De-carbonising?

Question: Has anyone had their car de-carbonised? If so, was it worth it?

Thought: If the consensus was that its worthwhile, how about a de-carbonising day somewhere to see if we can get a group booking discount...

BBQ as well (To make up for all that lost carbon!) etc..

Comments...?

The one thing about a blown head gasket is that it does a great job of decarbonising :bust:

After watching Eric The Car Guy de-carb his engines with just plain water, I've done that on all 3 of my cars with no ill effect. Just don't pour too much in the air intake. I used a kitchen cleaner spray bottle to spray the water in and just kept going until I was nearly stalling the engine, letting it recover each time. Tickover ended up being slightly cleaner - but could have been my imagination. No performance difference.

But as already said, water (steam) is the best cleaner. Look at a cylinder that has had a gasket fail compared to one that hasn't!

Nick

Yup, I've been reading this in a variety of forums. From what I gather it's only really the inlet valves that get badly carbonised, due to direct fuel injection rather than coming in with the air mix from a a carb. Hence no cleaning in normal use. Modern fuel and additives apparently do a reasonable job of the rest of the engine if it's not too bad to start with.

It's a while since I last saw my valves, but at the time they didn't look too bad. Perhaps just a misting of water into the plenum would be all that's needed.

Thankfully although Hesketh failed MOT today due to brake light switch intermittently sticking on, (and the usual discussions about almost total lack of any pattern to headlights), he didn't fail emissions, so can't be in too bad a state.

Perhaps we should revise the proposed group day to a "plenum sauna & BBQ"

<Off topic>
Do you still "do" radio? I've not been on for a fair few years now, but used to be very active on 10m, in the 10-10 club.
Just wondering if there's still much activity around

73, de G7IZR
</Off topic>

Not from my current location, but yes HF bands still very active. Quite a big revival in CW, which is surprising considering its being dropped as licence requirement years back. Lots of new digital modes on both HF and VHF/UHF. cheap radios available from China now. Lots of cheap QRP kits on eBay too. Software defined radio is also big now, using DDS radios and high spec soundcards or A2D converters. Much going on in way of crossover tech RaspberryPi and radio etc. Amateur sat Comms is easier with simple dual band hand held and small dual band Yagi using mobile phone on bracket for sat tracking. Again, crossovers into high altitude balloon projects etc too....

And you can even work most of the worlds repeaters from your phone using the echo link app...

Loads of cool stuff going on... Worth a revisit.

Edit: as I've commented a few times, there seems to be a disproportionatly large number of amateurs who own MGs (which speaks volumes about both the hobby and the cars!). From memory there are three or four of us on here who actually use callsign as forum ID, but lots who remain "in the closet" too.

We should start a weekly net on 80m to discuss headgasket woes and the like!

g7nbp wrote: We should start a weekly net on 80m to discuss headgasket woes and the like!

I stopped 11 years ago when my 2nd was born and ended up with the 3rd bedroom. So when I have got rid of one of them, I was planning on starting back up anyway.

What I really need is a SDR or black box that can be left in the loft all on it's own, connected via short runs to the antennas, but that is remotely controlled from downstairs. Like a remote head radio, but that does the audio and control over a *long* ethernet run. Then I could get back on from a downstairs living room without running coax all the way from the downstairs front to the upstairs rear. Any ideas?

Obviously PM me so we don't bore everyone else - or ask for a "radio ham" forum section

Nick

Pm sent

And now back to the decarbonisation thread...

My day is suddenly more empty than I would have expected. This is good news as far as time to do some more work on Hesketh, but bad news as far as available funds goes. (The double edged sword of self employment)

So, today's el-cheapo-mechanico tests will consist of a small garden sprayer and some H2O...

Updates on results / engine destruction later

Ok... Garden sprayer is quite effective, but much more so is this : https://amzn.to/2IIjoRs :)

I've disconnected my K&N and clamped the steam hose near to the short pipe to the plenum... Clouds of steam, magically sucked into the inlet each time I blip the throttle....

Engine note changes slightly... Not sure how much difference it's making, but we have done some 'sperrymenting and at this stage "results are inconclusive"...

I will try and shoot some video, it's worth it just to see steam suddenly bending at right angles and disappearing like a genii into a bottle!

seeing just how much the mobile decarbonising services charge, Im thinking... box up my wallpaper stripper in a fancy looking case with lots of redundant knobs and switches and buy a white van

g7nbp wrote: seeing just how much the mobile decarbonising services charge, Im thinking... box up my wallpaper stripper in a fancy looking case with lots of redundant knobs and switches and buy a white van

:clap: