When and how do you blow carbon out of car/truck?

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Hello everybody,

I changed the oil out in my Sisters 08 Acura TL 3.2L on Thursday. Went for a good test drive and when I floored it on a straightaway from stop -- I looked in the rear view mirror and some black smoke was coming out. Did that one more time and redlined it and when I did it the last time -- no smoke at all. I imagine that it was carbon from not getting on it often enough? How often should this process take place and how does everybody else do it?


Dale
 
Did the car feel more perky afterwards, or the same? IMO, if it didn't feel one bit different, then it's "never" required. But if it did feel better, then clearly it needs to be done more often. Not an exact science, but, something easily determined.

My VW TDi clearly benefited from hard driving. I don't know how often it really needed it, but at 100hp I could easily find reason on a daily basis to flog it. So it was never really a problem--it only reared its head when I was after max mpg for a tank or two. All the gassers I've had, port injection vehicles, never seemed to care.

A good place to wind it out is on a hill, particularly if you're not going fast at the bottom. Or highway on ramps. Used to be toll booths too, but ours went to high speed lanes so no slowing down.
 
I don't do it often, once in a blue moon getting onto the parkway, and only when the engine has been running at least half an hour or more. A good kick in the pants is good every so often, but I think some people over do it. Especially to a cold engine, which may eventually end up doing more harm than good.
 
I occasionally do what you did, but I wait until second gear to push it, and I make sure the A/C is off.
Of course, only after fully warmed-up, including transmission. And drive gently for a few minutes afterward, before shutdown, to let it cool down to ‘normal’’. This is especially important for turbo engines, from other comments on this site. Watch the speed limits!
 
Originally Posted By: supton
A good place to wind it out is on a hill


^ This. Back when I worked on cars for a living, I'd always road test them up a steep hill, flooring the accelerator at low speed and getting the revs up around redline. The vehicles which spent most of their time in the city would always blow great plumes of black/brown smoke out. Does them good!
 
Well, CA realized that carboned-up engines pollute more so they legislated a minimum amount of cleaning agents be in all road gasoline, no matter how cheap the gas you try to buy.
 
I like uphill onramps as they require lots more throttle.
With a warmed-up engine, I roll into it (don't squeal the tires) and then lett'r rip to the speed limit +5/10.
I try to do this "Italian tuneup" every month or so. I generally drive pretty normally (revs under 3k most of the time), and am cognizant to not be hard on a cold engine.
 
"A redline a day keeps the mechanic away," is I think how the old adage goes.

Let the oil get up to temp and let 'er rip.

A throttle adaptation can do a world of good too. I like to do them whenever I change the oil.
 
Heh, everytime I drive. Couple miles up the mountain will do it, and I have no choice but to drive one to get outta town. You really let it rip when you see a semi halfway up and you wanna beat him before the twisties
laugh.gif


Not every vehicle can benefit from this though. It's only a matter of time before I shoot a rod out the side of the block on the S10. You gotta be running some RPM to make it up the mountain in that thing.
 
Originally Posted By: rooflessVW
"A redline a day keeps the mechanic away," is I think how the old adage goes.

Let the oil get up to temp and let 'er rip.

A throttle adaptation can do a world of good too. I like to do them whenever I change the oil.


If you mean reset the adaptives I like that too. My transmission gets really laggy if you slur around town at 1500 rpm all the time. If you get on it then no problem. The throttle was exactly the same until I tuned the car.
 
I like to give the cars I drive a good romp on the onramp once a week. Tricky in a hybrid to get it to WOT, but if it's a conventional car I stomp on it when I have the ramp to myself and if the merge lane is clear.
 
Not many good hills around here so if I feel it’s necessary I can hop on the interstate or find a nice backwoods road. I like to let it wind out up to about a hundred but usually for safety I just make about 3 hard accelerations up to 80 from 40.
 
Once a month or so, to red line in first and second. I had an interesting experience last year. My car had about 130k miles, it threw a CEL with code for a catalytic converter problem. I took it on a good run up the local highway, two decent hills, one ~1/2 mile long, the second ~1 mile long. To give you an idea, the exit for the second hill is for a Ridge Road. I had the engine working hard for both hills. Since then, no CEL for the catalytic converter.
 
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