I recently heard that water down the carb will in effect, 'steam clean' the motor and help clean the valves. The way it was explained seemed logical but I thought I'd bounce it off you guys.
It was mentioned because I am shy 50 psi of compression in one cylinder and the topic came up as an idea to clean the valves so they would seat better and possibly bring compression back.


What do you think?

Ever try Seafoam? One way to try it is, warm the engine up, and disconnect a vac hose at idle. Dip the hose into the can and let it suck up the entire can. After the can is empty, shut the engine off for about 15-20 minutes. Then take the car for a spin. I've read a few articles about how it cleans the combustion chambers and valves. Hey at worse you'll have a cool smoke screen.

Try to tell you what I know, and what I think. For what it's worth.

I don't think you'll bring back 50#. But who knows.

I have seen water injection on engines, but not car engines. It is succesful at removing some deposits, not all.
The application I know of used it to bring uncontrollable CO exhaust gases back into range. Limited success. I did it to a large V-16 engine one time. It was boring and didn't do squat, but it would have been cheaper than a $25,000 head swap... 16 heads @ a grand apiece plus labor and downtime.

Water may get plugs wet if too enthusiastic.

In order for water to soften deposits, it must be applied over a fairly long period of time or the deposits don't absorb it.

Water injection must be metered, and to a known inlet air volume. Proportion, that's the word I want. In other words on a car, enough to do some good at WOT or half throttle will kill an idling engine.

My Dad used to talk about a water injected Dodge engine, but I never saw one. I think he said they(Dodge) did this in order to control detonation. Which water will do because you lose power out of the fuel to convert the state of the water. As well as any cooling effect on the air charge.

All I got right off the top off my pointy head regarding water injection.

Lets step back here one second! You are 50lbs. low on one cyl did you do a leak down test to see if the cyl is leaking past the vale,rings or even head gasket? If you know it is past the valve and you think you may have excessive carbon build up, what you want to do is go to a GM dealer and purchase X66 treatment. It is designed to remove carbon and works excellent. You must be carefull pooring any liquid down the carb if you dump it in to fast you could create hydrostatic lock and bend a rod. Even a little could pound a rod bearing so you must be careful!!! If you have a stuck ring try Risilone (that may not be spelled corectly) it works great and I would use it on any eng. with more than 50,000 mi. once in a while. It frees up sticky rings. Good luck

Where do I get risoline?

What is the x66 stuff you talk about?