So i got my 2.0 tdi (2015) with 38k miles at the weekend. As far as i know it was an older person that owned it from new. Not one for stereo typing but thought it likely that it had a sedate life and possibly only ever run on supermarket fuel (worst case). So first thing i did was fill up at shell and add 50ml of millers additive. 

 

Dpf regened when i got it and said 279 miles since last regen. Not sure if it completed the cycle before the 279 miles but it did for me (down to 25%).

 

Checked after about 75 miles and dpf already at 63%. Thought that might b a combination of the millers and some spirited driving.

 

So today i treated it to Wynns egr cleaner. Car was at about 67% dpf and just shy of 100miles.

 

I know people will say to clean the egr u need to remove it. I dont disagree but this was more a preventative measure.

 

So applied the wynns as recommended. Then went for the 3 miles, again as recommended. As i started out i thought i would open the app and see if the soot had increased in 10 mins. A bit shocked to find it was 100+7%. Have nevr seen it above 95% in my last octavia. 

 

So whether or not the wynns cleaned the egr, it definitely loosened something! Took forever to get the dpf back to 25% as although it was burning as fast as it could, i think the engine was still dumping soot and prob will do for another few hundred miles.  

 

Screen shot of dpf app attached.

16 minutes ago, cmcm789 said:

So applied the wynns as recommended.

How is it applied?

1 minute ago, Wino said:

How is it applied?

Aerosol spray sprayed into air inlet. Just disconnect pipe between air box /MAF sensor and the inlet manifold and spray in short bursts until the can is empty. Only £10 for the can so not much to lose if it doesnt work.

I just used it to clean up a 97,000 mile, 12 year old vw fox 1.4 that had had a questionable service history.

 

it worked very well with direct contact and seems to have worked well generally....

 

however the air filter was a 2013 filter as was every other filter, so I wouldn’t say well looked after. Not sure i’d use it on an EA288 though...

 

So... I'm calling bull**** on this snake-oil stuff until they can produce some credible evidence*.

 

First, they are going to come up with a credible hypothesis for *how* it works. 

 

Then they are going to have to do enough blinded testing to prove that it *actually* works to both a statistically and a mechanically significant extent.

 

There is a long-history of snake-oil-bull****tery in motoring. Terraclean, carbon clean, fuel additives etc. etc.

 

There is no big-auto conspiracy going on to hide these things from the masses. If they worked, they would be evidenced and the big boys would be making the money, not some plucky little company with their spray/pour-in additives.

 

 

*anecdotes are not evidence.
 

20 minutes ago, Jono said:

 

So... I'm calling bull**** on this snake-oil stuff until they can produce some credible evidence*.

 

First, they are going to come up with a credible hypothesis for *how* it works. 

 

Then they are going to have to do enough blinded testing to prove that it *actually* works to both a statistically and a mechanically significant extent.

 

There is a long-history of snake-oil-bull****tery in motoring. Terraclean, carbon clean, fuel additives etc. etc.

 

There is no big-auto conspiracy going on to hide these things from the masses. If they worked, they would be evidenced and the big boys would be making the money, not some plucky little company with their spray/pour-in additives.

 

 

*anecdotes are not evidence.
 

Jono

It's been years since I was in Halfords to look at the additives and the amount of them available for cleaning every filter or valve for both petrol or diesel was astounding. Something for every ailment. There's definitely money in Snake oil!

 

As for my car, whether or not the spray made a button of difference to the EGR I will never know, but the combination of it and the additive has definitely cleared a lot of soot out of my engine.

 

The thing is, you have *absolutely no idea* if you got to the end result *because* of the additive, or even *despite* of the additives.

 

Correlation =/= Causation.

 

8 minutes ago, Jono said:

 

The thing is, you have *absolutely no idea* if you got to the end result *because* of the additive, or even *despite* of the additives.

 

Correlation =/= Causation.

 

"Absolutely no idea"??

 

Car was run for 2 days with millers diesel additive and some harder acceleration. During this time the soot output to the dpf was consistently higher than normal and not just when I put the boot down (monitored through DPF app). After 10 mins of spraying Wynn's into the engine, the DPF had accumulated soot equivalent to being driven over 200 miles under normal conditions (again as displayed by the DPF app as my original post). I've been driving a diesel with DPF for over 7 years and monitored the DPF app regularly without ever seeing it fill like this, and that includes after the car was remapped.

 

If as you say all these additives are pure snake oil, feel free the explain the above.

 

I didn't create this post to try and convince people like yourself that this "snake oil" as you put it is all singing all dancing, but for those who may be on the fence and wish to use it just on the off chance it can improve efficiency, clean/ lubricate the engine or as a push extend the life of your EGR. For £10 I'm quite happy with my purchase.

What makes you sure the soot wasn't just being produced as the additive was burnt off?

13 minutes ago, cmcm789 said:

I didn't create this post to try and convince people like yourself that this "snake oil" as you put it is all singing all dancing, but for those who may be on the fence and wish to use it just on the off chance it can improve efficiency, clean/ lubricate the engine or as a push extend the life of your EGR. For £10 I'm quite happy with my purchase.

 

Ignore Jono he has a long history of claiming products are snake oil. 

 

I would be interested to see how long it lasts for. Having cleaned a few EGR valves I suspect it’s removed very little as it won’t have had time to dwell and dissolve the real grunge that reduces airflow but enough to show as additional soot. You’re normally able to tell when the EGR is clean after driving with a dirty one as the engine will be more responsive to your throttle inputs. 

Next time I have an EGR to clean I might get some Wynns to try direct and see if it’s anymore effective. 

8 minutes ago, langers2k said:

What makes you sure the soot wasn't just being produced as the additive was burnt off?

Can't say I looked at the tin that closely, but given it's a glorified carb cleaner and therefore highly combustible I would be pretty sure it is at least as combustible as the diesel being run through the engine and given that it is a 200ml? tin I would think worst case the contents of the tin itself would produce the equivalent amount of soot of driving 10-15 miles (0.2l of fuel equivalent), not 200 miles.

 

As I said before, I'm not selling/justifying this stuff, just created the post because I was surprised at the results and in case anyone else would be interested. 

This is an old EGR valve and as you can imagine it’s not too hard to remove some of the grunge in there with a spray cleaner under compressed conditions  but to really clean it takes time, lots of cleaner and mechanical removal. 

 

2 minutes ago, CWARD said:

 

Ignore Jono he has a long history of claiming products are snake oil. 

 

I would be interested to see how long it lasts for. Having cleaned a few EGR valves I suspect it’s removed very little as it won’t have had time to dwell and dissolve the real grunge that reduces airflow but enough to show as additional soot. You’re normally able to tell when the EGR is clean after driving with a dirty one as the engine will be more responsive to your throttle inputs. 

Next time I have an EGR to clean I might get some Wynns to try direct and see if it’s anymore effective. 

I watched a youtube clip before buying the wynns of someone testing it on an egr. They removed and showed the EGR before and after. The Wynns only removed the freshest looking crud (probably the most recent layer) but did little for the years of build up underneath. Possibly if it were used at every service from new it may make a difference over the life of the car. It was by no means a resolution to a blocked EGR. I used it as a preventative measure as i'll be holding onto the car for a while. If it works it works.

Just now, CWARD said:

This is an old EGR valve and as you can imagine it’s not too hard to remove some of the grunge in there with a spray cleaner under compressed conditions  but to really clean it takes time, lots of cleaner and mechanical removal. 

 

Completely agree.

I’d agree with that as a maintenance product it would work but as a cleaner it would have a minimal effect. 

No doubt you could run this through week after week and it would gradually removal the gunk but the cost would be far greater than fitting a new EGR.  Not sure what damage it would do to seals etc if you were to do so not recommended. 

 

You added fuel additive then drove spiritedly in a car you suspect never stretched it's legs.

 

How can you know it was the additive and not the harder driving that dislodged coke and caused the DPF to fill?

 

Decades of overwhelming observable evidence shows us that the "Italian Tune up" does often dislodge a lot of crap. I'd suggest that that is a lot more likely than magic fuel additive.

 

 

There is another confounding factor - we are taking it trust that the VAG DPF app accurately tells us how much soot is in there. It's not impossible that the fuel additive does something that falsely raised that reading, either because it burns to soot itself, or changes the properties of the soot so the DPF "reads" differently. Different particulate size? different unburned hydrocarbon-mixture properties? etc. Not to labour that point though, it's conjecture, but it adds another level of doubt.

 

 

It's not safe to conclude that 200ml of additive makes the same amount of soot as 200ml of diesel. By definition it's not the same stuff, so cant assume it smokes the same. 

 

Although, how funny would it be if it WAS the same stuff, just with some blue dye in. Instead of doing anything tangible it relied on us just trusting that it *must* do something plus some anecdotes from mates that tried it and don't want to admit they were duped.

 

 

 

 

CWARD - you are quite right - I do claim bull**** a lot. There is a lot of bull****.

 

Sometimes it makes me angry, sometimes I just think of it as a gullibility-tax  

 

 

 

Anyway, it's not up to me to disprove something. It's up to the person selling it to prove it works.

 

I'd be wary spraying anything into an expensive DPF or Cat that is advised against by your car's engineers and isn't known to be safe. 

 

Oh, the additive manufacturers say it is safe? must be safe then.

 

 

 

 

As said above, an Italian tune up is a usual fix for clearing out any crap from an engine. Best thing I've always done with any of my cars. When I got my nan's old Fiesta as my first car, it failed it's MOT on emissions due to 14 years of never being driven faster than 30mph or put into 5th!!! Half a tank of V power and a rag up the motorway and tad daa, one passed MOT.

Italian tune up was the way my relative used to get a fleet of pre DPF Leyland Sherpa delivery vans an MOT test pass. 

Apparently the initial smoky phase was pretty ugly.

As far as additives are concerned I am yet to see a truly independent test confirming any benefits outweighing cost of the product.

Spraying it directly on a petrol throttle body removed the burnt on oil and carbon from the breather, so it certainly has some effect.

 

it wasn’t an additive, but a direct solvent cleaner on an intake path.

 

fuel used to wash the valves to keep them clean before direct injection. I imagine this is similar. Will it clean a filthy EGR in situ.... no.

 

will it help washing off deposits before they build up (looks like it)

 

addative wise the old millers was was fantastic when put in for mot test of old.

Edited 21 September, 20187 yr by cheezemonkhai