injection cleaner advertising misrepresentation

I have noticed that on injector cleaner ads in car magazines and on the brands that put a color tag on the bottle and now on TV ads they show two injectors. One marked dirty shows poor spray pattern and the next picture shows a fuel injector marked clean injector. On TV ads same thing but you can see the injectors spraying. What they don't say is dirty injector before use and clean injector after use of our wonderful product. All they show is the difference between dirty and clean, not clean after the use of our products. For the last 20 years, or more I would look at those tags hanging on bottles of Techron and most other cleaners, read the label and see they recommend cleaning every 10 to 15,000 miles. So even if my car was running okay I would still buy a bottle and pour it into my tank. Does anyone else think that this is misleading advertising?

Thanks. I still believe in seafoam, I have not seen a tag on their bottles.

Richard.

Techron has been around for years and is one of the more reputable products IMHO. I have never tried the Seafoam products but I do believe they can help for minor cleaning. That said, most mainstream gasolines today have a fair amount of cleaning products already part of the formula and the alcohol in most common fuel blends is a pretty effective cleaner by itself. There are also in between style injector cleaners that connect to the fuel rail, while the fuel pump is disabled, and operates the engine on a more aggressive mixture. The only way to know for sure is to have the injectors cleaned and flowed by a reputable shop. I agree the dirty vs clean advertising is misleading.

and the alcohol in most common fuel blends is a pretty effective cleaner by itself.

If you mean "Ethanol" instead of alcohol, hopefully the companies have upped the detergent. An Australian Govt. study in the 90s show massive gunking up of intake stems even with E-5, muchless e-10.

Techron was the cleaner of choice by most Corvette guys when i had my Corvettes. but i've used Seafoam for years with good results - especially thru the intake manifold: http://reattaowner.com/roj/component/content/article/67-engine-a-drivetrain/fuel-system/241-cleaning-the-fuel-system-with-seafoam

agree with "2seater" about going to a good garage to get the injectors cleaned is the best. they have equipment and cleaners (usually BG products) not available to the general public. i'd go there before replacing the injectors, but after trying the Seafoam treatment and received negative results. so far, i've had good results with the Seafoam Tx on several vehicles.

and the alcohol in most common fuel blends is a pretty effective cleaner by itself.

If you mean "Ethanol" instead of alcohol, hopefully the companies have upped the detergent. An Australian Govt. study in the 90s show massive gunking up of intake stems even with E-5, muchless e-10.

Ethyl alcohol (the stuff you can drink), AKA ethanol. Tis true that there have been incidents in the past of fuel related issues with intake valves, BMW was one such carmaker that actually had procedures to clean them without removal. That sparked a lot of development by the oil companies to do a better job in the detergent department. Many of the ethanol horror stories are older vehicles and especially small engines that aren't built with the proper alloys and seals to handle the alcohol content and mixture changes required. Filter clogging was another side effect from the cleaning properties of alcohol.

I learned something about our fuel supply on the Discovery Channel a few years ago. With all the interstate fuel pipelines when they would switch from two different types of fuel, say gasoline and diesel a plug would be inserted between the two fuels to limit intermingling. It was discovered that by not using the plug there wasn't much more intermingled fuel, and it could be sold to certain users. I also found out that gasoline is not branded until it goes into the tanker truck where that brands formula or cleaners and additives are mixed in. According to this show the basic gasoline stock has to meet certain requirements like octane, moisture, etc but doesn't become Shell or Mobile until it goes into the truck. Anybody else know about this?

Richard.