Gumout Gas Mileage Improver

[glennc]

I picked up a bottle on sale at Wal-Mart and haven't been able to find much info here or elsewhere on it. I found the MSDS that said something like "Additive Package" 20-45%, a little Naphtha, tiny bit of Naphthalene, the balance "Hydrocarbon Solvents." No mention of amines or other compounds.

Anybody have any knowledge of it? The bottle claims an average gas mileage improvement of 2.3%, for whatever that's worth, and it is said to clean valves and combustion chambers as well as, of course, the injectors.

I'm curious how this product would compare to other products such as BG44k, Techron and the rest.

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

I doubt you'll see much MPG improvement. Driving habits tend to have more of an effect on MPG than additives.

As far as cleaning goes, Techron has always been one of my favorites but I use FP now.

 

[John_K]

Local AAP had marked down to 75 cents recently so I tried it...didn't see any improvement.

John

 

[Hermann]

Probably why it was 75 cents.

 

[Big O Dave]

No mileage improvement in my tests on our vehicles... wallet was lighter, though.

 

[CharBaby]

Gas Mileage Improvers only improve MPG(if at all), if MPG was first lost due to dirty injectors or valves etc. Any product that claims to increase something such as MPG, compression or HP, that something has to have been deminished in order to bring it back to normal or even a slight increase. Usually there has to be noticably something wrong with a vehicle/engine for a product to work noticably. There's usually nothing wrong with our vehicles when we add chemicals to them and that's why most of us never notice any difference after we've dosed our engines with some addative either in the oil or the fuel tank. Maybe our engines don't seem to run as sweet as they were when they were new and, there not! So, we want to add something to try to change that. Others of us use chemicals as a preventative maintenance so that issues don't arrise.

 

[Gary Allan]

I haven't seen any mileage improvements with fuel system cleaners. I did see drivability improvements and lower fuel numbers in UOA. I've got engines that don't fuel squeeze well in the jeeps.

 

[glennc]

For what it's worth I didn't notice a difference after using it. I have never noticed a difference after running any injector/cc cleaning product though. Hard to quantify their relative benefits, if any at all.

 

[CharBaby]

The only time that I have ever noticed that fuel system cleaners actually worked was when I noticed a probled with the engine. For example: When my daughters Honda Accord wouldn't say idling, I tweeked the idle so that it would and then I poured in some TECHRON FSC and within a couple of days every thing was fine(maybe some water in the tank?). I then had to go back and lower the idle back to normal. The Honda started and ran fine but just wouldn't idle proberly without quiting until I added the TECHRON. So, while the engine wouldn't idle, it didn't run poorly and I didn't notice any difference after all was well again with the idle.

Earlier this winter I noticed an injector ticking in my wifes Lexus only below 40 deg. One tankful I tried MMO and that didn't work. The next two tankfuls I used Lucas UCL and that didn't work either. This ticking was really noticable when the outside temp dropped below 20 deg. The next(4th) tankful of fuel I added a bottle of REGANE and within a couple of days the injector ticking was completly gone and there is no ticking to this day. I could be the combo of all of the stuff that I added but, it was the tankful of REGANE(coinsidently) that made the ticking stop. During the time that the injector was ticking the engine ran fine and the MPG was normal. After all of the addative were added, I still didn't notice any improvement in MPG, idle or exceleration. Just no more ticking!

I really beleive that in order to notice that a FSC actually works, your engine has to have lost something such as MPG, poor idle quality or exceleration etc. Otherwise there is no noticable difference or gains because there was nothing wrong to begin with.

 

[CharBaby]

Gary,
Have you lost MPG? Are you getting at or close to the EPA mileage rating?

Glen,
What differences are you looking for?

 

[glennc]

Very interesting observations. I'm sure you're right about something having to be wrong in order to notice a difference. If you don't want that to happen then using something occasionally is probably a good idea, but then the possibility of actually evaluating the performance of whatever you use on the basis of any actual improvement is about zero.

Your experience with the Regane is very useful, though. I have a bottle and I think I will try it with my next fill-up, perhaps.

One thing on my car that is useful is that I can track the difference between the mileage readouts on the trip computer and the actual mileage calculated at fill-ups. The computer is based on how the injectors should be firing, so if they are not firing perfectly it will read a little low (it thinks more fuel is being delivered than actually is). I noticed a while back after having my injectors professionally cleaned and balanced that the difference went to extremely close to zero - basically to zero within the limits of measurement. Recently the difference has gone up to about 2-3% or so, despite using injector/cc cleaners.

I wonder if Regane will make a difference with that.

 

[M1Accord]

Originally Posted By: Char Baby
The only time that I have ever noticed that fuel system cleaners actually worked was when I noticed a probled with the engine. For example: When my daughters Honda Accord wouldn't say idling, I tweeked the idle so that it would and then I poured in some TECHRON FSC and within a couple of days every thing was fine(maybe some water in the tank?). I then had to go back and lower the idle back to normal. The Honda started and ran fine but just wouldn't idle proberly without quiting until I added the TECHRON. So, while the engine wouldn't idle, it didn't run poorly and I didn't notice any difference after all was well again with the idle.

Earlier this winter I noticed an injector ticking in my wifes Lexus only below 40 deg. One tankful I tried MMO and that didn't work. The next two tankfuls I used Lucas UCL and that didn't work either. This ticking was really noticable when the outside temp dropped below 20 deg. The next(4th) tankful of fuel I added a bottle of REGANE and within a couple of days the injector ticking was completly gone and there is no ticking to this day. I could be the combo of all of the stuff that I added but, it was the tankful of REGANE(coinsidently) that made the ticking stop. During the time that the injector was ticking the engine ran fine and the MPG was normal. After all of the addative were added, I still didn't notice any improvement in MPG, idle or exceleration. Just no more ticking!

I really beleive that in order to notice that a FSC actually works, your engine has to have lost something such as MPG, poor idle quality or exceleration etc. Otherwise there is no noticable difference or gains because there was nothing wrong to begin with.


well said