How to use Seafoam on a B7A4

[mr shickadance]

i'll edit this and post up pictars but im bored in class right now and someone asked me about how to do a seafoam on a b7 so here we go:

materials needed

seafoam - i bought one can, if i had to do it again i would have gotten 2 to be honest

1-2 feet of vacumn hose (i used this)
OR
1-2 feet of 1/2 inch outside diameter to 1/4 inch inside diameter tubing

t-25 torx driver (if you go the 1/2inch to 1/4 inch tube method)

basket ball needle (for the 1/2 inch route)


so this is very simple however you should change your oil, and spark plugs immediatly after you seafoam, why? bc your sparkplugs will most likely foul and while you can leave it in your oil, this product is designed to clean your engine, so where does all that carbon build-up go after the seafoam? your oil, so switch it out with some fresh liquids after your done

step one:
1/3 of the bottle in the gas tank (if you can't do this step then hire a mechanic )

step two:
1/3 of the bottle in the oil (nothing fancy here it, unscrew the oil cap, pour it in)

step three
A)
the vacuum hose method


if you go the vacuum hose route (if you have a boost gauge and have tapped the vacumn part), pull off the boost tap, and attach the vacuum hose

start the car, the idle will be rough bc of the vacuum you have created, pour the rest of the seafoam into a coffee mug or a something where you can see the liquid. use the car's vacuum pressure to slurp the seafoam into the intake manifold. DO NOT dunk the hose into the seafoam, you will stall your car out, instead try to get a nice slurping noise much like taking the last sips out of a big gulp from 7-11.

it will suck up the seafoam very fast, this shouldn;t take longer then like 2 minutes at best


B)
the 1/2inch to 1/4 method

attach a basketball needle to the hose



unscrew the one t-25 torx screw holding on the IAT temp sensor which is located on the top of the intake manifold (pretty easy to find but i will be posting a picture later)

stick the hose into that hole (should be about the size of a 1/2 inch diameter

hold onto that hose as a friend starts the car, the idle should be a slightly rough but the opening of the basketball needle is so small that the loss of pressure should not be that great

again pour the rest of the seafoam into a coffee mug or something and slurp the seafoam liquid using the basketball needle and the vacumn from your car


step four

once done, shut off the car, replace the IAT sensor/boostgauge hose, start the car up, drive it fairly hard for about 15 miles (i basically did this one a 1/4 tank of gas, did the seafoam, drove to a gas station that was decently far away and drove back to finish with an oil/plugs change)

you want to take it up to redline a few times while the white smoke is still present

you will have looooooooottttttssssss of white smoke, it will look stupid, people will stare at you. it will be almost as if your car is on its last leg, but it ill run fine and perform great

by about mile 10 the white smoke should cease meaning that the seafoam in your intake manifold is all gone


step 5)

all done, change oil (let the car cool down obviously), change plugs, change clothes

[AWDTURBO]

I though it was bad to seafoam our cars?

[mr shickadance]

its one of those things where somepeople will tell you its the greatest thing since a vagina, other people will tell its the worst and a waste of money


i did this while changing gear oil, one step colder plugs, and oil so its hard to say if the seaoam did anything but my car runs a LOT smoother now, its prolly because of all the things combined but it was pretty easy to do and reletively cheap so i would do it again prolly in another 15-20k miles

[Leo14]

Sweet! Thank you for this, now next time I need to do an oil change I'll do this + spark plugs

[jimrobbington]

Thanks Shicky, I will be doing this soon, but dammit, I didn't think of it til just after my last oil change. Got a while now.

[yayjohnny]

Nice writeup! I'll do it on my next oil change!
Shoot his over to the Tech section Mods :)

[PhiDelt]

Thanks Shick. Seems pretty easy. I just picked up a can of sea foam and was starting to search for the how to on this. Much appreciated.

[ADV.1 Matt]

Good writeup and pictures! Thanks!

[kristokes]

Thanks for the write up Scott

I'll move this into the B7A4 tech sub-forum after a few days - I just want other members who don't frequent the tech section to see and comment on this.

FWIW, it was the combination of various maintenance that made your car a lot smoother and not just Seafoam alone.

[vdubjetta02]

I put seafoam in my gas tank last time i filled up.... car seams to run a little smoother. The motor was making some new noises, so i put seafom and "restore" into my car. Engine ran fine after that.....

[CleverA4Name]

Great writeup man, I was just thinking about doing this myself!

Also, did you just get the original or the Deep Creep?

[shiro1745]

You gotta be kidding me, this is just perfect timing. I just got seafoam a few days ago and I was asking in a different thread about this.
Will do this soon.
Thanks!

Edit: @ mr shickadance I was actually asking you LOL , just realized

[mr shickadance]

@ clever
It was just the regular stuff

@shiro
Welcome

[wootwoot]

mr shickadance thank you for the DIY I was wanting to know how to do this myself. Have you checked to see if this cleaned out some of your carbon buildup?

[themadscientist]

I thought I would add in some of my personal experience with seafoam as I've been using it for quite some time on several different customer cars.

For maximum effect, let it sit overnight once you've sucked it in.

I always pull in at least a half bottle depending on engine size.

I always submerge the end of the vacuum line and pull in as much as I can at once and shut it down as soon as it's all in. (despite what you may have heard this will not hydrolock the engine)I always do it with an assistant so they can keep the engine running while it gets sucked in, and shut it off as soon as I tell them, since we don't want to blow it out of the exhaust.

It won't foul your plugs, it will clean them.

The concern with the oil is not the carbon getting into it (something would have to be terribly wrong with an engine to get CC carbon into the crankcase) but the fact that seafoam will thin out your oil as it seeps past the piston rings.

[jmars]

Shick....I think I can speak for many here by saying that you really have brought a lot of value to B7'er of AZ

[PhiDelt]

I thought I would add in some of my personal experience with seafoam as I've been using it for quite some time on several different customer cars.

For maximum effect, let it sit overnight once you've sucked it in.

I always pull in at least a half bottle depending on engine size.

I always submerge the end of the vacuum line and pull in as much as I can at once and shut it down as soon as it's all in. (despite what you may have heard this will not hydrolock the engine)I always do it with an assistant so they can keep the engine running while it gets sucked in, and shut it off as soon as I tell them, since we don't want to blow it out of the exhaust.

It won't foul your plugs, it will clean them.

The concern with the oil is not the carbon getting into it (something would have to be terribly wrong with an engine to get CC carbon into the crankcase) but the fact that seafoam will thin out your oil as it seeps past the piston rings.

Thanks for this bit of info. I am set to do mine this weekend.

[Coderedpl]

I poured in a whole can of seafoam into my gas-tank and did the 1/3rd through the IAT sensor. (I also cleaned the sensor itself) I do have to admit that my mpg has improved a bit since I put it in the tank.
When i did the seafoam through the IAT I also changed my spark plugs aswell.

Planning to do this again, after the next oil change.

[Tusin]

SeaFoam now makes a spray. Can't find it in my town yet. But comes with with a special hook type hose to attach to the throttle body.

[themadscientist]

One last thing, if you're doing this to a higher mileage car (anything over 80k-ish) forewarn your neighbors, or the fire dept may be called out on a false alarm.

Ask me how I know :D

[Jay-Bee]

SeaFoam now makes a spray. Can't find it in my town yet. But comes with with a special hook type hose to attach to the throttle body.

Yep found it at my local NAPA in town, a lot easier to work with but I didn't do it through the TB I went with the IAT hole.

[mr shickadance]

Shick....I think I can speak for many here by saying that you really have brought a lot of value to B7'er of AZ

to be fair this is a regurgitation of a different DIY made for a different engine, this is just tailored for a B7

and from the reasearch i have done on the seafoam product i saw that alot of people reccomended changing the sparkplugs after a seafoam treatment.....it may not foul them, but i changed mine anyways as i was still running stock plugs on a stage 2 car so going one step colder was a smart move for me

[Tusin]

Doesn't going through the IAT port only hit two of the cylinders?

[mr shickadance]

thing is, there is no real way to ensure that a proper 25% of the seafoam goes into the 4 cylinders evenly, what i can tell you is you will be very surprised at the level of the vacuum that this car runs on, you'll find that it sucks up the seafoam incredibly fast and while i have no proof of this, the logic would follow that it would create some sort of spraying action, obviously the middle two cylinders will get more of the treatment but i like to think that the outer 2 cylinders do get some of the treatment, how much? im not totally sure


the more i think about it tho the more i felt i made the smarter decision to go through the boost tap because i feel like the vacuum is strong enough that it pulls the liquid to all 4 of the cylinders across then enters the cylinders.....again i have no data or solid evidence so take it for what it is and thats why i didn;t say one method is better then the other....just my thoughts would think that going through the boost tap is better

[swoardrider]

Kragen/O'reilly Auto Parts has a buy 2 get one free sale on Seafoam right now till the 24th.

I would think that the spray from TB method would make the most sense. The highest amount of air would be mixing with the Seafoam at that location. Plus, the intake manifold is designed to "divide" the air as equally as possible from the air source (TB location). Same principle as running meth injectors at the TB. Not as accurate as individual runner injectors, but it's gotta be way more even than a vacuum port, which is not designed to be evenly sucking anything but air through it. In fact I'm willing to bet that a majority of vacuum coming from a boost gauge port is being produced by the closest cylinder, as air seems to like the path of least resistance. (This would be a good question for Winston@Podi)

[Nikoman]

Awesome write up. I've seafoamed my car twice in two years and feel good about it. When it burns, the exahust release does make it look like your house is on fire. I've used a toothbrush and STP intake cleaner back in the day to clean my camaros' TBs. My assumption is this only gets the surface build up on the areas in touches. There is a video using the intake method on a VW FSI on youtube. I followed that the first time and it was a total of a 10 minute seafoam cleaning.

[fordyoz]

So its fine to use the spray in the IAT?

[mr shickadance]

the IAT opening may be too large and end up choking your engine, if you try the spray, it may be able to be done, but i had success with just regular seafoam

[Fastlane28]

the IAT opening may be too large and end up choking your engine, if you try the spray, it may be able to be done, but i had success with just regular seafoam

Before you put in the seafoam... Should your engine be cold or do you want to bring it up to normal temp?

Thanks

[jmarch1122]

^above question about hot or cold start is good...

I plan to buy the liquid can for oil and gas, and the spray for intake tract. As for the liquid, how much is too much? Thank liquid tank is pretty big so I just put 2/3 in the gas tank and 1/3 in the oil?

For the intake tract-can I spray it through the MAP sensor port while idling? I know the car might not run smooth with it unplugged but it seems like a good place to inject it. Alternatively, what about the unused bung for a meth muzzle on the TB up pipe? these two spots would seem to allow it the most time to mix properly with the air and distribute evenly into the cylinders.

I will do with before my next oil change, but will it really damage my sparks? I just put in rather expensive bosch side fire 2 range colder plugs a couple K miles ago, and id like to keep them. Now if the process is good for the plugs Ill leave them in, but if its bad then I want to swap my old shitty ones in just to operate the car.