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My mechanic laughed when I asked about fuel injector cleaner, then showed me the carbon on my valves after 60,000 miles
He pulled off the intake manifold and there was this thick black crust caked on everything, said those $5 bottles of cleaner at the gas station do basically nothing compared to a walnut blast. Has anyone else had a shop actually prove this stuff is a waste of money?
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violafox6d ago
laughed when I asked about fuel injector cleaner" - honestly that's kind of the right reaction from a good mechanic. The thing is, those bottles aren't totally useless, they just can't handle serious buildup like what you saw. They're more for prevention if you use them every few thousand miles on a clean engine, but once you've got carbon crust like that, yeah, it's walnut blast time or nothing. I've seen videos where people run a whole bottle through and then pull the manifold anyway - still looks like a burnt toast factory in there. So your mechanic wasn't wrong to laugh, but those cleaners do have a tiny bit of purpose if you start early enough.
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black.jordan6d ago
That bit about "burnt toast factory" cracked me up because it's so accurate. I've been burned by those cleaners myself, spent like $15 on a bottle hoping it'd fix a rough idle and it did absolutely nothing. Solidarity on learning that one the hard way, man.
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