Stop Wasting Money on Seafoam!

[ross1]

Your credentials please?
You are uncertain of it's exact composition yet are certain it is a waste of money. Interesting.
I am NOT usually a proponent of this or similar chemical concoctions BUT from personal experience it IS effective at dissolving carbon deposits. It DOES loosen sludge in the crankcase(not sure I want that aggressive a brew in there but it does loosen the sludge all right) and in fuel could serve as an upper cylinder lubricant.
I understand it's not a magic cure all but neither is it completely worthless.
Your issue seems to be with the smoke show. If the product is left to do it's work on the intake tract SOME of the smoke is the deposits being consumed, granted most is the SF itself.

[mr ilia]

Seafoam FTW!

[ELVA164]

Honestly, with no dog in this fight I think it's pretty clear the OP has a reasonable, well-informed, and well-supported argument. I've seen zero data or any type of hard evidence from anyone but him, just dumb quips about semantics.

[dricco69]

welp it cost 12 bucks opposed 2 8000 so im gonna give it a shot. Interesting read tho

[ELVA164]

welp it cost 12 bucks opposed 2 8000 so im gonna give it a shot. Interesting read tho

...What?

[EurOnly]

I've ran it thru multiple cars that had rough idles and it damn near smoothed them out every time, or maybe it covered up the problem I don't know.

However seafoam has it's place but I wouldn't believe all the hype about burning carbon deposits you'd be better off spraying water in the intake to steam clean it. I wonder if letting seafoam sit in the cylinders overnight would loosen carbon up. I'll have to give it a shot and check it out with an inspection camera.

[mcleod52]

In our non-BMW vehicles I drop Seafoam into the oil a few days before each oil change. Not certain how much good it does, but I bought several cans years ago on sale and have to use them us some way :-) I think I've even dropped it into the gas on my truck with no apparent harmful results.

[BMWForDays]

Proof Seafoam works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6UeJXkzDW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdT4DPFXIkM

[confusedcarguy]

So I get it don't use Sea Foam in the gas system. Is it ok for the crankcase? Or does it just thin out your oil? I have noisy lifters and the Sea Foam website said it would quiet them, do you know of anything to quiet noisy lifters. Or will it harm the engine - loss of compression, lose dirt, thin oil ...? Can I just add a little naphta if it does work?

As for the tread on cleaning the gas system, my old car had clogged fuel injector and was running rough. The mechanic said it was a 3k job to fix. I tried Techron, gumout, sea foam and 5 others. Nothing worked. I then drained the gas tank and added one gallon 50-50 solution of naptha and gasoline. Car ran fine until I donated it a year later. I wouldn't suggest it on a new car but on an old 1k car it worth a try.

- - - Updated - - -

[Languid]

it was used on ww2 turbocharged/supercharged fighter planes or maybe even earlier than that.

Yes, it was also used with methanol as a power booster for aero engines ti increase power at take-off. I'm a bit rusty now (sorry about the pun), but from memory, I recall the injection rate was about 10% which gave almost double the power to get a heavily laden kite off the deck. Once airborne, the meth mix was shut off, because the engine loads were way to great to use it for other than short bursts. t went out of favour with the advent of JATO bottles (jet assisted take-off) and then of course, jet engines.