Is seafoam safe? Options

[ILoveMySilly97]

I've heard that seafoam is a really good and easy way to clean the car up a bit. When I go look at videos and ask people they tell me pour it into the Oil crank case, Brake booster, and fuel tank. It sounds stupid to pour something that doesn't belong into the brake booster and espescially the crank case. I just want to know if anyone has ever used it and does it really work or is it just stupid.

[Galcobar]

Never heard of putting it in the brake booster.

The danger of Sea Foam isn't the Sea Foam itself, but the gunk (varnish from gas or carbon deposits from gas or oil) it cleans out. Sea Foam in the crankcase means that it will clean out deposits from the oil system -- which is good, unless a deposit is plugging a small flaw in a seal. In that case, you removed a carbon deposit and revealed a leak; that's what happened to me, and I ended up with my slow leak from the oil pump seal becoming a fast leak. It didn't change that the seal needed to be replaced, it did change how quickly I had to get it done.

Sea Foam will reduce the viscosity of your oil, but not to the point of it being incapable of protecting your engine if you follow proper dilution procedures. That said, I would still change my oil within a couple days after using it because of all the crud the treatment will transfer from the engine into the oil, or sooner if it's the first time the treatment's being done on an old engine.

Sea Foam in the gas or via the intake is much less of an issue. If your fuel system is heavily gunked, then there's the possibility you could loosen something which will plug an injector. However, modern gas with all its additives makes that improbable, particularly since the introduction of ethanol to the gas supply (ethanol is very good at removing built up varnish). Being more powerful than your standard fuel additives, however, it will be more capable of removing the baked-on deposits in the combustion chamber.

This post has been edited by Galcobar: Apr 1, 2012 - 9:18 PM