background.... 2000 cavalier z24 5 speed, after market muffler 140xxx km's

so i did the seafoam today and NO smoke what soever, was i ever disappointed. now my check engine light is on.

I warmed up the car to operating temp, pulled brake booster vac line, started car up. it shot up to around 3500-4000 rpm. i started pouring the seafoam in, not real slow, but not real fast...just a good steady pour and did about 3/4 the bottle. shut the car off, also noticed when i was shutting the car off the check engine light was flashing, how long this was going on i dont know. anyways poured the rest in the gas tank, put vac line back on and left it sit for close to 20 minutes. Go back out start it up,check engine light stays on, sounded kind of gurgly for the first minute or two while letting it idle, then did maybe 10-20 revs up to around 3000 rpm and then went for a drive....through all this i got NO smoke whatsoever!

so i drive it around for a good 15-20 minutes i notice a bit better throttle response, a smoother idle and maybe a tad more get up n go.

so my big question is, what did i do wrong? and why would my check engine light be on?

a friend of mine has done a couple of his vehicle's and he just put the vac line in the bottle and let it suck it right out of the can. Did i maybe pour to slowly having it all go through the engine to quick and not leave enough sitting in the engine to eat away at all the carbon build up???

thanks


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2000 Cavalier z24-5 spd, 2.4L - thinking of selling.....

Try turning the car on again and see if you get it. I got the same thing when cleaning my fuel system out, once I shut off the engine and started it up again the CEL went away.

even if the cel goes away its still stored in the ECU. check the codes

I've never used SeaFoam, but at work, we do perform fuel system cleanings that are more or less designed to do the same thing. It doesn't happen very often with domestic cars, more so imports, but they will throw CELs during the procedure. The most common cause is an angry 02 sensor, with the simplified explanation of: You're overwhelming it with all of the garbage from your system which it then uses to perform it's calculations, subsequently sensing that something is not right.

As for being angry that you didn't see any white smoke, that's kind of like being mad that your car got broken into but nothing was stolen or damaged. You should be glad that your car wasn't caked with layer upon layer of junk. Also, just because you didn't see white smoke, that doesn't mean it didn't do anything. I would say that only about 25-30% of the cars we do actually spew out white smoke (again though, this is using a different product/system). When I first got my Jimmy and ran a cleaning on it, from the back of the vehicle it looked like I was doing the world's longest and biggest burnout. It even burnt off crap for about 10 minutes after I was done. But, I've also done it on a lot of cars that have a lot higher mileage, and that I know have never ever been cleaned, and they produce zero white smoke, but again, that doesn't necessarily mean it didn't work.

So, like Mark said, see if it's still there the next time you go to start your car up. If not, great, if it is, go have a shop/store tell you what the CEL is (there are lots of places that will do that for free).

yea it did go off, and i dont know i was just confused as if i did it wrong or something because there was no smoke at all, i expected a little bit at least.

thanks people


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2000 Cavalier z24-5 spd, 2.4L - thinking of selling.....

You should have seen the smoke, much of it comes from the fluid itself burning. Did you turn off the engine after pouring it in, let it sit for 10 mins and then take it out for an Italian tuneup?

The CEL could be any number of things. My guess is a high idle code from when you had the booster hose off.

2002 Cavalier 2200 5spd