Fuel Injector Cleaner Recommendation

[Kestas]

It may make more sense to save the money you spend on injector cleaners and spend it on professional injector cleaning and flow balancing. Check out our sponsor, InjectorRX. Injector cleaners will never do a job as good a professional cleaning.

I don't use injector cleaners.

 

[Jim 5]

BMW's fuel injector cleaner appears to be in a black techron bottle. I think it is just re-badged techron.

That's a pretty strong endorsement if it is true.

 

[matt922]

Originally Posted By: Kestas
It may make more sense to save the money you spend on injector cleaners and spend it on professional injector cleaning and flow balancing. Check out our sponsor, InjectorRX. Injector cleaners will never do a job as good a professional cleaning.

I don't use injector cleaners.


if you have an extra car, and can afford the down time. I'm with this guy. For the price of about 5-6 bottles of potential snake oil, you can get a quantified flow test/cleaning with proof.

 

[severach]

Originally Posted By: fsskier
I have no idea why anybody would think any of these injector cleaners would help if they were not having any problems!!

Everyone has a different opinion on what counts as problems. For some there's no problem until “my Audi is only running on 3 cylinders.” For me a problem is that my engine isn't exceeding the quality of service of a new engine. Before BITOG raised my standards I was happy with “hittin' on all 4's” because I didn't know that could be beat so easlily.
Originally Posted By: fsskier
Before about 1988 the detergents in gasoline were more likely solvents for varnish and gum
...
Then the refiners - under enormous pressure from auto manufacturers began adding appropriate detergents, hopefully making additives unnecessary.

Every one of my post 1993 engines have benefited from gas additives, including those that most anyone would claim were already running perfectly. I'd say that the fuel suppliers added just enough detergent to permit an engine to progress from “new” to “old” at the same rate carburetor engines did. Just a bit more and “new” can be maintained forever. Just a bit more and “old” can progress back to “new.” Premium fuel might be enough but DIY gas additives is a sure bet.
Originally Posted By: Kestas
It may make more sense to save the money you spend on injector cleaners and spend it on professional injector cleaning and flow balancing. Check out our sponsor, InjectorRX. Injector cleaners will never do a job as good a professional cleaning.

An injector cleaning service gets the job done immediately, can open plugged injectors, and identify damaged or under performing injectors. Injector defects are not common so with some patience, the same money spent on additives will be enough for several engines or the same engine many times over. Either way the money is well spent but neither does the job of the other. The injector cleaning service only cleans the injectors. Good additives clean everything that gets in the way...
Originally Posted By: matt922
if you have an extra car, and can afford the down time. I'm with this guy. For the price of about 5-6 bottles of potential snake oil, you can get a quantified flow test/cleaning with proof.

… all without any downtime which is more expensive than either the additives or the service. BITOG makes it easy to pick snake free oil every time. Regular use of additives keeps the injectors from getting dirty.

 

[barlowc]

Originally Posted By: severach

Regular use of additives keeps the injectors from getting dirty.


+1 and why I started this thread. The feedback/input has been great and it sounds like the list of "preferred" fuel additives includes:

Amsoil PI
Redline SI-1
Chevron Techron Concentrate
Gumout Regane

The AAP page for Gumout Regane shows it being 2 for $7.00. If I buy 8 bottles, I can use my coupon for $10 off purchases of $25 or more which brings my cost per bottle (with tax) down to $2.39. That's a little less than what I was buying Chevron Pro-Gard for and folks seem to think Gumout Regane is a better product.

 

[Jim 5]

I had an '88 BMW 635csi a bunch of years ago, and it suffered from what felt like a miss, but only when you were within about 1500 RPM from redline and under full load. You'd notice it when you were pulling out to pass someone.

A few bottles of generic gas station fuel injector cleaner got rid of it forever.

While I've used Techron a number of times as preventative maintenance, I've never actually noticed a difference from using it. However, I've only used it on vehicles that have had less than 50k miles at the time, and none of them had any symptoms I was trying to correct.

 

[Vizzy]

Unfortunately it seems that the critical ingredient used in bottle injector cleaners gets overlooked in favor of naming brands...the only real issue is that whatever brand you use the only proven effective detergent on carbon deposits is "PEA" and it should be at least a concentration of 30% or more per bottle.

PEA not only is the most effective carbon deposit cleaner it also does NOT LEAVE ITS OWN RESIDUE BEHIND, very important fact!

 

[CourierDriver]

Originally Posted By: barlowc
Anyone with thoughts on the Lucas Fuel Treatment?
yep works 4 me and mmo and stabil

 

[kr_bitog]

Originally Posted By: barlowc
As I've poked through the threads in this forum, I've seen numerous discussions on fuel additives, but they seem to mix topics a bit and talk about different kinds of fuel additives in the same thread. I'm wondering what folks think about Fuel Injector Cleaners specifically.

For years now, I've added a 16 oz. bottle of Chevron Pro-Gard with Techron every time I do an oil change. I've been buying 4-6 bottle boxes at Costco where my cost per bottle usually ends up being around $2.50 - $2.75. What do you guys think of that particular product?

These days I'm not as cost-conscious, and given that we purchased our current vehicles new, I'm willing to spend a little bit more if it's justified. Would the "regular" Chevron Techron (I think they're now calling it Techron Concentrate Plus) be a better choice and worth the extra money?

What about BG 44K? My Nissan dealer really pushes that, but I imagine it's primarily a way for them to increase their profit margin when customers do their oil changes at the dealer and pay extra for it. The downside to the BG product is that it looks harder to find since parts stores (at least the ones in my area) don't carry it.

Also, I've always put the fuel injector cleaner in at the start of an OCI, at the same time I'm changing the oil/filter. Is it better to put it in at the end of an OCI, or doesn't it really matter?


Currently I only recommend Regane and Redline SI-1, but not sure about the new Regane, because some say they change ingredient as well. The only issue is Redline on maintenance dose give poor mpg on my car.

 

[Patman]

Originally Posted By: Vizzy
Unfortunately it seems that the critical ingredient used in bottle injector cleaners gets overlooked in favor of naming brands...the only real issue is that whatever brand you use the only proven effective detergent on carbon deposits is "PEA" and it should be at least a concentration of 30% or more per bottle.

PEA not only is the most effective carbon deposit cleaner it also does NOT LEAVE ITS OWN RESIDUE BEHIND, very important fact!



Does anyone know the PEA concentration of Redline si-1? I'm about to throw a bottle of it in the tank of my Corvette to clear out any carbon that may have accumulated in the combustion chamber (some say the LS1 is very prone to carbon buildup, especially in the winter months when you don't get the chance to go full throttle very much at all)

 

[CourierDriver]

Prone or not, carbon or not, dont care , can I have ur car,lol, nice ride, nice daily driver ride..............

 

[barlowc]

I picked up 6 bottles of Gumout Regane for about $2.25/each at Advance Auto Parts last week. Normal price was $7/bottle and they were running a 2-for-1. I added in a couple bottles of house brand FI cleaner (for my mother-in-law's car) to make it a $25 order and then used my $10 off coupon. So I got 6 bottles of Gumout Regane and 2 bottle of house FI cleaner (for my mother-in-law's car) for $16.

 

[CourierDriver]

sounds good, i made a mmo lucas cocktail, mixed the two bottles and now my van smells like a dryer sheet thing, lol, really, well im going for my meds now.ps, the engine never ran so smooth.

 

[Art_Vandelay]

Originally Posted By: barlowc
I picked up 6 bottles of Gumout Regane for about $2.25/each at Advance Auto Parts last week. Normal price was $7/bottle and they were running a 2-for-1. I added in a couple bottles of house brand FI cleaner (for my mother-in-law's car) to make it a $25 order and then used my $10 off coupon. So I got 6 bottles of Gumout Regane and 2 bottle of house FI cleaner (for my mother-in-law's car) for $16.


There is a $10 off $25 coupon floating around again for AAP?

 

[ahoier]

Originally Posted By: Vizzy
For cleaning ability and value for the dollar (highest PEA concentrations) Gumout Regane Complete Fuel System Cleaner really can't be beat.

I'm always amazed that Gumout doesn't emphasize the PEA aspect of their Regane product since it is the critical cleaning component in a bottle injector cleaner.
Likely due to the fact that the general public wouldn't know what "PEA" means, or does. So it's not a big "seller" or reason to spend money on changing the product label