Originally Posted by
ryan roopnarine
i'd suggest that if you don't have an extreme ping, that you not do this again, or do it with something non-fouling, like water....
the risks of doing this with a cleaner.....
--hard on cat (it IS a chemical, after all)
--risk of spark plug foul
--hard on o2 sensor
the risks of doing it with water are the same, except substitute giant @ss pieces of carbon doing the damage instead of chemical. some of that has to end up in the cat, and on the o2 sensor. bill r said its also hard on ring lands. someone else told me that any time you do this, the piston tops begin to crater (if only a little). i have a used oil sample under my bathroom sink that i haven't gotten a chance to send away for analysis yet, i did 3 decarbs on this oil, so we'll see if any engine type metals or ring type metals ended up in the oil solution.
what i'd do if i were you, is to take out a plug and use a flashlight to evaluate how much carbon is down there. the m50 is waaaayyyy more sensitive to buildup than is the m20s they mention on that board, (namely cause of the 10 or 10.5:1 compression) so its going to take more work, over time to solve your problem. i found that there's a limit to how much induction will clean. what i did find effective was doing the saturn piston soak (because most m50s have carbon everywhere, removing some, even if its not on the valves, helps). what i also found to clear crap out post haste is using berryman's b12 additive in 4 or 8x recommended solution in gas. if you think that the insides of your fuel lines, et cetera, are congested with crap, then don't do this. i wait until the fuel light comes on, put in one or two WHOLE cans of the stuff into the gas, put about 1/2 gallon of gas on top of it to mix it up, and eye-tallian tuneup to my comfort threshold of running out of gas. this suprisingly didn't do anything for city driving, but my highway driving mileage seems to have gone up dramatically after doing this, so i might do this again before my next oil change. if i were you, i'd definitely pull the o2 sensor out of the exhaust before doing any cleaning procedure, you'd be suprised how quickly it fouls it when the cleaning method is really effective.