during my "fix it up" phase) but after that, nothing that I recall.

[-Joe-]

Yesteday, I cut my grass for the first time this year. Surpisingly, I didn't have to buy any gas for my lawnmower, edger and weedeater as I had almost 3 gallons left over from last September or so. I'm certain I didn't put anything in that gas at all, and everything cranked right up and ran fine. This was absolutely the 10% ethanol gas.

[Beaubeau]

Flot,

It is a good idea to run a stabilezer for any vehicle that sits for long periods of time.

Even with stabilizer, over time it will turn to varnish.

Lets say you stabilized a boat or car's fuel and let it sit for 2 years. Then decide to wake it up. Even drain as much nasty fuel out as you can. Add fuel that has 10% ethanol in it and starts up like a champ. But not long after you run it a bit, Major fuel contaminants start showing itself. Eventually after a number of filters and flushes you'll get all out. Major pain.

What happens is that when fuel breaks down and dries to the side of a fuel tank, then add new fuel with eth. The ethanol will clean the inside of fuel systems and eliminates any use of fuel line antifreeze for us northaners. When we went from MTBE to eth, any crude in your tank,(car/boat)it got loosened up and caused running problems until you ran enough fuel to get all the contaminants out.

In retrospect, Its best to run as much fuel out as possible when putting an engine to rest for long peroids of time(1+years).

Joe's boat,

You can get away with it over the winter. Its been about 4months since people around here started their mowers up. Thats around twice as long as what is recomended. The first thing that happens is that fuel loses octane. A small engine isn't going to be affected as much.

Its just that their isn't an exact science to when it will cause havac. But eventually it will.

[-Joe-]

Flot,

It is a good idea to run a stabilezer for any vehicle that sits for long periods of time.

Even with stabilizer, over time it will turn to varnish.

Lets say you stabilized a boat or car's fuel and let it sit for 2 years. Then decide to wake it up. Even drain as much nasty fuel out as you can. Add fuel that has 10% ethanol in it and starts up like a champ. But not long after you run it a bit, Major fuel contaminants start showing itself. Eventually after a number of filters and flushes you'll get all out. Major pain.

What happens is that when fuel breaks down and dries to the side of a fuel tank, then add new fuel with eth. The ethanol will clean the inside of fuel systems and eliminates any use of fuel line antifreeze for us northaners. When we went from MTBE to eth, any crude in your tank,(car/boat)it got loosened up and caused running problems until you ran enough fuel to get all the contaminants out.

In retrospect, Its best to run as much fuel out as possible when putting an engine to rest for long peroids of time(1+years).

Joe's boat,

You can get away with it over the winter. Its been about 4months since people around here started their mowers up. Thats around twice as long as what is recomended. The first thing that happens is that fuel loses octane. A small engine isn't going to be affected as much.

Its just that their isn't an exact science to when it will cause havac. But eventually it will.

I guess my point with my lawnmower story was that gas takes a little longer than 60 days to breakdown. It's been what...120 days or so since I last used my mower?

Anyway, being the paranoid sort with stuff I can;t take apart and fix (like my boat engine), last fall I did stabil-ize the gas in my boat. I disconnected the fuel line and let it run on muffs as long as I could stand it..but couldn't run it out of gas. We'll see in a few weeks if the stabil worked.

[Flot]

Lets say you stabilized a boat or car's fuel and let it sit for 2 years. Then decide to wake it up. Even drain as much nasty fuel out as you can. Add fuel that has 10% ethanol in it and starts up like a champ. But not long after you run it a bit, Major fuel contaminants start showing itself. Eventually after a number of filters and flushes you'll get all out. Major pain.

Beau, that was my point. The truck has gone 300 miles in 3 years with no fuel treatement that I recall. If that doesn't dispute the "gas going bad" theory I don't know what does, not to mention the fact that I did a 50/50 non-eth/ethanol mix in the middle there. Still running fine.