TerraClean: Anyone Know Anything About This?

[XB70]

I was watching Dream Car Garage on SPEED Channel, and they had a segment about this stuff at around the mid-point of the show.

This particular episode will re-air again four times over the next few days.

TerraClean doesn't show up in a search of BITOG.

 

[Pontius Pilate]

quote:

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It works by first processing the fuel through a special unit that negatively charges the molecules before entering your engine.

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that killed it for me...

maybe someone in the know can chime in, i was excited for a second... so what did the show say about it?

 

[Vilan]

quote:

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When an engine is running on TERRACLEAN™ fuel, the gas molecules are significantly smaller than regular gasoline to begin with; also they are negatively charged and are therefore much smaller when being injected into the combustion chamber.

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They owe me a new **-meter!

Negatively charged gasoline molecules are smaller? A negative charge just means you added an electron. It wouldn't make the molecule smaller. Even if it actually did negatively ionize the gasoline like it says, which I have trouble believing... all that negative charge is going to want to ground itself somewhere.

 

[kc8adu]

more elongated legless reptile petroleum.

 

[XB70]

As for what they said, last week they introduced it by basically repeating the highlights of what's on the website.

This week they took a V-6 Mustang (previous generation) to represent a "normal" car and a Mercury Marauder as an example of a "performance" car.

Both were run on a chassis dyno to get some baseline horsepower and torque figures.

Next, both were given the TerraClean treatment then run again on the dyno again.

A supposedly independent outfit (First Look?) did the measurements. One shot showed a piece of equipment labeled "PXA-1100 Gas Analyzer". After all was said and done, this is what they said the results were:


Mustang

Before HP 140
After HP 148

Before TQ 192
After TQ 199


Marauder

Before HP 260
After HP 269

Before TQ 274
After TQ 282


1)After the treatment the engines showed "better injector flow patterns".

2) Both the decel and snap-throttle tests showed "dramatic improvements".

3) The combustion balance of both engines before the tests showed "slight variations" and after the tests were "more uniform".

4) During the above claims the camera would pan various printouts, but nothing long enough to be meaningful.

5) Claims of better emissions and gas mileage were made, but no figures given.

6) They said they were going to do mileage testing, and the results would be on the website by now (air date), but I couldn't find anything.

So, if you have SPEED Channel and you'd like to see for yourself, click on the first link above for the program schedule and watch one of the re-airs.

 

[peterr]

Hey us Canadians now have our own home grown snake oil! Not sure if i should cheer or cry.

The terraclean site is some pretty interesting reading. A lot of nonsense about negatively charging fuel molecules seems to put it in the "magnets on your fuel line" territory.

But then i was thinking, this is described as a two component process:
1. The tesseract hyperspace discombobulator that changes the fuel into gold.
2. Special terraclean fuel.

What if it is a veneer of nonsense pasted on top of conventional but not proprietary technology. eg what if the machine is a rube goldberg contraprion but the "special terraclean fuel" is Regane or Techron or something like that?

I mean if you wanted to create a business selling a snake oil machine to garage owners (that seems to be the business model) you could do worse than selling an overpriced fake machine and a heavily marked up special fuel. If anyone figured out the effect was really from the "special fuel" and tried to second source it, you could always claim the machine is the proprietary technology and you need it to work.

Given the company that apparently makes this is in the petrochemical business is it that crazy to think that they may have cooked up some polyetheramine compund? Maybe it infringes on a Chevron patent in this application or something like that, so they have to figure out a way to sell it?

After all the site says it is made by:

"a privately owned Canadian corporation that is known for producing award-winning tools for the automotive industry and a leader in UV leak detection technology. As an international leader in UV systems, UView's tools and dyes are sold globally."

Doesn't that sound like exactly the type of mechanical and chemical background that could create the snake oil delivery system for the real if not exactly earth shattering PEA type cleaner?