Quote:
Originally Posted by pinballdave
I drove the car fairly regularly, both before and after the treatment, and it did feel more responsive afterward, and being generally sceptical I was fairly surprised that I noticed a difference. But it didn't last for long before it was back to how it was before the cleaning.
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Like i said much further up in slightly different words (post #2 or #3 or thereabouts) once you stop the cleaning process the engine will start making itself dirty again. How long it takes before the performance drops off is another matter but can't see it taking that long on a used engine.
Some time back when the only ATF available for my other beast was £12/L from the dealer, i looked into ATF Dialysis - in short this machine would pump out your ATF, clean it and return it to your gearbox.
The cost at the time was about half the cost of buying the correct fluid to renew the ATF and the correct ATF had the friction modifiers (that would either have been worn out or cleaned out by the dialysis) in and they would have been missing after the dialysis process. The friction modifiers were there to help effect a smooth change as one clutch pack dropped out and the next dropped in to change the ratios.
End result was i came to the conclusion that ATF Dialysis wasn't a viable proposition and any benefits would be short lived to be outweighed in th long term by the lack of additives that the new fluid had.
I think a similar principle to hydrogen cleaning will apply. Strip the engine and do a full decoke and it will stay clean. Have the DPF/cats cleaned and they will stay cleaner on a clean engine. Granted that is much dearer but the improvements will last longer and the economy and perforance will be returned to near or better than new and stay there a lot longer than hydrogen cleaning.
Perhaps if the car is running badly and smoking a bit before the MoT is due a hydrogen clean would be effective enough to get it through an MoT and sold to some unsuspecting buyer but next year it is likely to be just as bad!