Cleaned injectors

[Cadillac STS]

purchased a bottle of the Lucas injector cleaner and Octane booster. Now hold the flames...it actually sort of made a difference. The pedal feels much more responsive and the motor feels much more torquey in the lower RPMs..which is just fantastic!

But don’t take my word for it...go out to your local auto parts stores and try it for yourselves...have to see how long this "effect" lasts

[Regis]

Yup, pretty good stuff.

http://caddyinfo.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3373&st=0

[cadillacjeff7777]

I put some injector cleaner into my 93 Seville with the 4.9L once and it ate something away in the injectors. It would dump in more gas then what was needed but the system would not account for the extra fuel usage do to the computer being calibrated to what the injectors should have been injecting. I really had some mechanics stumbling on this one for a bit. It appeared that the car was leaking gas due to the gallons used did not match what was being put in at the pump.

[tjtjwdad]

I had mine cleaned not to long ago along with the throttle boddy. Didn't notice that much more pep, but the fuel economy was better.

Jim

[bobnsue2]

I put some injector cleaner into my 93 Seville with the 4.9L once and it ate something away in the injectors.  It would dump in more gas then what was needed but the system would not account for the extra fuel usage do to the computer being calibrated to what the injectors should have been injecting.  I really had some mechanics stumbling on this one for a bit.  It appeared that the car was leaking gas due to the gallons used did not match what was being put in at the pump.

I agree with him. On a 91 STS with 4.9 engine, I added injector cleaner not lucas though and the same symptoms appeared. the computer reported different mileage than actual and it stumbled a lot. The injectors resistance went down to 6-8-10 ohms, so the windings were shorting out internally.

I went with Bbobinski's advice and replaced the injectors. This fixed it.

I won't use the injector cleaner again!

[Bruce Nunnally]

I think that the injector cleaner commercials & ads are very misleading. Injectors either work or not, and/or leak or don't generally. If I offerred to sell you a $10 bottle of soap guaranteed to make your kitchen tap run faster, you'd laugh because you can see the current flow out of the tap is just great. Because we can't see the injector flow without some bother, we buy cleaners based on the ads.

When i did back to back performance testing on my 1992 STS with 120K+ miles after replacing the original injectors with brand new injectors, it made no difference in the performance. I was hoping for some improvement, but there was no difference. You can't get cleaner than brand new. But because the original injectors were still working, new ones were not an improvement.

If you have an injector that fails, or is leaking, it is necessary to replace it. If it is working, let it be.

[cadillacjeff7777]

I priced injectors and they were right around $110 an injector according to A-1 or parts plus...I can't remember which store.

Well, that times 8 was not in my budget so I drove it as it was for the remainder of the time that I owned it. And it is still on ther road with the original injectors and nearing 170,000mi

[seattle_fleetwood]

I'm glad someone posted the resistance of the injectors...is there a "normal" range? Is it possible to tell if my injectors are messed up while they're still in the fuel rack by checking the resistance?

[Bill K]

Listen to the STP Fuel Injector Cleaner commercial. It says "A clean injector is better than a dirty one, so use STP." While they show the spray pattern difference between a clean & dirty injector. They imply but never say, that STP cleans injectors.

A lot of people used to swear that Carters Little Liver Pills made them feel better.

[Ranger]

A lot of people used to swear that Carters Little Liver Pills made them feel better.

Yeah I remember that commercial. Talk about "snake oil"!

[STYES]

We need to dispel the rumors about "injector cleaners" right here, right now. The earlier post about injectors being "all or nothing" is right on the money. An injector clean procedure does little if anything to the injectors. Instead, it helps to clean the combustion chamber, piston tops, and plug surfaces. If anybody gets any kind of increase in performance or fuel economy, it is because the injector clean helped remove carbon deposits from the above mentioned parts. Removing the carbon in the combustion chamber helps eliminate the "hot spots" and an excess of carbon actually can increase the compression ratio. The drag racers out there might say that an increase in compression ratio is a good thing, but in this case it is not. A strong buildup of carbon can reduce the amount of "space" in the chamber, and therefore increase the compression ratio, but it would be inconsistent across all cylinders and create the hot spots I mention. Those hot spots can cause the actual ignition of the a/f ratio to occur at a point within the chamber that is not ideal for complete and efficient combustion. Bottom line is that an "injector clean" can increase performance and fuel economy, but not because it actually cleaned the injectors. It should come as no surprise that the dealers refer to this procedure as a "carbon clean" because that is exactly what it does. I hope that there are not folks out there who had to "eat" a set of plugs because they were told that the cleaner "fouls" them. This is not the case. I have serviced many cars that had a knock upon initial start up in cold weather. The fix for this in most cases, is the carbon clean. Find me a dealer who will do this AND change the plugs while under warrantee, I dare you. But have I heard of dealers fixing this, and making the customer eat a plug job? Unfortunately I have. NOT under warrantee, of course. I am real curious here. Has anybody had the carb clean, or "injector clean" and had to buy plugs as well?