Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting dribbling water into throttle as a cleaning technique??

I just walked by two guys having a conversation on the sidewalk, and one of them said to the other:

"I've done this a couple of times. You pour a little bit of water into the carburetor while it's running, and it will start spitting out all this black shít."

Is this a legitimate technique for cleaning something in the engine??

I wouldn't do that, it probably won't do anything. Use throttle body cleaner. I used so much once that the engine was spewing nasty white smoke for like 5 minutes at idle....but that means it's cleaning stuff out. What also works if you wanna clean out your cat converter (i've heard) is to fill your gas tank so high that you keep going until it almost spills over. When it starts, you'll run really rich.

Well, actually, it is a very effective method of cleaning carbon from the combustion chambers. When I was still a tune up technician I did it hundreds of times. Sometimes it was done prior to removing heads for a valve job to have less clean up work.

It needs to be done with skill though. If overdone it can damage things. I'm not sure if I would try it on an engine with ported fuel injection since it would be much harder to control than on an engine with a carburetor. (Am I giving away my age here?)

HA! I used to do this too - on older, carburated engines. Engine missing when hot and under a load and you've changed everything already? Crank on the throttle, stick that garden hose sprayer in the carburator and let it rip until the engine starts to sputter (don't let it die!). Watch the black goo come out the tail pipe. Repeat until you feel better.

But I have to agree with Big Jim about the ported fuel injection.

sheesh I dont know about using a garden hose (hydrolock??) but I used to do this on my 79 Camaro by using a windex bottle with water in it. I would spray down my Holley, and while I don't recall loads of crap flying out the exhaust, I do know it did help things out.

What you CAN do on your car now is...go to the ford dealer, they sell this decarboning cleaner, and you can spray that into your intake while the motor is running. It more or less does the same thing but it is a foaming cleaner...there is a bit of a proc to it. I will do this every 5K once I clean out my intake manifold/butterflies in the next few weeks.

You can, in fact, mist water into the intake while revving the engine to decarbonize the motor, and yes, it can be done on fuel injected cars. I must stress this point, however, that it has to be done in MODERATION and by a TRAINED TECHNICIAN. I would NOT recommend that just anyone tries this, for fear of a hydro locked motor. For those of you who have done/witnessed this, don't you think its cool how the exhaust manifolds start glowing bright red after doing this for a while?

I did it to my 78 F-250. I used a 1 liter soda bottle and poured it in as fast as it would flow, although I had to run the engine at learly wide open.

Immediately after I squirted oil down the carb to restore the oil film on the cylinder walls.

I got enough black stuff out of the exhaust to fill a coffee can

Weren't you afraid of hydrolocking the motor? How big is the engine in your truck? I would think that you would have to be running the motor like 5K or something to cycle the water thru fast enough!

I wonder how one would fire water in the SVT intake, and I wonder if this would do the same job as breaking down the manifold and doing the manual cleaning....?

It works best when the engine is warm. Just thought I would add my 2 cents. I will try to post a pic of the connecting rod I pulled from an engine this past weekend. It is bent into a u-shape and twisted. This was from letting water (too much)get into the motor. The carnage we saw that day when we tore the engine apart was terrible. Even the cam was broken in 2 places. I know its kinda off-topic, but oh well....

About five or so years ago I did this to my `74 Dodge pickup. It had an old and neglected 6-cyl. I didn't go to the extreme that some of the other guys did, but it worked, and yes, the black stuff came out of the exhaust.

Another intresting trick an old man told me was to run some av gas through it. He said that the av gas had the lead in it that the old motor needed. I don't know if it was true, or even if it helped. I did noticed that the truck had a little more power (very small, but it was hard to tell with a slant-6 and 2.76:1 gears), and it made this intresting exhaust smell that I haven't smelled in years.