Tried the suck up water into manifold trick...
 

Filled a 2 litre with water, got some hose, unplugged the vac connection at the UIM for the purge valve solenoid, revved it up and dropped the hose in... took a few minutes of high revving and bogging to get it all through, didn't see anything come out the back end and i'm not sure if it made any difference or not, oh well worth the effort eh?

Wow.... Thats uh lota water... how long did it take to suck it all down?

What is it for, call me a noob but i've never heard of this before.

supposedly it's the best method to clean the carbon out of the engine (think steam cleaning, water introduced to fast moving engine with hot combustion temps)

took about 3-4 minutes to ingest it all

Got it, thats pritty cool. Its not damaging in anyway, or is there going to be a yes and a no from everyone?

everyone seems to agree it's safe, very natural way to produce cleanliness

That does seem like a lot of water.

that much sounds crazy. water is incompressible, thus water in chamber increases compression ratio by that amount.. and steam just raises pressures more.

Just FYI: using water (steam vapor) to clean out carbon deposits in the combustion chamber will take a lot longer than "revving the car for a few minutes".

As long as there is still combustion taking place, there isn't near enough water present in the combustion chamber to have any effect on the compression ratio. Same for the "steam raising pressures"; there isn't near enough being produced to have any effect.

EDIT: I do think that the practice of simply feeding water into the intake tract via vacuum to "clean out the engine" is a waste of time.

so what method do you prefer then?

Yeah, I have never heard of anything breaking from sucking water into the engine, but some are afraid of a large carbon chunk breaking off and damaging the turbos.

Personally I just make sure to redline the engine everytime I take it out. :bigthumb: It sure is the most fun way to clean carbon from your engine.

I've seen many mechanics use the water method with success.

At first I was scratching my head when I saw this.

well... haha water can hurt for a piston engine when they hydro lock......

Tell this guy water never hurts anything. Now, on a rotary motor you would be looking out broken apex seals more then likely.

http://www.exileracing.com/gallery/hydrolocked/6g73.jpg

haha, when they say "a healthy gulp" they are talking about a lot more water than can be sucked through a small vacuum nipple like we are talking about here.

edit: Any specifics on how he did that?

Letting the engine inhale water through a vacuum line is not going to cause hydraulic lock for the simple fact that is would be impossible for the engine to ingest an amount of water large enough to completely fill the chamber. If you have a running engine and submerge the entire inlet then you're looking for trouble, but letting the engine suck water through a 1/4" or so hose is not going to cause it to lock. Impossible.

Of course. I only posted to say 'Yes, water can rock your socks'.

He was going off roading in a stream that was pretty damn deep.

waste of time

I might have to use the water method for warranty work ;)

You can't compare piston engines to rotaries for this particular procedure. That is total apples-to-oranges comparison.

Rob Golden from Pineapple was the main tech speaker at Sevenstock last year. He talked about dumping a 2 liter bottle of water into your rotary while it running at around 4k RPM. I am personally scared to try this myself, but Rob is one of the most respected builders in the industry. Do you think he'd stand up at a rotary specific event in front of many rotor heads and tell them to do something that would kill their engines?

Sonny

I never once said how much it would take to destroy a rotary motor. Don't take what i posted out of context. And im not comparing Rotaries to Piston engines.. Don't start one of the debates. I was merly showing what water does to an engine based off of this statement.

But im not Rotary wizard but i dont see how it is physicaly possible for ANY motor to compress water and not suffer damage (enough water). Now i wasent there to hear Rob speak. Cans someone else chime in and explain how a motor can fill one of its combustion chambers compress it and not suffer damage?

Also, Rotary combustion walls and rotor faces are thicker than piston face and wear sleeves.

Read the top post on this page.

A rotary won't run on broken apex seals.

Sonny

Why are you taking what im saying out of context? i never said anything about it running on a broken seal (BTW: There have been cases where a motor has had a broken seal and still ran.. like shit... but it ran). honestly, I dont care if god himself came down from the heavens and pissed in a combustion chamber, once that chamber goes to compress something is going to break (assuming it is filled and the water has no where to escape). Water does not compress.

LOL...it's all good, man. I think I understand what you're saying. Those hydrolocked piston engines both ingested a lot of water...usually at full throttle. Are you saying that broken apex seals is what would probably happen if a rotary ingested a comparable amount of water? That makes more sense. Your posts made it sound like you were trying to say that any amount of water can do that type of damage.

Sonny

hehe, ok now we are on the same page :)

:beerchug:

Sonny

At least in the piston engines, I don't think so.
Just last week I took my wife's car into the dealer on a minor warranty issue (plastic end tank of the radiator split...go figure :D ). At that same time, I mentioned a slight ticking sound that I had noticed her car had begun making in the last month or so. Although the engine is a NORTHSTAR V8, I likened the ticking as sounding similar to a bad hydraulic lifter on my antique car. The service tech immediately suspected that it was carbon build-up in the combustion chamber, apparently not uncommon problem with this engine when it's driven "conservatively". As I watched, they did the water ingestion and cleared it right up. While I didn't notice any power increase, the noise was gone and it now seems to idle a bit smoother.

hmmm... worth a shot.. Im going to try the sea foam trick though

ac delco makes top engine cleaner that is specificaly designed to not attack rubber or plastics. it does a number on carbon deposits though. that said water does a nice job also

guess it really can't hurt to try.... ill do the sea foam then water...see what happens.

i did the sea foam, cleaned up my idle. im sure water is just as or more effective. note: use distilled water. tap water contains minerals and chemicals and such which may not be engine friendly. seriously.

My roommate second semester freshman year at college worked at a Caddy dealership during the summer as a porter, and he said that they got Northstar powered cars in there all the time for that problem. He said that they used some sort of chemical to clean out the carbon buildups, and the reason was two fold, one that people drive their cars conservatively, like you said, and that Caddilac recommended one too many quarts of oil, so the engines were burning the excess oil, causing the buildups.

BUddy of mine has a North star and had to change the O2 sensor many times .

and the northstar leaks and pulls head bolts like it is it's job. batman there is no reason to go through several o2 sensors , there are 4, could be a fuel prob or the maf. there is a fuel rail recall for alot of years and the fpr fail all the time. on topic the top engine cleaner does a nice job also