seafoam, techron, airfilter arx

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bigjeffie

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so i did seafoam in my rav4 today.
helluva blue smoke cloud. burned away in about 5 miles.

i also ran a techron injector cleaner before that, with both applications falling on the tailend of and auto rx 1st stage run.

thing is, so far not much difference, tho not any worse either.
i also put a new air filter in.


next thing is plugs, but after that i am stumped.
 
Did it have any problems before you did all that?

EDIT: Beaten to the punch...
 
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Seafoam should be a white smoke cloud rather than blue. Were you having trouble with it pinging or throttle response before you did it?

You probably need new plugs from having done the Seagoam anyways, it's generally not done but if anything got in the electrodes they are done.
 
I don't think Seafoam will help performance unless you were having trouble to begin with. Cleaning carbon from piston tops and so on will reduce compression ratio, so if you didn't have a detonation problem before Seafoam then you will probably have minisculely less performance after.

If you have bad deposits around the valves that actually affected flow at normal flow rates that would be different too.
 
well the car has 110k. been run on 87 oct and generic dino w/ about 5k oci's.performance was ok, but seemed more deliberate than in its younger days.
some of it might be that i bought a passat v6, 5 spd.
the vw really scoots on the highway, like running 80 to 100 mph easy.

maybe its a perception, aggravated by 2 different motor personalities.

so the plugs are next.
car doesn't use any oil.

oh , and yes, the seafoam plume was more white than blue. left a real trail. kinda fun
 
When you do your plugs, do wires, and check your coil too. If you have a plug grounding or carboned up or something it could be causing some of your power loss. This is all tune-up type stuff which tends to be serviced between 80,000 and 100,000 miles now, and if you don't use oil, burned the carbon out, Auto-RX, check your ignition system.

As well, do your fuel filter and PCV valve if they have not been done before. The PCV valve is a $5 or less part that is a very very quick job to replace and can help as well.
 
Originally Posted By: MGregoir


As well, do your fuel filter and PCV valve if they have not been done before. The PCV valve is a $5 or less part that is a very very quick job to replace and can help as well.


not the OEM
shocked2.gif
20 bucks for honda!
 
Oh well, every vehicle I have had has given up the ghost before needing a PCV valve (usually around 112,000 miles) so I guess I could eat the $20.
 
i have an update kids ( i know how eager u all are )

the rav4 is pulling like a branded mule once again.
i am into the auto rx rinse cycle.
puff of white at cold start is gone.
between the rx, seafoam, and techron injector cleaner the car is pulling , shifting, downshifting, etc better than ever before.

i was running around with the overdrive off, just tromping the snot out of it.
i went to manually shifting the auto trans, just a few ticks before redline.
whatever was stuck is gone, cause this car absolutely roars compared to where it was a few weeks ago.
 
my understanding was that rx could be helpful in freeing stuck rings, conditioning seals etc.
sea foam i thought was reputed to clean harmful deposits as well
techron would purportedly improve injector spray.

so a decarbonized, well misted combustion chamber would be a plus, yes?

perhaps the electronic ignition re-adjusts, coupled with the snot hammer driving style.

i know enough to sense the change in power throughout the rev range.

it was to the point that the transmission wouldnt kick down at hwy speed anymore, just slowly lug along when stomped,,.


i vote yes for all three products.

big change for 50 dollars, and a lot of fun.

one word, and i'll shut up: you would think it was a new car-but smooother.
 
don't manually shift the transmission too much, it may not be all that good for it. also, look into replacing the transmission fluid, spark plugs as mentioned above, and differential fluid if this car has a seperate drain for it.
 
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Manually shifting an auto while redundent in most cases won't do jack to it. In fact some cars shift with full line pressure when done so manually instead of softly flaring the shifts for smoothness. So your actually doing the transmission a favor.
 
I would say that Chevron Techron and Amsoil PI would both clean the injectors and deposits in the combustion chamber. Techron is a POA and Amsoil PI may also be not sure. The POAs work after they have been used. Seafoam in not in the same category.
 
I had a sudden major drop in mileage on my explorer a few weeks ago. I built my own injection cleaner and hooked it to the fuel rail, and ran the engine off of it for 10 minutes. I used 3M brand injection cleaner in the pressurized can, but let the pressure out and dumped the fluid into my cleaning machine. Anyways, just by doing that alone, my mileage went from 15 mpg to 22 mpg at 70mph. BTW the engine has 170,000 miles and had never had an injector clean done on it till now.

So my point is to keep up with your injector cleaners, the more often the better.
 
I was manually shifting because for whatever reason the motor had become reluctant to kick down when pressed.
so i would switch the overdrive off when safe on the open road and run it hard.
After a few days the motor seemed better.
Here and there around town I would shift manually to let the rpm run all the way to redline.
this is fully warmed, with clean oil, and in a relatively discreet manner./
It seemed to help also.
 
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