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/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl General Category >> Rubber Side Down! >> Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additive? /cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1354817556 Message started by DavidOfMA on 12/06/12 at 10:12:36 |
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Title: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additive? Post by DavidOfMA on 12/06/12 at 10:12:36 In my continuing efforts to get a smooth-running bike, I'm wondering if adding a couple ounces of a carb/fuel system cleaner such as Gumout might help. I'm not at technical skills place where I feel comfortable tearing the carb down and cleaning every orifice. Gumout seemed like it might help clean orifices that might be coated but not plugged. I've had good results with these products with several cars. Anybody here tried it with their bikes? |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Serowbot on 12/06/12 at 10:28:31 An additive might give psychological comfort used as routine maintenance... but, it's not needed... There are already cleaning additives in gas... If there's enough crud in a carb to actually effect the running of an engine,.. it's beyond being helped by additives... In other words,.. they're practically useless... If you don't want to pull the carb and clean it,.. just ride the tar out of it... See if the additives already in regular un-leaded gas, will eventually do their job... More additives don't do much better,.. it's mostly just moving fuel through the passages that will clear things up... |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by houstonbofh on 12/06/12 at 11:53:50 Good thing this is rubber side down and I can totally dissagree with Serowbot. :) If the carb is clean, you use fresh gas, and ride every week, he is correct. However, if you let it sit up, especially if it is 10% ethanol, crud starts to build. There are two fuel additives I consider very good, and both work differently. Techron - This is a high concentrate detergent. It cleans very well, but does not suspend much. Good for some hard clogs. Add too much, and you get nothing, as it has no energy itself. SeaFoam - This is like magic pixie juice! An amazing solvent, and it has some energy. You can actually (kinda) run the engine off it with no gas at all. (It will stumble and stall, and that is if it is not in gear) Also, it seems to be very stable, especially with 10% ethanol fuels. If you get on the MIG forum, you will see lots of folks singing the praises of seafoam. One use that I can personally say works is when you have badly gummed up carbs with occasionally sticking floats. Get it running with gas, than (using a diner catchup bottle or something) fill the carb with pure seafoam. You will have to work to keep it running, and after a short time, let it die. Let the seafoam sit overnight, and the next day, drain the bowl and start it up on gas. After a few seconds it will clear out and WOW! I have put up to a quarter can (3x the recommended amount) in a tank on my Marauder and ran it through. On the next tank of clean gas, you could feel the difference. (I used to travel for work and my bike might sit up for a month or two) |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Gyrobob on 12/06/12 at 12:09:48 485E49544C59544F3B0 wrote:
Serowbot speaks with veracity. Two sides to the coin: 1. It can't hurt anything unless you spill it on the paint. 2. It probably won't do any good. I say probably because there is a very slight chance there might be a bit of goop somewhere inside the carb that could be dissolved or dislodged. A buddy of mine in college would put a proper mix of the stuff (he liked Berryman's chemtool) in the tank. Berryman's works every bit as good as obscenely over-priced stuff like seafoam. All these things are just strong solvents, no more no less. -- He'd drive it around until the tank has just started on reserve, so there wasn't much gas in the tank. -- Then he'd pour in a whole can of the stuff and drive it around for a few miles to make sure the carb was completely full of the super-strong mix. (it didn't run very well, BTW) Before it was shut down he'd take off the air filter and squirt some of the stuff down the throat of the carb. He'd shut down the motor that way,. one final squirt that wouldn't allow the motor to run anymore. -- Then he'd let it sit overnight. The idea was to let the overly powerful solvent eat away at the goop in the carb. -- The next day he'd fill the tank back up and go on his way. He claimed that technique worked really well, and that he never ever had to clean a carb,.. but,.. then again,.. what else would you expect him to say? I have tried something like that a few times and didn't see any huge advantage. The only time I ever had a lot of improvement was on my Dad's 1965 Fiat 600D that saw very little preventive maintenance on his part. One of my personality defects is that I LIKE to take simple carbs like on an LS650 apart and clean them up in sterile conditions. I like all the precision, and the tidy way things all fit together. Same with guns. I always use a very very good filter on the carb so as to keep it particle free, and I use sta-bil if it won't be operated for a few months or so. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Serowbot on 12/06/12 at 12:12:42 If you're using an additive in such strong concentration that your engine will barely run on it,.. it's possible that it will strip the oil seal from your cylinder and cause damage to walls and rings... This stuff don't disappear in the carb,.. it travels on... It's very popular to do this, and create huge plumes of smoke out yer' exhaust... Youtube is loaded with these videos... It's not a smart way to clean a carb... It's kinda' like washing your bike by riding it into a swimming pool... :-?... |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by DavidOfMA on 12/06/12 at 12:14:44 Thanks to both of you for your opinions. I think I will try something, maybe Seafoam. Before I got the bike, it was mostly just sitting without being ridden for two years. The previous owner had some work done on it before parting with it, but not a full teardown of the fuel system, and it has had several problems since I got it. I got a used carb from an older bike off eBay and plan to practice a carb teardown on that. If that's successful, I will work on the "real" carb in the spring if I still have problems. But it sounds like I have nothing to lose by trying Seafoam. I used to run my old two-strike on Gumout each spring to clean out the fuel system, and it never seemed to hurt it (and the carbs were always clean when I did disassemble them to change the jetting). Also fixed an inaccurate gas gauge in my car with fuel system cleaner. I'll report back if I see a change. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Gyrobob on 12/06/12 at 12:18:33 6076617C64717C67130 wrote:
Agree. The overly-strong solutions as mentioned above are a bit scary for today's seals, eh? Anyway, using solvents like this is about 1/100th as effective as: -- taking the carb off,.........................10 minutes -- disassembling the carb,..................20 minutes if you don't get hung up with stuck screws -- cleaning the carb and all its bits......30 minutes -- reassembling and installing.............30 minutes An hour and a half. Tack on an hour if this is the first time you've ever done it. Tack on a week if you have never done it before and do not have a manual. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by verslagen1 on 12/06/12 at 12:35:31 -1/2 hour if you done it a hundred times and are really wonderng why you've done it a hundred times. ;D |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Gyrobob on 12/06/12 at 12:48:15 564552534C4147454E11200 wrote:
Actually it takes me more than a 1/2 hour for the cleaning now, because I use an ultrasonic cleaner. That adds in some delays where I have to go find something else to do while the microscopic bubbles try to seperate the crap from the carb surfaces. I would guess from start to finish it takes 3 hours, but some of that time is used for some other chores. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by DavidOfMA on 12/06/12 at 14:22:56 Quote:
I do have a manual and have also read the teardown thread, but based on previous recent attempts to work on the bike it still seems like a task I'm likely to screw up the first time. And it will take me some hours to do it. Used to be good with machines. Not so good any more, though it does come back eventually. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Gyrobob on 12/06/12 at 15:00:47 55535E5E5A53585F555443310 wrote:
How about getting a Savage carb from eBay or some such, and rebuild it at your leisure? Then when it was convenient you could swap it for the carb on the bike. A spare carb is nice to have, anyway. If you botch the job on the extra carb, you will have learned a lot, and the bike will still be intact. Do you have the tools for this kind of job? |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by DavidOfMA on 12/06/12 at 15:03:29 That's what I did, got a spare. Winter project. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Gyrobob on 12/06/12 at 15:16:42 2B2D2020242D26212B2A3D4F0 wrote:
Good on ya! |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Gyrobob on 12/06/12 at 15:19:32 696F6262666F646369687F0D0 wrote:
There is nothing special about seafoam other than the exhorbitant price. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Kilgore Trout on 12/06/12 at 19:54:57 Quote:
Bob, is it possible your roommate was treating the engine with fogging oil? I agree with Serowbot that any solvent strong enough to eat through the crud in a dirty carb is probably strong enough to eat through the oil protecting the cylinder, but maybe at least he was trying to take some measure to counteract that effect. Either way, that sounds like a really unnatural thing to do to a bike. I probably know just enough about this kind of thing to get me in trouble, so I hope someone can correct me if what I say next is complete and total rubbish: It seems to me like if you run solvent through a carb to get some gunk out of it (and the process actually works), wouldn't that just move the mess on down the line? I think of old cars that have a lot of rust and sediment in the bottom of their tanks, and they're just fine until you try to fix them, then the sediment gets stirred up, goes through the fuel line and gunks up everything. If you're dealing with a solvent the mess would be dissolved instead of suspended, but I feel like you're going to get little chunks of stuff going through your jets, etc., and then making a mess when it burns in the cylinder. But again, I'm operating on basic knowledge and my instincts here. I'm hoping that one of the veterans can speak to the accuracy of my hypothesis. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Boofer on 12/06/12 at 21:24:55 http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu351/Boofer56/bth_DSCF0031-1.jpg $3.58/gal--$5.99/Pt ;D |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Serowbot on 12/06/12 at 21:25:56 +1,.. Killgore... What goes in, must come out... If you get a splinter in yer' thumb,.. do you want to try to pull it out through yer' bum...?. ... no' what I mean?.... :-?... |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Boofer on 12/06/12 at 21:30:05 http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu351/Boofer56/bth_DSCF0037.jpg I don't just talk the talk. :D |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Boofer on 12/06/12 at 21:33:04 http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu351/Boofer56/bth_DSCF0033.jpg OK kids, enough for today. :) |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Serowbot on 12/06/12 at 21:38:13 Seafoam in the medicine cabinet?... Boofer,.... you scare me... :-?... |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Boofer on 12/06/12 at 21:54:03 3224332E36232E35410 wrote:
Good for whitening, but awful hard on toothbrushes. ;D |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Routy on 12/06/12 at 22:45:16 Every word of Serow's post below is true ! I been saying the very same thing for years, and have posted pics to prove it,...pics of inside carb bowls that are spotless, bowls that just "set" for months during the winter. I have also been asking for pictures to show the contrary for 2 yrs,....none posted yet. Please,.....post just one pic of a carb that has all this crud built up in it from e-10 ! 3422352830252833470 wrote:
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by houstonbofh on 12/06/12 at 22:59:13 OK. Let me clarify a few things... 1) A bike run a few times a week, with at least a tank of gas each week needs no fuel additives. Actually, in the US all fuel is required to have a set amount of detergent, and it works quire well for normal use. Running your bike often is the best maintenance. Also, anything in your fuel that is not fuel is wasting energy and robing you of power and economy. 2) Bikes that set up will gunk up. Ethanol fuels gunk up faster. If that gunk is bad enough, normal fuel use may not clean it out. This means a additive or a rebuild. I have done both, and trying an additive is fast and easy. 3) Detergents and solvents are not the same thing, and do not work the same way. From personal experience, solvents work better with gunk build up from sitting, and detergents work better with baked on gunk like carbonization. 4) SeaFoam has 3 uses. a) Fuel additive - This can stabilize fuel a bot (no where near as good as Sta-Bil Marine) and will clean out carb bowls, sticky needles, and partially clogged jets. b) A Decarbonizer - There are the smoke screen YouTube videos. You pour it in the intake until the motor stalls. It sits wet in the intake and on the intake valves breaking up the carbon. In a car with 4000,000 miles that was not passing emissions due to high Nox, it brought it down about 300 points. It is also likely to seep into the cylinders and wash the ring surfaces. Long term this is bad. Once every 200k miles or so, not so much. c) An Oil Change Additive - Add to oil and run for a few minutes to break up the gunk. I think this is BS. First, if you change your oil on time (and I do) you do not have gunk build up. Second, I do not want anything thinning out the oil surface on my bearings. They are not easy to replace... |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Gyrobob on 12/07/12 at 04:19:01 42455F595E454448454C422A0 wrote:
Paragraph 4 is just as valid (assuming any validity at all) with the name of any strong solvent like seafoam,... berryman's, gumout, walmart fuel system cleaner, rislone, whatever. By some sort of marketing coup, the seafoam company actually has a lot of folks thinking it is worth spending absurd amounts of money on their solvent. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Dave on 12/07/12 at 05:31:52 I have some very strong opinions about fuels........most of them based on my own personal experiences. I worked at a lawn mower shop repairing mowers and chainsaws in the early 70's, at 2 motorcycle shops, and I have continued to work on mowers, chainsaws, cars and motorcycles for the last 40 years. The majority of the repair work I have done is the result of equipment sitting idle with fuel in it. Before the advent of the new blended fuels the damage was mostly gum/varnish build up. The old gasoline would slowly turn into a thick gooey coating that would clog everything up. If equipment sat outside uncoverd or in unheated buildings it could also suffer from water damage. If you could catch this varnish/gummy process soon enough - I believe the fuel cleaner products had some chance of cleaning things up and removing the varnish. New blended fuels don't leave behind this varnish and they are much cleaner, and when used up regularly there is little problem. When this fuel started to be the fuel of choice I noticed that Briggs and Stratton fuel pump diaphragms had to be replaced often as the little check valve tabs would curl up, fuel lines became gummy and were dissolving, and every spring we would have to put new accelerator pump diaphragms in my uncles muscle cars as they had dissolved over the winter. Equipment that sat unused for a while was no longer varnished up - instead the rubber parts were sticky and soft, the aluminum in the float bowls was corroded, and carb diaprhagms were dissolved, and rusty fuel tanks appeared to occur even in equipment that was stored indoors. Over the years the equipment manufacturers have been changing the material that fuel lines and diaprhagms are made from, and they don't dissolve like they used to. Why this long winded post? My thoughts are that the cleaners used to do a good job on the varnish deposits if you caught it early enough. However with modern blended fuel - I don't think the cleaners are very effective. IF you have a running problem related to the fuel system (tank, petcock, fuel line, carb.) - it is best to take things apart and clean them. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Routy on 12/07/12 at 06:29:21 Dave is exactly right. Those of you that think.....or imagine that todays E10 leaves bad stuff in carbs, were not even around yet in the 60's and 70s, when that leaded fuel really did varnish and turn to ka ka in less than a years time. That leaded fuel wouldn't hardly run if it was a year old. Todays e10 runs fine yet at even 1 1/2 yrs old,......I'm proving it in my 50:1 tillers,....and they start 2-3 pulls every time. Pictures !!!!! I want some pictures of all the bad stuff left from e10 !! ::) |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by houstonbofh on 12/07/12 at 17:38:08 112F2439343934560 wrote:
Actually, you have a few differences there. Some are pure detergents. They have no energy when they burn. Other solvents are more aromatic. They are harsher, but evaporate quicker as well. Put a small cup of Techron, Berrimans and Seafoam out overnight. You will see some differences. But that said, they all perform similarly. I have just found SeaFoma to be the best first pass. As to pictures, I used to have one with a carb bowl filled with what looked like brown sugar. Wish I could find it. It was e10. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by DavidOfMA on 12/09/12 at 20:14:20 I've run about a tank of fuel containing STP's fuel system cleaner through my bike, and it seems to be idling smoother and to be backfiring a little less than it did before. The difference is not dramatic in the backfiring, but it is noticeable in the idle smoothness and low-speed running. I'm running another tank with STP in it. After I've completed the two tankfuls with STP I'll also try Seafoam. If there is some narrowing of passages (but not clogging) because the bike sat for a long time before I got it, maybe this will make a difference. In any case, it doesn't appear to be doing any harm. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by Charon on 12/10/12 at 06:01:06 64626F6F6B62696E646572000 wrote:
The "Great Unanswered Question" here is whether the fuel by itself would have done the same thing as the fuel with the additive. That is what makes testing these assorted additives so darnably difficult. All the testimonial letters say something like "I used Supersolv 17 in my vehicle, and after a couple of tanks full it ran much better." I have never yet seen a letter that said "I just ran a couple tanks of clean gas through the thing, and it was cured." |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by DavidOfMA on 12/10/12 at 06:36:21 6A41485B4647290 wrote:
The "Great Unanswered Question" here is whether the fuel by itself would have done the same thing as the fuel with the additive. That is what makes testing these assorted additives so darnably difficult. All the testimonial letters say something like "I used Supersolv 17 in my vehicle, and after a couple of tanks full it ran much better." I have never yet seen a letter that said "I just ran a couple tanks of clean gas through the thing, and it was cured." [/quote] Well... Since I got it from the original owner, I ran about 30 tanks of gas (3000 miles) through the bike before I added the STP fuel system cleaner, and the idle was always rough, even after fooling with the pilot jet and idle mix screw and checking the TEV and the floats. Then I ran two tanks of gas with the STP in it and it runs better at idle and low speeds. To me, that says that half a bottle of STP fuel system cleaner did more than 30 tanks of gas. In this case, with a bike that sat for a while with little use, it seems to have helped. |
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Title: Reduced backfiring - fuel additive or weather chan Post by DavidOfMA on 12/15/12 at 11:44:33 I'm on my third tank of gas with the STP carb/injector cleaner in it, and I just rode for an hour or so. The idle is still smoother, and the backfiring, today, was much less than in previous rides on the same route. The air is cooler (40F) and drier (40% humidity) than previous rides. If I understand it correctly, these changes should have made it more likely to backfire, correct? If that's true, then I can say that the fuel additive has apparently improved the performance of this particular bike, maybe because some of the carb orifices were partly clogged in a way that fuel alone wasn't dissolving. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by DavidOfMA on 01/19/13 at 12:07:34 A final report on using fuel additives, for those of us reluctant to take the carb apart and clean it. I've run four or five tankfuls of fuel with additive through the bike, and it runs much smoother and backfiring is down to one or two loud pops every hour-long ride. This compares to about a dozen loud pops for the same route before I started using fuel additives. The additives that seem to have made the most difference are Seafoam and STP Complete Fuel System Cleaner (which I suspect is similar to Techron). |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by bill67 on 01/19/13 at 13:48:30 +1 on Sea Foam it cleans and lubes your carb and lubes you petcock,carb slide.All snowmobilers and motorcyclists and farmers around here use it. |
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Title: Re: Gumout or equivalent carb cleaner fuel additiv Post by MileHiRider on 01/19/13 at 15:29:46 A few years ago I got a tank of bad gas, the bike ran crappy and I didn't realize what had happened until I spoke with the local Suzuki mechanic. He recommended I drain the tank and mix some fresh gas with BG44K. This cleared things up in a few hours, I added the rest of the stuff to the tank of my old Corolla. No one here has mentioned BG44K, it's $23 for a small can but really works well to clean-up a fouled fuel system. |
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