Seafoam and Amsoil PI test

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So I decided to see how effective some of these fuel treatments are.

I’ve done a bunch of research and found it’s a lot of people saying things work with no backup. I bought a boroscopic camera and decided to do some before and after views. I’ve seen a few videos online from project farm and Chris fix and decided to do some comparisons. I will note the caliber of their videos and pics is a lot better. I hate editing videos.

I have several notes:

1. 4.7L 2013 with ~40,000 kms. Or 25,000 miles. It has an oil catch can installed around 30,000 kms. I have a 100L tank or 26 Gal.
2. I looked in cylinder 1 originally and added cylinder 3.
3. I didn’t look in all cylinders because it’s a huge PITA.
4. I took video which I will hope to put on YouTube but it is very hard to film and make it look nice. I will post a link once that’s done.
5. With limited time, tools, I noticed I didn’t always get the best views of the pistons.
6. Ideally, one would take out both sets of plugs, injectors, and even tear the motor apart. I didn’t do this because of cost and time.
7. I’ve used these products in the past and am no way paid by them. In fact, I would stop using them if I found they didn’t work.
8. I use Costco top tier fuel in the vehicle only.

Assumptions:
1. There are a variety of factors that could alter effectiveness including:
-Humidity - -~ 20-30%
-Temperature- 15-25 degreees Celsius.
-Engine wearing characteristics - unknown
-Carbon build up and hardness- unknown
-Injector spray pattern- example- does injector 1 spray straight at the intake valve whereas injector 2 sprays at the intake manifold resulting in different spray patterns, etc.
-Dilution of the cleaner.
-These are some of the factors and honestly, there are so many more.

Please take this with a grain of salt.
These cleaners can only do so much. I believe one must consider this.

I used Seafoam with the intake sprayer and amsoil PI.

1. Seafoam
This stuff is petroleum based.
This is the one with the little sprayer into the intake.
Note: The company calls for adding the liquid stuff into your fuel as well. I didn’t do that to see the effectiveness of the upstream cleaning. I followed their directions using most of the can and let it heat soak for about an 1hr and 15 minutes.
Then I drove the snot out of it. I found when I looked into the intake through the throttle body, it made the intake carbon wet and goooy. It didn’t clean it to any degree. This is not posted as it was a video.

The following is a before of cylinder 1.





The next picture is the after doing Seafoam. Again, I apologize for the angles. It was really hard to move the camera and couldn’t get the crank to manually move it.




You can see a bit of cleaning and appears that Seafoam does work. To an extent that you’re happy with? I can’t say.

2. Amsoil PI
This stuff is composed of PEA. See footnote 1.

The following is a picture of cylinder 3 before amsoil.




When I added the PI I added it to an empty tank. I poured in about 45 liters or 11.89 US gallons.

My reasoning to over concentrate the additive was if it doesn’t work when it’s concentrated it’s not going to work at full dilution.

I did a variety of driving from coasting to highway to city driving but every chance I got I did a lot of full throttle acceleration. I drove the vehicle hard. When the low fuel light came on I parked the truck and let it sit for 8 hours.


The next picture is what I noticed and had seen on one of Chrisfix videos. The cylinder 3 looked wet and sticky with carbon.




A couple days later I decided to take another before Seafoam and see if it could rectify the mess. This is what I had seen.





It appeared as though it needed some time for that soft carbon to get cleaned up and maybe after those couple days Of combustion it burnt it off. I did not run Seafoam as I pondered my results.



The next picture is cylinder 1 after Amsoil PI.






There appears to be more polishing of the piston.

The build up at the bottom appears to be remaining. However, this could be attributed to the injector spray angle, etc.

Perhaps a limitation of the cleaning agents is the design of the motor itself?

I do apologize for the quality of the photos.

Any tips on how to be able to manually crank the engine would be greatly appreciated as there is little room.

Please use this as a guide and make your own opinion.

The plan is to try a couple more of these cleaners. If there is interest I’ll post the results.

I hope you guys found it useful.


I forgot to add about the wet carbon picture. I thought that perhaps the additive cleaned upstream (intake, valves, injectors) resulting in dirtying up the piston. Maybe it’s a bit of that and softening of the piston carbon.


Footnotes
1. https://www.sae.org/publications/technical-papers/content/2000-01-2020/
 
Amsoil > Seafoam. I imagine over time the Amsoil would get it up to par. Seafoam only brings great marketing and thats about it. Thank you for your efforts,observation,and write up. A
welcome2.gif
 
PEA based cleaners added to the gas tank will do the most cleaning of deposits in the engine when allowed to ‘soak’ the target deposits for a bit. How long is ‘a bit’? It depends, but for this scenario it should be longer than the nanosecond it has after being sprayed from an injector and before being combusted.

As such, driving WOT with the gasoline-mixed PEA additives will not normally result in more cleaning of the deposits. What will is multiple stops (where engine is turned off) after a short trip that gets the engine up to operating temp. The hot carbon of the deposit will soften up and be more likely to get cleaned from the extended soak time while engine is off, and the more this soak time can be multiplied throughout the typical drive day, the better.
 
Thank you for documenting this. The amount of deposit change during the tests is a function of the rate of deposit removal minus the rate of addition of new deposits. I wonder if overdosing can cause more incomplete combustion and carbon, hindering the cleaning performance. I don’t think Amsoil PI will burn as easily as gasoline does and suspect it burns more like how 2-stroke oil does...increasing 2-stroke oil treat rate too much can cause excess carbon.
 
Originally Posted By: JAG
Thank you for documenting this. The amount of deposit change during the tests is a function of the rate of deposit removal minus the rate of addition of new deposits. I wonder if overdosing can cause more incomplete combustion and carbon, hindering the cleaning performance. I don’t think Amsoil PI will burn as easily as gasoline does and suspect it burns more like how 2-stroke oil does...increasing 2-stroke oil treat rate too much can cause excess carbon.


The rate of new deposits while burning gas mixed with PEA is supposed to be nil. That’s basically what differentiates top tier from non, it won’t be adding new deposits while cleaning existing deposits because of the PEA additive.
 
Yes, provided the mixture is within expected limits. I don't know where those limits are, but it would be pretty clear you can't run a fuel with 35% PEA and expect any good results with respect to cleaning or running.
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I think it might be better in oil. It did remove some and every year when I Seafoam my idle drops from 750 rpm to 500 rpm so it must do something.

You are welcome! I hope you found it useful. I’m going to try some other ones later on.
 
I’ll take that into account, that’s why I did a variety of driving, highway, city. I can’t accelerate hard in the city. This was done over a few days as I seldomly drive.
 
Originally Posted By: deven
Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
Why are we cleaning an engine with only 25,000 miles?

Preventative maintenance maybe?


I thought I’d have a look and if it’s clean great, if not, preventative maintenance. Plus, I used them in other vehicles and just wanted to know if it was worth the money.
 
Originally Posted By: Gixxer46
Originally Posted By: deven
Originally Posted By: BrocLuno
Why are we cleaning an engine with only 25,000 miles?

Preventative maintenance maybe?


I thought I’d have a look and if it’s clean great, if not, preventative maintenance. Plus, I used them in other vehicles and just wanted to know if it was worth the money.

I've followed ChrisFix's videos as well and to my untrained eye I thought the best of the bunch was actually Marvel Mystery Oil(MMO).
 
ChrisFix never tested MMO, I know project farm did some tests with it. Well worth checking out his channel.
 
Originally Posted By: Gixxer46
ChrisFix never tested MMO, I know project farm did some tests with it. Well worth checking out his channel.

It was Project farm then. I follow both of them.
 
Originally Posted By: The_Nuke
PEA based cleaners added to the gas tank will do the most cleaning of deposits in the engine when allowed to ‘soak’ the target deposits for a bit. How long is ‘a bit’? It depends, but for this scenario it should be longer than the nanosecond it has after being sprayed from an injector and before being combusted.

As such, driving WOT with the gasoline-mixed PEA additives will not normally result in more cleaning of the deposits. What will is multiple stops (where engine is turned off) after a short trip that gets the engine up to operating temp. The hot carbon of the deposit will soften up and be more likely to get cleaned from the extended soak time while engine is off, and the more this soak time can be multiplied throughout the typical drive day, the better.


I had asked that very question to Gumout when they first became a sponsor...(is a long highway run as effective as short trip, stop/start driving when using a PEA additive?)

I had assumed that what you are saying was correct and I'm glad to see you feel the same.
 
In the interest of full disclosure I should probably point out that the whole “sitting is better than driving” approach for cleaning deposits with PEA additives was originally pulled from a paper I read about experiments done with high detergent gasoline (aka top-tier) versus minimal detergent gasoline (non-top-tier) and how they each cleaned/prevented carbon deposits in the test engines’ cylinder heads. Applying the conclusion that ‘higher detergent gasolines clean and protected against deposits better than low detergent gasolines’ to our discussion about gasoline mixed with a PEA additive was entirely my own doing.

However, seeing as PEA is one of the (main?) extra detergents in top tier gas as well as being identified in the experiment results as the active carbon fighting ingredient, borrowing the original paper’s claim on efficacy of cleaning with that detergent doesn’t seem out of line to me here.

Either way, that’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (as I see it)!

Now carry on...
 
I would tend to agree with that. They tend to mention to drive "normally." They don't indicate to go on a high speed 8 hour road trip, or to do a bunch of one block trips spread out 24 hours apart. I'd think some soak time, along with getting up to temperature, through a decent mix of driving, would be most effective.
 
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