Saw an advert on the box there today so wondering if anyone has used them to sort egr & dpf carbon issues, sounds good but wonder if it’s worth it?

Terraclean was discussed a lot on the Audi B7 RS4 (which as an early FSI engine did show more carbon buildup than most GDI engines) forums when I use to own one, and some members tried it.

 

The conclusion? - it made absolutely no difference to the power/torque (according to dyno plots before and after), and when the carbon buildup in the inlet manifolds was checked with an endoscope the carbon has reappeared to the same level within 1000 miles.

 

So it was considered to be a waste of money for the unmeasurable short term change.

Although it cannot be proven to be the treatment to blame, there was a quite popular thread on Briskoda a while ago concerning issues AFTER having a car cleaned in this way. The vehicle in question started having quite catastrophic issues almost immediately after being cleaned and was at the centre of a possible legal issue. I would think twice about using this or any other deep clean method, including the strange Mr Muscle to clean a turbo, treatment. The only cleaning product I use is a bottle of Cataclean Diesel, a few times a year in a quarter filled fuel tank. Others recommend a Millers or Archers product, which is most likely similar but they will most likely either clean the fuel and exhaust system, etc, do nothing but at least do no harm! They will be like using premium fuel but at a lot less overall cost.

Edited 6 June, 20188 yr by mrgf

Not used personally, but everything I've seen from other forums suggests it's not worth the cost (around £100 iirc). Unless you are having specific issues, I would not look at getting it done.

Edited 6 June, 20188 yr by ahenners

In my opinion you are just throwning money away & risking potential damage to your fuel pump, injection system & catalyst & DPF putting anything except fuel into your fuel tank.

 

If it was needed, dealers would use it & charge you an extra €100 at each service for it.

When my other half had a BMW Mini, Terraclean was often mentioned but I decided to have it walnut blasted instead. That worked. Terraclean probably wouldn't have done. The reason it needed walnut blasting is fairly unique to the Prince engine though.

Is this similar to Carbon Tech HHO?

Edited 6 June, 20188 yr by match14

3 hours ago, SWBoy said:

Terraclean was discussed a lot on the Audi B7 RS4 (which as an early FSI engine did show more carbon buildup than most GDI engines) forums when I use to own one, and some members tried it.

 

The conclusion? - it made absolutely no difference to the power/torque (according to dyno plots before and after), and when the carbon buildup in the inlet manifolds was checked with an endoscope the carbon has reappeared to the same level within 1000 miles.

 

So it was considered to be a waste of money for the unmeasurable short term change.

 

Yeah the B7 RS4 carbon build up was all on the inlet, and Terraclean goes in at the point of injection so totally useless for those engines. They required taking apart and cleaning properly (at enormous expense!). 

 

I’ve had no personal experience of Terraclean, but can echo this point and that others have made - general consensus is that it’ll relieve you of £100 and give no benefit. 

There's a lot of bad press over the terraclean. Apparently it's a franchise set up so your results may vary depending on where you go.

 

It was offered to my uncle after his taxi started acting up (rattly on idle, hesitant acceleration and black smoke when driving). All he done was put half a tank of vpower diesel with a full bottle of redex. We went onto the motorway, dropped it down a cog or 2 and revved it up til it was screaming along. After a while, the black smoke went and the engine was behaving normal.

 

Only cost £30 for the fuel (most of which was still left for his shift) and a fiver for the redex.

 

All vehicles, every so often, need a good ragging to clear themselves out. Diesels especially. 

I filmed the launch of Chevron Techron and they certainly had a lot of evidence (from tests I believe they may have conducted) that brought 20 cars they bought at auction back to spec.

I then bought some, but can't say I noticed any major benefit, but certainly nothing bad. Although the car wasn't exactly playing up in the first place.

3 hours ago, GoneToBeemer said:

Yeah the B7 RS4 carbon build up was all on the inlet, and Terraclean goes in at the point of injection so totally useless for those engines. They required taking apart and cleaning properly (at enormous expense!).

And for little short term benefit - most people who complained of being down on power claimed it was due to carbon buildup, but when investigated by specialists the cause was normally a leak in the vacuum system that operated the inlet manifold tumble flaps and the air cleaner box power flap. Solving that vacuum leak normally permanently recovered around 60bhp, whereas a manual carbon clean would normally only regain around 30bhp and then only for around 1000 miles before the carbon buildup returned. Personally I never has a carbon buildup power loss with my RS4, when I sold it after nearly 10 years it still produced over 430bhp despite never had any carbon clean done. Remember the B7 RS4 was claimed to develop around 420bhp...

2 hours ago, tunedude said:

 All he done was put half a tank of vpower diesel with a full bottle of redex. We went onto the motorway, dropped it down a cog or 2 and revved it up til it was screaming along. After a while, the black smoke went and the engine was behaving normal.

 

Only cost £30 for the fuel (most of which was still left for his shift) and a fiver for the redex.

 

All vehicles, every so often, need a good ragging to clear themselves out. Diesels especially. 

The good old "Italian Tune" normally works wonders

This reminds me of my younger motoring days when it was considered necessary to add Redex to your tank of fuel.  Some swore by it, others found no difference.  There were also some pellets that you dropped in your tank and were supposed to boost Octane ratings.  The jury is till out on these ideas as far as I know.  Oops, I think I'm letting my age show

 

Anyway, my recipe is use top quality fuel whatever you're driving and if you have a modern diesel, give it a good blast from time to time as mentioned.

2 hours ago, SWBoy said:

The good old "Italian Tune" normally works wonders

 

Well that's it.

 

When I first heard about terraclean I thought 'well good job this has come along. What did we do before?'. I know in days gone by things were simpler, but it's making a mountain out of a molehill.

 

It's like the JML crap, it's just a load of stuff you didn't know you needed.

Snake oil and nothing more.

 

I see lots of one man bands advertising it as a DPF unclogger but they basically force a full DPF regen with a laptop.

 

 

A car was done on Wheeler Dealers hence Edd China is featured on the poster ads. My Roomster manual says to use no additives so I haven't. I doubt if any of petrol or diesel treatments work. In the days of a shot per gallon of Redex at the fuel pumps only made blue smoke at the back of my Morris Minor

Mine was occasionally difficult to start and a little lumpy on idle. 2 fillups with 1/2 bottle redex in each and it feels a bit smoother. Haven't had the starting issue either.

 

Though I'm probably postponing the inevitable of injector failure.

Back in my Focus CC days (2.0 turbo diesel pushing out a whopping 136bhp) I fed it nothing but V-Power diesel from day one.

 

Cost me an arm and a leg over and above regular diesel that I could have got from the Asda store 700 yards up the road.

 

But when I took it for its first MOT the tester made a point of telling me afterwards that he'd been testing cars for 34 years and he'd never seen a cleaner diesel.

 

Apparently he swapped out the emissions testing machine thingy because it registered nothing and he assumed it was faulty.

 

I guess you get what you pay for?

2 hours ago, SkodaVRS1963 said:

Back in my Focus CC days (2.0 turbo diesel pushing out a whopping 136bhp) I fed it nothing but V-Power diesel from day one.

 

Cost me an arm and a leg over and above regular diesel that I could have got from the Asda store 700 yards up the road.

 

But when I took it for its first MOT the tester made a point of telling me afterwards that he'd been testing cars for 34 years and he'd never seen a cleaner diesel.

 

Apparently he swapped out the emissions testing machine thingy because it registered nothing and he assumed it was faulty.

 

I guess you get what you pay for?

 

exactly right!!! A lot of people are still of the opinion 'fuel is fuel' and 'it's all the same'. It's not and the sooner they realise it, the better.

 

I was forced to throw a tank of 'regular' into my bike when I was riding through Wales (and took a wrong turning) and I did notice a difference when I opened the taps, as the bike felt a bit hesitant to accelerate (my bike is tuned for 98 RON or better fuel)

 

I understand putting v power into you car isn't going to make it do a 10 second quarter mile, but it will assist in keeping vital bits and bobs in the engine clean, with the added detergents and other additives which are in it. V power diesel also has a high cetane number, which will aid the combustion and it burns better (less crap produced). Also because of the higher cetane number, it's less dense, will run better on a cold engine and will burn under less compression.

22 minutes ago, tunedude said:

 

exactly right!!! A lot of people are still of the opinion 'fuel is fuel' and 'it's all the same'. It's not and the sooner they realise it, the better.

 

I was forced to throw a tank of 'regular' into my bike when I was riding through Wales (and took a wrong turning) and I did notice a difference when I opened the taps, as the bike felt a bit hesitant to accelerate (my bike is tuned for 98 RON or better fuel)

 

I understand putting v power into you car isn't going to make it do a 10 second quarter mile, but it will assist in keeping vital bits and bobs in the engine clean, with the added detergents and other additives which are in it. V power diesel also has a high cetane number, which will aid the combustion and it burns better (less crap produced). Also because of the higher cetane number, it's less dense, will run better on a cold engine and will burn under less compression.

And would you believe the in Ireland we dont have shell.

we're missing out!

 

8 minutes ago, seanbrady49 said:

And would you believe the in Ireland we dont have shell.

we're missing out!

 

 

I  can't think of what brand of petrol stations you've got in your neck of the woods. Don't any of them have premium diesel? 

 

Just had a butchers on google. Is circle K well known garage? Can't quite understand whether it is premium or not, but they've something call miles plus petrol and diesel.

Edited 7 June, 20188 yr by tunedude

 

9 hours ago, seanbrady49 said:

And would you believe the in Ireland we dont have shell.

we're missing out!

8 hours ago, tunedude said:

 

I  can't think of what brand of petrol stations you've got in your neck of the woods. Don't any of them have premium diesel? 

 

Just had a butchers on google. Is circle K well known garage? Can't quite understand whether it is premium or not, but they've something call miles plus petrol and diesel.

 

 

Statoil were pretty much everywhere when I lived in Wexford, they've recently rebranded to Equinor - Norwegian State Oil I think.

I remember when I was running my Sunny GTi it hated the Standard unleaded, really hesitant to pick-up and almost a pinking type effect and Statoil had a Premium unleaded which made a real difference, this was 1996-98 tho'. A massive 148bhp from a 2 litre turbo twin cam!

11 hours ago, KevC_Derby said:

 

 

Statoil were pretty much everywhere when I lived in Wexford, they've recently rebranded to Equinor - Norwegian State Oil I think.

I remember when I was running my Sunny GTi it hated the Standard unleaded, really hesitant to pick-up and almost a pinking type effect and Statoil had a Premium unleaded which made a real difference, this was 1996-98 tho'. A massive 148bhp from a 2 litre turbo twin cam!

 

Ha ha, when I was growing up, everywhere you looked there was a "National" filling station.......I seem to remember a blue and yellow logo featuring a woman's head.

 

What happened to them?

On ‎07‎.‎06‎.‎2018 at 23:50, tunedude said:

exactly right!!! A lot of people are still of the opinion 'fuel is fuel' and 'it's all the same'. It's not and the sooner they realise it, the better.

 

I was forced to throw a tank of 'regular' into my bike when I was riding through Wales (and took a wrong turning) and I did notice a difference when I opened the taps, as the bike felt a bit hesitant to accelerate (my bike is tuned for 98 RON or better fuel)

 

Theres a big difference between petrol & diesel when it comes to cheap & premium.

Premium petrol increases the RON (91/93/95/97/99 etc) and can have a big impact on the engine charactersitcs especially if your ECU/engine is able to support automatically detecting higher RON.

A old engine tuned for 98 RON fuel will obviously not run well with 91 or 95 RON.

Modern "performance" engines will automatically adjust the ignition timing when the detect higher RON fuel.

 

Premium diesel just contains "cleaning" additives.

In modern engines with electronic injection & combustion control these are not really necessary in my view.

I've always used supermarket fuel for my entire driving life & have never had a problem due to fuel or seen a difference (except in my wallet) when trying BP Ultimate or something like this.

 

Edited 11 June, 20188 yr by Gabbo

On 08/06/2018 at 19:38, SkodaVRS1963 said:

 

Ha ha, when I was growing up, everywhere you looked there was a "National" filling station.......I seem to remember a blue and yellow logo featuring a woman's head.

 

What happened to them?

 

I think the colourful National logo was Mercury, a male classical god with a winged helmet.  Formerly National Benzole (a blend of petrol and benzole, derived from coal- thanks Google)

Any one remember the cheap ICI petrol? I was told it was actually their chemical by- products.

Regent petrol, famous for their bullet-hole car stickers.

Burmah fuels were big in the Edinburgh area when I started driving in the early 1970s and were always cheaper than Esso and Shell.

Edited 11 June, 20188 yr by gregoir