I used to go to an old carburetor mechanic when I owned an 85 Crown Vic before they had fuel injection. He used to swear that a bottle of STP gas treatment once a month would save a lot of cleaning and was a good idea and I followed his advice.

STP makes a gas treatment for fuel injected vehicles nowadays.

Anyone ever use this in an F150 or is it 1985 thinking & a waste of time/money with today's detergent gasolines?

 

I always use Seafoam (same type of stuff).

 

There's better ones out there like Redline SI-1, Amsoil PI, Techron Concentrate, Gumout Regane. They all have significant PEA, which cleans well.

 

Be careful with fuel additives on these newer computer controlled cars...There are several dangers associated with additives for injector cleaning...here's some interesting reading to add to the library...

WitchHunter Performance - Injector Cleaning & Flow Testing Services

 

andrmorr, very good info!

Never heard this, or for that matter, the shop from the link that cleans injectors for $18.00 a piece.

Seems like a good deal until you go to Auto Parts Fast at RockAuto and find brand newr OEM motorcraft injectors for $25.99 a piece.

If it ever came down to injectors that were fouled that badly, I'd just replace all 8....

 

don't use fuel cleaners...or any other additives. Ford specifically says not to use them.

besides, the gasoline of today is pretty good stuff. IMO you are wasting your money, and possibly hurting your engine and it's electronics

 

The injectors they mostly clean are not the $25 dollar OEM versions, they are race injectors that run much more...Even if they are too expensive for your OEMs, they have good insight to injector functions I thought you guys might be interested in...

 

Yeah, I kind of figured.

I just wanted to mention how cheap these injectors are, for anyone who looked at your link and was tempted to send in their injectors....

 

I've used seafoam in my '01 5.4L Expy, my '02 'Stang GT, my Wife's '06 5.4L Expy, her old '93 Lexus GS (it went 187K miles before we traded it in on my F150) and my '06 F150. Never had a problem. I run some through the brake booster line and it helps stop any rough idle and increases throttle response.

Before I started using it I did a lot of research, and while I found some stories of bad experiences, I didn't find very many that were the result of first hand experience. They were all third hand stories...a friend of a friend, or "A guy I used to know tried it and..." The only bad experience I recall from first hand experience were O2 sensors going bad. Which, could result from using way too much. So much that it blows out the exhaust. So, like anything else, read the directions and use in moderation.

Fact of the matter is, seafoam and others like it are a racemic mixture of petroleum distillates: Pale Oil, Naphtha and IPA (Isopropyl Alcohol). The Pale Oil is also referred to as Hydrotreated Paraffinic oil and Naphtha is nothing more than a generic term used to describe the left overs after refining crude oil. Its usually a mixture of C10 to C15 hydrocarbons. Nothing to be afraid of in terms of running a small amount through the combustion chamber. The only thing one need be concerned with is if you mix it in with the oil before an oil change and knock loose some build-up and block an oil passage. There is also the possibility it will expose a weakness in a gasket and cause some leakage...which the sludge it broke loose was blocking.