Fact or Fiction - The Italian Tune-Up

[Hoofy]

DickyC said:

Mrs C's elderly SLK; shops and back, shops and back, for a month or six weeks. Then an Italian Tune Up by me. She always says it feels better and asks what did I do to it.

"Oh, just a leisurely drive."

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/SpectacularSmugBrahmanco...

[InitialDave]

If you have a TDI with a variable vane turbo, filling the turbo hotside with Mr Muscle foaming overn cleaner (really!) prior to giving the car a good blat around can be very beneficial too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUAfzi5BdM

[donkmeister]

InitialDave said:

If you have a TDI with a variable vane turbo, filling the turbo hotside with Mr Muscle foaming overn cleaner (really!) prior to giving the car a good blat around can be very beneficial too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUAfzi5BdM

Just in case anyone misreads your post (which specifies the hot side only!)...

The acive ingredient in oven cleaner (including Mr Muscle, I checked the datasheet!) is sodium hydroxide. Most modern engines are made of aluminium. Sodium hydroxide is very reactive with aluminium. If you put oven cleaner into the air side of a turbocharger (not the hot side!) you may create sludge with the oil (sapification), as well as pitting aluminium parts such as intake manifold, cylinder walls.

As it is epic for dissolving oil, grease and carbon, I bet it does wonders for cleaning the exhaust side of a turbo though!

[InitialDave]

Yep! That's exactly why it works, and why, as you say, putting it into the cold side would be a very bad idea!

You specifically want the foaming kind so it'll fill up the housing a bit more and cling in there to get its teeth into the crud, rather than just dribbling out.

I've seen my mate do it on a couple of his cars (I don't have diesels), and the cloud of soot that gets chucked out on startup is hilarious.

[DickyC]

Hoofy said:

DickyC said:

Mrs C's elderly SLK; shops and back, shops and back, for a month or six weeks. Then an Italian Tune Up by me. She always says it feels better and asks what did I do to it.

"Oh, just a leisurely drive."

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/SpectacularSmugBrahmanco...

Correct in principle, but I wear a baseball cap back to front for my ITUs.

[DanT86]

Rich Boy Spanner said:

A spirited run definitely works on cars usually stuck in the city. I take a 12 year old turbo-diesel on a monthly 65 mile round hilly pennine trip along the M66/65/61 to give it a clear out. Once warmed up the first serious acceleration leaves some kind of James Bond smoke screen, but after the drive it runs smooth and cleanly. Saves me having to remove and clear out the EGR valve too. A brief note to the self-appointed diesel police before they arrive, no it wasn't bought as a town car but circumstances changed, and no, it would not have been cheaper over the life of the vehicle to have bought the petrol.

One of our previous family busses was a 2.8 turbo diesel Chrysler grand voyger. When that got taken out on longer journeys the first few full blast accelerations would produce so much black smoke it was like it was running on cole. After that the smoke would no longer appear.

[Glosphil]

In the mid 1970s I bought a Avenger 1500 that had been used for 2 years as a runabout in Bristol by a firm of solicitors. The first time I used revs to overtake there was a black cloud out the back. This continued to happen for a few minutes after which the car definitely felt faster & smoother.

[B'stard Child]

InitialDave said:

Yep! That's exactly why it works, and why, as you say, putting it into the cold side would be a very bad idea!

You specifically want the foaming kind so it'll fill up the housing a bit more and cling in there to get its teeth into the crud, rather than just dribbling out.

I've seen my mate do it on a couple of his cars (I don't have diesels), and the cloud of soot that gets chucked out on startup is hilarious.

Along the same lines and before redex became a poor shadow of it’s former self (see note) any new to me car got 50mls of redex down every bore and an overnight soak to clear out the backs of the rings and the combustion chambers as well as the tops of the pistons

Followed the next day by cloths down the plug welks and a 2min spin over to clear the excess

You could look down the plug holes and see shiney aluminium on the tops of the pistons

The fog bank it produced on start up plus a quick run up the bypass was epic but they ran so much better

Note - I stripped a head of an engine I was rebuilding and used the “new improved redex” to clean the tops of the pistons - three soaks later and it didn’t make an impression on the carbon coated pistons - used mr Muscle in the end Redex is utter garbage now

[anonymous-user]

InitialDave said:

If you have a TDI with a variable vane turbo, filling the turbo hotside with Mr Muscle foaming overn cleaner (really!) prior to giving the car a good blat around can be very beneficial too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUAfzi5BdM

This modern trend for "cleaning" the inside of your engine is frankly ridiculous. Just drive the car properly and it'll be fine. There is no need to have the inside of your engine "clean" it gets covered in a layer of carbon, which actually helps increase the thermal gradient and protects the parts themselves.

The only time i'd recommend cleaning is when an engine is truely gummed up, ie has never been warmed up, or has had an EGR fault etc. But then, i'd recommend the physical removal of those parts (throttle body, EGR valve and housing, inlet manifold etc) and cleaning them off the engine to avoid sending god knows what through your engine and aftertreament.......

[InitialDave]

Do you know how variable vane turbos work, or why they commonly cease to adjust properly?

[ToothbrushMan]

InitialDave said:

If you have a TDI with a variable vane turbo, filling the turbo hotside with Mr Muscle foaming overn cleaner (really!) prior to giving the car a good blat around can be very beneficial too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUAfzi5BdM

would spraying that stuff inside the turbo damage the oil seals or anythng else further down the chain? i guess not if it still survives?

[StescoG66]

I genuinely think a good run does the car the world of good.

My 159 1.9JTDm does a 13 mile each way commute half urban half motorway/fast A road. I do stretch it’s legs at least once on the journey each way.

However when it gets the 80 mile each way to Crail and back (not every week but at least once a month) which starts as Motorway all the way to Kirkcaldy then fast B road after, it runs like a charm afterwards. In so far as that 1.9 can run like a charm as it is a bit agricultural.........

I believe in the Italian Tune Up even now. Plus I do think V Power helps enormously too

Edited by StescoG66 on Monday 26th August 13:31

[anonymous-user]

InitialDave said:

Do you know how variable vane turbos work, or why they commonly cease to adjust properly?

If that's aimed at me, you might want to check my credentials before digging any further...... ;-)

[anonymous-user]

ToothbrushMan said:

InitialDave said:

If you have a TDI with a variable vane turbo, filling the turbo hotside with Mr Muscle foaming overn cleaner (really!) prior to giving the car a good blat around can be very beneficial too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUAfzi5BdM

would spraying that stuff inside the turbo damage the oil seals or anythng else further down the chain? i guess not if it still survives?

It's safe to say at the very least you stand a really good chance of killing your aftertreatment stone dead.......

[Toyoda]

Max_Torque said:

This modern trend for "cleaning" the inside of your engine is frankly ridiculous. Just drive the car properly and it'll be fine.

Don't have a diesel myself but always wondered if those Terraclean ads plastered over Facebook were a load of snake oil or not. I think your quote above says it all, cheers.

[InitialDave]

Max_Torque said:

If that's aimed at me, you might want to check my credentials before digging any further...... ;-)

Ok, I should have been less arsey, I wasn't in the best mood when I replied there. Your point about anything further down the chain not taking kindly to it is valid - but the moving vanes in variable turbos do fill up with this crap to the point of it affecting their function, and I've seen the oven cleaner approach work very well.

I don't disagree that stripping things down to get at them properly is often the better way to deal with it, but it's also pretty involved on a lot of cars - for example that video is an old A3 1.9tdi, and getting the exhaust manifold/turbo out of one is not a job I want to do again if I can avoid it. Quite seriously, having to replace a cat because it got killed in the process would be preferable!

If your credentials are that you design this stuff, then I'm going to blame you for these situations coming about!

[RumbleOfThunder]

Max_Torque said:

Please, please make sure you fully extend your engine often!

Modern engines are designed and tested to be used, they even do a test where the engine is started on a engine dyno, taken to peak power, and left there, for 180 hours straight !! (That's 7 and a half days continuous to save you working it out)

Running at high rpm and load beds rings, heats the oil (boils water / condensate out of the oil), burns off soot and carbon, brings the CAT and DPF to operating temperature, fully excercises things like fuel pumps and injectors, allows cams and valve control systems to switch / phase, helps clear EGR systems, allows turbos to shed soot and have their boost control system exercised (which can seize through non use) It even does things like cycle O ring seals so that they get lubricated dynamically (helps them stay flexible and hence seal.


So, warm up your car carefully, (at least 15min of gentle driving, using increasing revs and load) and then THRASH it!

This is great and vindicates what I'd already thought. I'm bouncing my i30 off its fking valves on the way home.

[rainmakerraw]

RumbleOfThunder said:

This is great and vindicates what I'd already thought. I'm bouncing my i30 off its fking valves on the way home.

Max_Torque, you mentioned high revs *and* high loads to bed in rings. I'm not disagreeing, but I do have a question. Most car manuals state to avoid full throttle, high load and/or high revs (including avoiding Sport mode on an auto/DSG/PDK/etc) for X number of miles for run-in - and to definitely avoid low revs with WoT due to the load it induces.

I've always run-in cars with an hour or so of town traffic driving away from the dealership, to vary loads/revs and warm them up, and then onward to a day of cross-country NSL B-road thrashing to progressively open it up (within reason) and get everything moving. Obviously this also then involves a return leg culminating with the same hour winding (and cooling) back down through the town/city on the way home. I consider that basically job done and just drive it normally after that. Who's right/wrong? Avoid high revs and loads or introduce them gradually(ish) on a properly warm engine? Does it even matter in a modern car?

[MC Bodge]

It seems funny that, even on here, there are people who feel a need to pencil into their calendar the use of high revs and the full travel of the accelerator in their cars

I generally drive fairly economically these days, and get fewer opportunities for spirited driving, but have always frequently exercised any engine I've had.

When I had diesels I never a DPF problem.

My old Mondeo TDCI never ran better or more efficiently than after a "full throttle wherever possible" trip to Austria across Germany and over the Alps and back.

Our old Fiesta 1.4 gets an Italian tune-up most of the times that I drive it.

It went particularly well after an unplanned long weekend of fully laden, family hauling, full throttle Lakeland and motorway driving .

Edited by MC Bodge on Tuesday 27th August 18:30

[Davie]

Absolutely...

Back in the day when Vauxhall ecotec engines had sticky valve issues, usually in 1.4 and 1.6's that had never seen 2000rpm at the hands of sedate drivers, a tin of Forte and a decent run revving them out dud improve matters.

Similarly, my late uncle had a Yaris, owned from new and probably never did more than 40mph so when he died and I took it to be MOT'd, it felt like it had 12bhp. A few days driving it with enthusiasm and it definitely pulled much better.

She also has a V50 diesel, does high miles but it too gets a bit lifeless after a few days of trundling around so a periodic good thrash and comedy black smokescreen and it's much better and she's now told to give it a boot every few days just to clear it's throat.

Oddly, I have an 850 T5 that I drive fairly assertively daily, 60 miles a day on mixed roads however it's just had 400 miles found the Highlands with some enthusiasm and it's noticeably more eager as it comes on boost now... bit smoother too.

So yes, I'm absolutely convinced it does work.