My 2000 Ford Explorer with the 5.0 decided to start detonating on 87 octane. I went to 89, which worked for a while, but eventually it began detonating again.

So I started it up, held the engine to 3k rpm, and dunked a vac hose into a bucket of water.

Result: No more detonation on 87 octane.

 

Damn Ben, how many cars do you have? A pair of Miatas, a Montero Sport, an Explorer, and a MB. How many others?

 

I'm actually down to 1 miata, which is waiting on the Link board to be repaired or replaced by FM.

Cars are like golf clubs, you gotta have one for each specific job.

Wifey "claimed" the explorer a couple of years ago. She had a neon at the time, and I had a work truck, so that was OK with me.

 

You sold your low mileage Miata? I hope you made a profit

 

Yeah, it paid for my Link.

 

what would that bucket of water do... except damage the engine? Maybe im missing something( like a joke), but i just dont understand

 

when a little water enters the combustion chamber, it cleans better than any product that's ever been sold.

 

HAHA no, not a joke, no engine damage. :gay:

Detonation can occur from carbon build up in the combustion chamber. I believe that this is because the carbon takes up volume which results in more pressure. The water "shocks" the carbon, causing it to break up. It ends up getting sucked through the exhaust valves and pushed out the tailpipe.

You can also try pouring a bottle of ATF in your fuel tank. ATF is a pretty good detergent. The water would be more effective.

 

wow never knew that. Thas actually really cool. Thanx for clearin that up

 

I do that from time to time on my mother-in-law's 10AE Miata. Clears her knock right up. I have done a visual inspection on the tops of the pistons a few times on her car and you can see the "clean spots" where the water cleaned them.

 

WI FTW yeah

 

Ive never heard that... weird
how much does it suck up?
just a little?

 

:gay:

naw man, you put a vac tube in a bucket, and the motor will suck in the entire contents of the bucket with a quickness. Probably something like 1 gallon per minute. I used about 3 gallons of water.

No detonation still.

 

You've heard of water-injection, right? Same idea. Steam-cleans the combustion chamber.

 

But be carefull with this!! Water exploding in a combustion chamber can cause engine deffects...

But it really cleans up good... (nice 2 see after a bad headgasket, all carbon deposites are gone...)

 

I gave my M-I-L an 8oz bottle and some vacuum hose and showed her how to gradually feed the water in over a 2-3 minute period. Not sure what the "shove a fire hose in the intake" method does or doesn't do compared to that. I know that doing two of the 8oz bottles a couple of times has really helped her car. She had the typical 1999 shitty coil pack problem and managed to coat everything with a nice carbon crust. Tons of problems associated with that crappy coil pack. Mazda should have warrantied that stuff because we have spent hundreds repairing the damage from it.

 

I did 3 gallons in ~5 minutes. Perhaps something more elegant would have been more prudent, but the firehose technique worked fine.

 

yeah just gotta be careful of hydrolock.

 

This is basically the SeaFoam technique... just with a more easily available liquid

edit: the seaform directions have you do it slowly also, dunking it into large amounts of liquid just doesn't feel wise.

 

I have a friend who siezed up a motor doing this ... however he used a friggin garden hose directly into the intake, idiot. So if i do this im feeding slowly