Engine carbon Clean - snake oil?

Engine carbon Clean - snake oil?

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Original Poster:

39,974 posts

197 months

Saturday 27th August 2016
quotequote all
My Cynicism meter was spinning like a spinny thing when i saw the advert below on facebook.

https://www.facebook.com/enginecarbonclean

Am I wrong to be cynical? Apparently they clean the engine using hydrogen gas...... how the merry heck would Hydrogen gas dissolve carbon deposits? confused

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Original Poster:

39,974 posts

197 months

Sunday 28th August 2016
quotequote all
I understand the basic principles behind de-coking although,in my limited experience, engines seem a helluva lot cleaner these days than 20+ years ago. For example engine oil seems to stay clean/amber for weeks after a change (rather than minutes). It was some of the odder claims that ECC are making that made me think it was a scam.

One was the use of hydrogen gas. If somebody could explain how this gets rid of carbon deposits I'd love to know. Another of their claims is that it gets rid of the carbon from inside fuel injectors - how on earth is there a build up of carbon inside those? confused

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Original Poster:

39,974 posts

197 months

Saturday 16th June 2018
quotequote all
There was an episode of wheeler dealers on earlier today (on Discovery Turbo I think, or maybe Quest) where Edd China was working on an XK8.

I'm not sure if it was the same thing as advertised in my original link but it DID supposedly remove carbon deposits from the engine. I was only half paying attention but it went something along the following lines.

Edd hooked up the XK8 to an emissions testing machine similar to what they use for MOTs. It passed on CO emissions but failed on the particulates. So he hooked it up to this machine which put a special kind of fuel into the engine which burned a lot hotter than normal fuel and burned off a lot of the carbon deposits. There were two different liquids that were used, a "pre combustion cleaner" and another one (which I assume was the bit that cleaned inside the combustion chamber itself).

Anyway, apologies for the somewhat basic explanation but Edd certainly seemed convincing that these things work/are beneficial.

ETA : Linky below seems to relate to the episode I watched.

https://www.jaguarforum.com/showthread.php?t=46057

Edited by Countdown on Saturday 16th June 12:51