Does Seafoam work?

[ragtop69gs]

Since the price jumped up a few years ago I used it more often, now, only if I'm trying to solve a problem.

[cowpuc]

A few years ago I did a little man cave testing using straight Sea Foam, cheapy Auto Zone spray carb cleaner in the yellow and white can, Techtron spray throttle bottle cleaner and Chem Dip. I took an old set of carbs from a 750 Honda that had been left for years, pulled the bowls (nasty inside but all the same nastiness) pulled the internals including floats/needles, jets... Put the parts in the bowls - filled the bowls with straight up chems listed above with the floats weighted to hold em under..

With NO brushing or scraping or compressed air blowing = Chem Dip parts were clean in less than an hour, Techtron came in second with a couple hour soak, Auto Zone spray cleaner came in third with clean parts at a four hour soak.. An interesting thing here, the Sea Foam did nothing,,, even after leaving the parts soak for a few days the stuff did nothing.. Admittingly, this was straight Sea Foam with no gasoline added (I am no chemist and have no idea what kind of chemical reaction happens when gas is mixed with the stuff).

One of the things that really interested me in my findings is that I had used Sea Foam on a number occasions and the stuff always did seem to make my engines run better. After my testing I wondered if the better running of the engines I had experienced had more to do with the type of burn attitude gas has with Sea Foam in it rather than how the stuff actually "cleaned" surfaces.. I am still not much of a believer in cleaning carbs by adding a substance into your fuel,, just never really seemed to actually work for me. Strange as this might sound,, I have had wayyyy better luck with cleaning carbs by draining my bowls, pulling the slides/metering rods, injecting carb cleaner into the bowls thru the drain tubes with a syringe until the carb cleaner flows out of the main jets thru the meter rod holes into the throat of the carb, close the drains and let it sit for a few hours. Open the drains, pump the syringe to make some agitation and suck the dirty carb cleaner out, refill thru the drains with raw gas until it too flows out the mains, agitate and suck gas out, close the drains, fill the bowls with fuel from the fuel pump, open the drains and bleed em till they run clean.. Have had much better luck doing that as opposed to "add to gas" anything as far as actually cleaning the carbs without removing them..

Another thing I might add here,, years ago spray carb cleaner used to come with some kinda cleaner in it that would burn your skin under your wedding band when it got under there - had an obvious "bite" to it . I LOVED that stuff (not cause of the burn but cause of its CLEANING ABILITY!!) - it ROCKED!! Havent seen it for years now and , other than Chem Dip (very hard on rubber parts) - this new age spray stuff aint even on the same page..

 

 

 

Concerning the plug fouling thought, I have found that Sea Foam does indeed seem to cause fouling.. I have noticed a "sheen" on fouled plugs that have been exposed to Sea Foam.. Strangely enough, I have also seen a very similar type of sheen on 2 stroke engined snowmobile plugs that have had a diet of some synthetic 2 stroke injector oils..