]. For the time being I'm enjoying the car more and I cant complain about that. Edd
the only problem is, I realised many years ago, if you leave fuel system parts soaking in these fuel additives that are water acetone based, they corrode, so again, possibly not the end of the world in small quantities in your fuel tank, but large or regular use of the additives could cause corrosion in the fuel system. Now back to the point, the original poster had his car connected to a machine, which gave him some good results from a drivers perspective, and I might be one of the few people here who actually believes that this machine has removed carbon, probably has improved the seal of his piston rings and will have improved performance. In years gone by, I used to have a little rig I made, which included a electric fuel pump, a 5 litre fuel tank and hoses with various fittings on the ends to hook up to various Porsche fuel injection systems. I used to fill this machine with a mixture of acetone, water and fuel, hook it up-to the fuel rail on the donor vehicle, connect the fuel pump to the cars battery with some alligator clips and start the engine and let it run for half an hour, just like the original poster described with this much more polished machine. If a car had a large amount of deposit build up, there would be more smoke from the exhaust, if deposits we not heavy, often the smoke was less form the tailpipe. You could often see the machine working by the amount of smoke from the exhaust. We used to use it especially on vehicles which either had spent years doing short journeys and seemed to be down on power, or on cars where the engine was smoking or lacking in compression... With cars which were heavily suffering from deposits, the car would run much better afterwards, where no improvement was found we would look deeper into the engine and either find a more serious fault, but would be presented with a very clean engine within the combustion chambers. I suspect that the original posters experience was with a very similar machine, probably running what used to be a very well known mixture of acetone and water. As a side note, water injection systems also have the benefit of removing deposits from an engine, as well as increasing the performance of the engine, but that is another subject. Years ago we had to stop using our rig for doing this, as it was a piece of equipment that our insurance company were extremely unhappy about, which is understandable really, highly pressurised fuel in a home made construction without BS or CE markings and no manufacturer for the insurance company to sue if something went wrong.. So now we use forte products, either their engine flush down the bores, gas treatment or injector cleaner into the tank etc.. they work great, but not a patch on the "old rig". I think the problem with the manufacturer of this machine is that they charge the earth for their own magical fluid/fuel, which is a big part of their revenue stream, so they do not want to be as frank as I have been here, but maybe if you now re-read their website following what I have written, you might actually see through some of the marketing, but in effect, it is a good machine, insurance companies are happy with them, and they work. But if they were to say they run on acetone and water, there is a good chance that garages would use their own cocktails and that their sales of the fluid would go down to zero... not only this but some customers would be shocked at the idea of water being fed through their fuel systems and engines! There you go.. A bit longer than I expected.. Just my take on the original posters experience and why I believe 100% that his experience is not all in his head. 
] The mechanic that did my car told me that on the second (post combustion chamber) can of fluid they often get plumes of white smoke out the exhaust, which would support your analysis, although I never saw anything like this whilst the treatment was carried out on my car. Whilst the treatment was run the only thing I could detect from observing was some slight changes in engine speed and tone (which was set set at 1500 rpm). Re the price, factoring garage labour rates in London at about £70 an hour and considering the process took about 1 1/2 hours the £100 is not too excessive, I'm sure they have a big mark-up on the product but when I consider the results it appears good value. Terraclean's recommended pricing for this is about £56 for the treatment (I have it on a .pdf somewhere) so I assume most places are adding their own labour rates into this or setting the price higher as they believe customers are willing to pay more for positive results. Overall I've been very happy with the result, the engine does actually feel like its been cleaned, it certainly pulls harder and is more free reving, the difference has been quite marked. Edd
I have told this story before, but I think it is relevant here, back a few years ago when I was still based in my tiny old workshop and was just myself and one other technician, I had a visit from a Forte rep, when we had just finished servicing my 968 The rep made me a deal, he said that if I was not impressed by his demonstration he would pay for my time, an oil filter and 2 gallons of Mobil1... So I agreed The demonstration included taking the car on a 4 mile test drive, then checking the intake vacuum reading, compression test on all 4 cylinders, and checking the oil colour.. Because the oil was always changed every 6 months on my car, it was still golden just as expected... compression was good, just a variation of 5 to 10 psi across all the cylinders and the vacuum was just fine (cant remember the exact readings).. but it was all as you would expect from a 100k mile 968 So we added a Forte flush to the oil, a gas treatment and injector cleaner to the fuel tank, ran the car for 15 mins, shut it down and checked the oil... It was now black, totally black.. We drained it, changed the oil filter, changed the oil and took it for another 4 mile test drive. I hated to say it, but on the second test drive the car felt more responsive, but being a hater of snake oil, I underplayed how much better it felt and we progressed with the vacuum and compression tests, which really shocked me... All compression's were equal, within 1 or 2 psi, the vacuum gauge now showed an improvement in vacuum.. I was a bit blown away to be honest and turned from dismissive to stocking Forte products ever since. I have no shares in Forte, always been a fan of Wurth products, because they supply the Porsche factory, so this is just my own experience of deposits within engines. As a side note I kept a sample in a glass jar that Forte gave me to keep some of the used engine oil in, I put it on the shelf and even after another 2 years before we moved to the current workshop, the contamination in the oil never settled out... not sure if that is a bonus of the forte product (keeping dirt in suspension) or it is a testament to Mobil 1 for doing the same thing (grabbing hold of contamination), but I was quite shocked by that as well.
I think so, the Forte products are good, but they work over however long it takes as long as it takes to use up the fuel in the tank, you are also dealing with a product of about 500ml so it is limited how much it can do with one shot. I think frequent use of the forte products would possibly eliminate the need for something like a decontamination machine, even if the car started off life with heavy deposits. My own cars get two services a year, on each one the engine oil gets a flush and the fuel is given a dose of the forte gas treatment and the injector cleaner. The old rig I used to use was more of a concentrated one shot, which over the course of half an hour used to do its thing and right away you could feel a difference. Its hard to make a real comparison, it could be that the Forte stuff is just as good
My car gets regularly thrashed so although it may help its obviously not enough to prevent a certain amount of buildup that requires removal by other means, the Italian tune up has its limitations it appears. Without an endoscope its going to be difficult to show anything worthwhile, and perhaps only really useful if a before and after inspection was carried out. I don't expect the process has left the pistons devoid of carbon but its obviously removed enough to restore some performance. Edd
Water injection works for performance, and very possibly economy, and would improve carbon removal.. But Aquatune is not the way forward, there are proper systems out there. A lot of this reminds me of the various in line "devices" that people were fitting to cars when leaded fuel was vanishing, which were mostly magnets and somehow ionised fuel, didnt believe them back then, and the aquatune smells of the same ethics. Ah well... gonna sign off and wait for ed china or Randstad to sue me now!
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