+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?....  ...

OK kids, enough for today.  

Serowbot wrote on 12/06/12 at 21:38:13:


Good for whitening, but awful hard on toothbrushes.  

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...

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.

Gyrobob wrote on 12/07/12 at 04:19:01:

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.

DavidOfMA wrote on 12/09/12 at 20:14:20:


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."