Sea Foam
 

Hello im getten ready to do a 150000 mile tune up on my 2001 cherokee sport. Some people at work were talking about putting seafoam in the oil for a few days befor the tuneup to clean the engine. has anyone done this or know anything about it? Thanks in advance, Dillon

its great stuff and it works well ive used it on several vehicles ive owned. i would run it in your engine about 100 miles. youll be surprised at how nasty all that comes out

I put it in my oil for a couple hundred miles, don't know what, if anything it did though.

I recently ran a third of a can of seafoam through my throttle body and the rest of the can through my gas tank. It was the best 11 bucks I ever spent on my Jeep. I saw positive results in starting, idle, reving, general smoothness of the engine. Just positive results all over.

I didn't feel comfortable putting it in my oil though, I've heard a few horror stories about minor leaks turning into major leaks because of seafoam cleaning all the gunk out of the area that was leaking.

I've heard the same horror stories and to add, I've heard seafoam can dry out gaskets too, advancing wear and tear on the engine.

As far as an engine cleaner (whatever you want to call it), I usually buy Gunk's Motor Flush. Its really strong but does a good job at breaking down the sludge and deposits that build up inside the engine from years of neglect and over-due oil changes.

As far as sea foaming, I can personally vouch that the BEST way to see a gain from it is to have it slowly drip into the engine via an intake manifold vacuum line (usually the line connected to the brake booster is fine to use). I've done it on thousands of cars (worked for a lube shop for a year and a few months). We used to have a purpose-built bottle with a hose (like the kind used in fish tank air pumps), a small butterfly valve, and a Y valve located right after the butterfly valve (to allow air into the line), and at the end would be a cone shaped nozzle that would connect to the vacuum line. You'd set it to a medium-slow drip (not too slow), then set the car's engine speed to 2000 RPMS. If your engine is really dirty, you'll hear/feel the idle get a bit rough, you'll feel the engine hesitate here or there but its normal. At the end of the consumption of the bottle, rev your engine up to 4000 rpms (we used to "gently" redline em) and be prepared to have the fire department at your door (haha happened to me!). Depending on how dirty the engine is on the inside, it will smoke from bad to REALLY BAD as your engine burns and consumes the loosened dirty and deposits through its combustion cycle. I've seen engines that were so dirty that at the end of the service when we'd have to redline the engines to finish cleaning em out and get the product through the combustion cycle the cars would start to misfire, hesitation would get worse, idle would get real rough, so if it happens to you, dont worry its normal just keep revving the engine until it completely finishes burning out the gunk and you see no more smoke coming out the rear. In short, that will clean out your intake manifold, intake valves, and injectors. Be ready because your car will smoke badly, specially after the car consumes the seafoam drip. Although the following has never happened to me, in the Neon forum I used to post on, a lot of ppl would replace their spark plugs right after doing such a service to their vehicle because they claimed the spark plugs would burn out or become too dirty to fire properly.

I hope this helps!

P.S. Oh! Btw, EvilMaster pointed out something very important that's often times neglected during tune ups and preventive maintenance. Clean out your throttle body. Get some tb cleaner and a shop rag or 2 and with some elbow grease and about 5 or 10 minutes, you can clean it out pretty well. Normally, we'd do it BEFORE we ran a seafoam drip so whatever gunk from the TB spills into the intake manifold will be washed away with the cleaning of the intake manifold.

I've done that drip too, I still have the bottle set up in the garage.
As far as leaks when your done, well if it starts to leak the seals were no good to begin with. I have used it in the oil and it is fine, works well.