Sea Foam

Ventucky Red

Ventucky Red

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Jon
Anyone here ever use Sea Foam on their auto engine? The whole treatment, oil additive, gas additive, and throttle body spray... If so did you notice an improvement in the engine?
 
I know people that swear by it, and other people that would not touch the stuff.

I have never used it, but also I have not heard any horror stories about it.
 
If I haven't ridden one of my bikes for awhile, I'll pull a fuel line and squirt some into the carb and let it sit for awhile. Then flush it out with clean fuel and go riding. For my FI bikes, I'd always keep the fuel tanks full and throw a little in the tank if I knew I wouldn't be riding for awhile. Never tried it in any of my vehicles.
 
I've been tempted to see if it does anything useful in the old gasser cars, but never the airplane.

Airplanes don't have stupid stuff like emissions systems (ironic we're talking about that in the diesel truck thread) designed to destroy engines, and it's rare to find crud in the intake side of things when you see airplane engines apart on the bench.

If you do, it was most likely by huge numbers, that you put it there with a bad load of fuel at some point.

Probably the better question is: What would you want Sea Foam to clean up that's dirty in an aircraft engine?

The reactions to it online also seem way too cultish. Not as cultish as hundreds of people who jump into any motor oil discussion and say they're "Amzoil dealers and can get it at wholesale for you", caused by the whole company selling via MLM business practices... but cultish nonetheless.

If I'm going to be in a cult, I'll make it an aviation specific one, like CamGuard!
 
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It's a solvent. For getting rid of external crud that can bind linkages? Probably great. Internally? With modern oils and gasoline, unnecessary and potentially counterproductive.
 
I use it quite effectively in my Rotax 912 engine as well as the diesels in my boat.
 
Art VanDelay said:
I use it quite effectively in my Rotax 912 engine as well as the diesels in my boat.
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And how did you define "effective"? I've never seen a properly controlled test for any of this stuff. Just because it goes through the engine and burns doesn't mean it did anything useful.
 
I've used it in older engines, but only via vacuum line or direct into carb. It creates a nice smoke show, but I was doing so more as a preventive every few years, not as a fix for poor operation.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
denverpilot said:
And how did you define "effective"? I've never seen a properly controlled test for any of this stuff. Just because it goes through the engine and burns doesn't mean it did anything useful.
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It is effective in moving money from the consumer to the retailer, distributor, and manufacturer.
 
GlennAB1 said:
It has caused my engines to idle more smoothly and feel more responsive.
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Well I trust ya. They're your engines. But I haven't seen any evidence of that done with a proper control. Shouldn't be that hard for someone to get with modern data loggers and OBD-II data.

A dongle to prove it and log it to a smartphone is about $40, if even that, and not a single video of anyone showing hard data in a sea of YT videos of all sorts of automotive enthusiasts shooting video of even the most boring things. M

Plenty of videos of the stuff creating white smoke out the exhaust pipe for all of these solvents that get sold to pass through engines. Just the sheer number of those would make me think there would be at least one person scientific enough to do a real A/B test, even an anecdotal one.
 
GlennAB1 said:
Less than $10 to try the product and see if you notice a difference, no need to get all scientific.
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Way less than $10 to pee in my gas tank too, and "try that out", but it isn't really a good reason to do it. LOL.
 
denverpilot said:
And how did you define "effective"? I've never seen a properly controlled test for any of this stuff. Just because it goes through the engine and burns doesn't mean it did anything useful.
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Not finding water in the fuel anymore is a pretty good outcome for me. Although I'm not ready to put on a lab coat and walk around with a clipboard just yet either.
 
As an avid outdoorsman I've had my share of outboard motors / chainsaws / mowers / etc that over time would idle rough and often not even stay running or be difficult to start. Often manually cleaning the carb was the fix but not always. I've always stayed away from ethanol fuel but things still gum up over time.

It was my experience with a 40hp mercury (bass tracker) that made me a sea foam believer. I could get it to run but it was just rough. Wouldn't idle at all. Cleaned the carbs meticulously. Still rough.

I read some stuff online regarding carbon deposits / sticky cylinder walls. I used the spray version of the sea foam... got the engine running and started spraying the sea foam into the carbs. With an aggressive spray I was actually able to choke the engine out. I let it sit for about 15 minutes and started it back up. The degree of black smoke that rolled from that engine was hard to describe. For a moment I was truly shook up that there had to be flames under that smoke. It coughed, sputtered, snorted, etc over about a 15 second period and then she was done. It was like new life had been breathed into her. Literally ran like a brand new engine from that moment forward.

So yeah I'm a believer. Would I ever use it in my plane though? Hell no. That's what camguard is for.
 
Seafoam fuel additive is mineral spirits (Varsol) and isopropyl alcohol. If it magically makes an engine run better you probably had water in the fuel. I've used it in my planes and had good results when I needed a little help with water in a carb. Fuel injection? Save your money. MMO and a little bottle of Isopropyl is a lot cheaper than Seafoam.
 
It probably does do a little to help, but more importantly when you use it, you WANT it to work, so it will feel like the engine is running better. (placebo)

This feeling of well-being decreases stress, which increases lifespan.

So using seafoam increases your lifespan.

That's the real reason to use it. LOL.
 
Stewartb said:
Seafoam fuel additive is mineral spirits (Varsol) and isopropyl alcohol. If it magically makes an engine run better you probably had water in the fuel. I've used it in my planes and had good results when I needed a little help with water in a carb. Fuel injection? Save your money. MMO and a little bottle of Isopropyl is a lot cheaper than Seafoam.
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This is what I was thinking when Art said he no longer has water in fuel. The next step is finding out how the water is getting in there in the first place. If it isn't leaking in, it's usually the ethanol fuel and that's an easy fix if you can find non-corn juice gasoline.

Thankfully Walmart (of all crazy things) has finally brought their Murphey Express gas stations to town and every pump has an additional third hose... one for corn-juice in three octanes, one for diesel, and one for non-corn juice gas at $0.20 more per gallon.
 
GlennAB1 said:
Water in fuel is a natural process of condensation forming from cold fuel and humid air.
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And removable with isopropyl. Which is essentially what "Heet" was for decades. Even that was a lot cheaper than Sea Foam. But as the other poster said, you can buy the real deal and use that.

Technically you could just run the corn juice gas and it would suck it all up, too... perhaps in quite undesirable ways... but you wouldn't find any water in the gas, unless you had incredible amounts of condensation. It'd all be suspended in the ethanol. For better or worse.

That's got to be one of the best parts of living in the desert southwest and high plains. Stuff doesn't rust and you don't have to deal with water in everything.

Our mechanic once joked...

"If you ever find a Colorado airplane that's been seriously damaged by corrosion, I want to know what lake they pulled it out of."

:)
 
SeaFoam like many of the related additives is a light petroleum solvent. Its use as a general additive to either oil or fuel is somewhat illusory. I use it to clean up gunked stuff (straight out of the can).
 
A lot of people swear by Sea Foam. I have A friend the swears by Chevron Tectron. Can other less expensive products do the same job? Maybe. Probably. As I said, I like Marvel Mystery Oil.
 
I use marvel Mystery Oil in my lawn mower, especially I use too much when I need to thin down the bugs in the area.

And my lawn is mostly weeds and rocks....but my mower starts first pull every time.
 
I've used it occasionally in the gas on my carbed bikes when I don't ride for awhile and to cut down on water and help keep the jets from clogging.
Might be snake oil as I don't have any definitive proof that it works.
 
I used a tad of SeaFoam when I left gas in my tank for about 6-8 months once. The carbs were all gummed up. I ran it per the manufacturer's recommendations, and it did quite a bit of cleaning. The issue I was warned about though was that if you pour it into your gas tank, make sure the gas tank is pretty clean on its own. Otherwise, the SeaFoam will do a really good job of cleaning the gas tank of the rust...which will start making its way into the rest of your fuel system.

Not to mention, it smokes good when running seafoam through the engine. But, it does a good job of cleaning the gunk out.
 
At least MMO has a minty fresh sent.
 
flyingron said:
At least MMO has a minty fresh sent.
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I've always wondered if the MMO and Sea Foam crowd intersects with the various "Miracle" dietary supplement consumers!! ;)

(the infomercials look very similar...)
 
You can look up the msds for these products. Sea Foam is not varsol it is pale oil, isopropyl alcohol and naptha (fuel for Coleman lanterns). Pale oil is between kerosene and diesel.
Google MMO msds and you may decide to keep that out of your engines also.
 
ronnieh said:
You can look up the msds for these products. Sea Foam is not varsol it is pale oil, isopropyl alcohol and naptha (fuel for Coleman lanterns). Pale oil is between kerosene and diesel.
Google MMO msds and you may decide to keep that out of your engines also.
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What! You mean it's not a magical chemical formulation??? :eek: :confused:
 
ElPaso Pilot said:
What! You mean it's not a magical chemical formulation??? :eek:
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Well it is magical in a chemical way. It appears that they are using a wetting agent to help dissolve oxidized hydrocarbons in an engine. In this case the isopropyl alcohol is doing the dirty work. I've used isopropyl to help remove water from rocks which is really majic. I suspect that just dumping isopropyl in the tank would do the same thing without all the white smoke. Note that isopropyl is effective at low concentrations so ya don't need a lot of it.
 
Say what you will about MMO or Seafoam but if you run two engines to TBO, one with top oil and one without? It'll be easy to predict which is cleaner inside. One side benefit of MMO is the red dye bonds with water so any water in your sumped fuel is really simple to see. And if your Lycoming has morning sickness? The first thing most mechanics will suggest is to put MMO into the crankcase and go fly it for a while. These elixirs have their place. I keep a gallon of MMO around for boats and wheelers that don't get run regularly. It helps.
 
Well the Isopropanol will absorb water (dry gas has this as the active component), but still I can't say it has any lasting benefit to the oil.
 
flyingron said:
Well the Isopropanol will absorb water (dry gas has this as the active component), but still I can't say it has any lasting benefit to the oil.
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Nobody said it did. But you do need to think about what compounds for which isopropyl will act as a solvent.

By the way, isopropyl doesn't "absorb" water. It is miscible with water in all proportions and results in a lower surface tension which lets it pass through a fuel system.
 
Stewartb said:
Say what you will about MMO or Seafoam but if you run two engines to TBO, one with top oil and one without? It'll be easy to predict which is cleaner inside. One side benefit of MMO is the red dye bonds with water so any water in your sumped fuel is really simple to see. And if your Lycoming has morning sickness? The first thing most mechanics will suggest is to put MMO into the crankcase and go fly it for a while. These elixirs have their place. I keep a gallon of MMO around for boats and wheelers that don't get run regularly. It helps.
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Soaking a stuck engine, sure.

For ongoing use? I still struggle to believe that every major petroleum company, aviation or automotive, has decided that the fantastic claimed engine benefits of adding a few pennies worth of common solvents to their highly engineered products is a crappy idea and that they all leave that lucrative business market to aftermarket products.

This stuff has been around since what, the 30's, and no one has published a controlled study showing positive results yet??
 
ElPaso Pilot said:
Soaking a stuck engine, sure.

For ongoing use? I still struggle to believe that every major petroleum company, aviation or automotive, has decided that the fantastic claimed engine benefits of adding a few pennies worth of common solvents to their highly engineered products is a crappy idea and that they all leave that lucrative business market to aftermarket products.

This stuff has been around since what, the 30's, and no one has published a controlled study showing positive results yet??
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Very good points. Regular oil changes are much better than dumping kerosene and alcohol in the sump which already has contaminated/oxidized oil in it. The other side of the coin is once solids have precipitated and adhered to engine components can the majic stuff help remove them? In cars I use synthetic oils to avoid the precipitates. Lots of folks don't take care of engines in toys and yard equipment. Maybe the majic stuff helps there. I don't know since I don't use it. I can contribute by sharing info on the physical chemistry but that's mostly limited to suggesting ways that things might be working in a chemical sense.

Hey, if somebody has some research money we could study this stuff and develop simulators to model the system's behavior!
 
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