Restoring lost engine power

[ainarssems]

Stumbled upon this video on Youtube from Fifth Gear. If you use Shell VPower with cleaning additives already in fuel then I guess effect of Redex will be lesser if any but interesting video nonetheless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03nL8Z0dRkI

[Conquistador]

I would highly recommend Terraclean rather than these fuel additives every now and again, although high-RON petrol all the time is certainly beneficial. £100-£120 for a big engine but produces spectacular noticeable results including a boost of a couple of MPG, even more on smaller engines. Going to get it done in the next couple of weeks as well as new cats on my S8 so should be running beautifully after.

It cleans the injectors up and de-carbonises the engine and kicks 10 years of crap out through the exhaust too!

[kele]

Originally Posted by Conquistador

I would highly recommend Terraclean rather than these fuel additives every now and again, although high-RON petrol all the time is certainly beneficial. £100-£120 for a big engine but produces spectacular noticeable results including a boost of a couple of MPG, even more on smaller engines. Going to get it done in the next couple of weeks as well as new cats on my S8 so should be running beautifully after.

It cleans the injectors up and de-carbonises the engine and kicks 10 years of crap out through the exhaust too!

I was contemplating this on mine ( after two injectors failed on me last summer ). I have acted on your recommendation and booked it in for next week. £126 I was quoted but at least it is relatively close by....

[Phil303]

I was considering getting the injectors cleaned by hand, but this sounds promising. Even more so as a quick search shows there's a Terraclean agent quite literally 1 minute away from the office!

I'm going to investigate further...

[Goran]

Interesting result from that Redex stuff.
I hope I don't jinx myself, when I had my S8 dynoed at MRC last year with 4 year old plugs, old HT leads, and old fuel filter, it made 355hp, which is pretty much spot on the book value. I felt very happy with that result. Maybe it made even more when it was new, that's a nice thought

[Phil303]

I been scouring an interweb and it would appear that the opinions towards this type of engine cleaning range from 'fantastic - for a month' to utter contempt at selling snake oil to gullible motorists.

An Audi user on another forum had it done to his S4 and was impressed by the slight increase in efficiency and smoothness, but a month later he posted that the MPG figures were back to what they were before the clean.

Others have said that carbon is pretty hard to shift at the best of times and they can't quite understand how this fuel mixture manages to shift deposits where manual cleaning and chemicals fail. Another factor which I had thought of was that the engine is now used to running with tolerances that take into account any build-up. Clean that away and your exposing the engine to uncoated surfaces that just *may* have been protected by a slight build up of carbon.

A guy with a Jag had 2 injectors fail after the clean and surmised that it was the carbon build-up that was actually holding the things together and keeping them working.

Also someone questioned the point at which the mixture is added and how much of the engine it actually reaches before it's vaporised and burnt off; and also does the muck now flowing through the exhaust system do any damage?

A phrase which was came up time and again on numerous forums was the best clean out method would be to give your car an Italian tune-up. You can guess what that involves.

All things considered I think I'll save my money for something important like petrol.