Sea Foam experience
 

Well, just for grins I decided to run a can of Sea Foam through the car today. I've had the car for just under 3,000 miles now, and am really enjoying driving the thing.

I came home and took the spin-on fuel filter off. I drained the fuel out of that, then topped the filter off with Sea Foam. Spun it back on and ran the engine for a minute or two. It coughed and died once or twice on start-up (I'm guessing some air in a line), then ran fine. I let it idle and gave it a good rev-up or two. Then killed it, let it sit for a few minutes, then drove it ten miles.

There really wasn't any drama at all. No terrible smell, no belching of black or white smoke, nothing. My guess is that things were cleaner than I figured in the first place, and/or the B99-B100 that I've been running since I bought the car cleaned things out for me.

Just thought I'd post about that. I'm curious if anyone else ever used this product and sort of shrugged that none of the usual reported excitement happened.

I should cross 175k miles sometime this week. :D

Cheers, John

If the W123 owners manual states to not use any additives then the W210 also states so. I really never got the seafoam stuff. Makes me think of salt water foam.

i tried it once thinking it was diesel purge (yea i was a n00b then) a noticed nothing different. therefor i never tried it agian

Nothing will happen with such a small amount. All of the SF you put in the filter was pumped back to the fuel tank within 30seconds of you starting the engine.

Interesting -- product directions said to put it in the spin-on to get it straight to the injectors. Makes sense to me, as there's no closer (practical) way to get to the injection pump. I wasn't up for all the work of a diesel purge kind of thing, and just wanted to give it a whirl -- caught a sale at the local auto parts store on the stuff. So if I've got a little bit of additive in the tank, I'm not too worried.

Cheers, John

John - You'd be surprised how fast fuel is returned to the tank. Probably 75% of it isn't used and goes into the return line.

Next time, set up a temp tank and put the cleaner in that bottle to recycle it. You'll get more bang for your buck.

Here's how.... http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/diesel-discussion/113596-e300td-diesel-purge-proceedure-solved.html

I agree--having run Diesel Purge from an engine bay-mounted juice bottle, it is easy to see how much DP is pumped back into the bottle. The already minimal amount you put in the filter was gone in a few seconds.

Follow the directions in the thread, but (as I figured out the hard way) either PLUG the fuel uptake line at the head-mounted fuel heater or make sure you car has a full tank of fuel before disconnecting that line. My tank was only 1/4 full and all the fuel in the line drained back to tank level. Imagine purging a new filter...times ten....;)