Flushing engine with diesel

Anybody ever heard of flushing the engine with neat diesel rather than adding engine flush?
The thoughts are that the additives in the diesel do a better job of clearing out the crud. The advice is to let the engine run for 15 minutes with the diesel in and definately not to drive the car.
Got to admit that I had my doubts after reading on ITOC what resultant damage can occur with diesel leaking into the oil via the faulty injectors on the 3.0 ltr Troopers.

I guess with the 3.0's the issue is that of you dont know, so still drive it hard, or it overfills so it runsaway.

Yes mate i put in a mug full run it for 5 minutes just before i drop the oil. It can also be put in with new cheap oil if you want to do a complete clean through then drop it again ready for the expensive oil to go in. All it does is thin's the oils and gets rid of crud. I would never put in just diesal on its own though. Hope this helps.

Bobster

I just dont flush the engine, unless its flushed at every service from new I wouldnt do it.
There is a certain amount of deposits that actually help seal the engine and flushing these out using a chemical formula will remove/disturb these deposits and thus possible cause seals to leak.

My god this is an old old old trick my dad used to do this with his uncle. i used to use this technique before i got the frontys but don't now as its a pain to get out of the oil coolers, and would never use the oil flush additives you get in the bottles

Cheers for replys - the reason I asked is that I've recently flushed the Doblo with the proper stuff - it had a severe oil leak. By the state of the motor, I had my doubts that it hadn't been maintained properly for the last few years. My thoughts were that possibly, due to lack of regular oil changes, carbon/crud build up could be evident in some of the oil ways, hence pressure build up, consequently oil seal going. Who knows but thought it better to give it a flush out. Put two tins of engine flush it, then second blast with cheap oil (Asda £16) that wasn't cheap compared to the Halfords stuff that got discounted to £14+ odd - kick myself because I'd already bought the Asda before going into Halfords. Anyhow, noticed the flush stuff was very thin in terms of liquid viscosity. When it was drained out, also noticed how thin the old oil was, I was expecting the normal black thick stuff with lumps of crud. Put this info up on the Fiat forum and a couple of the guys came back with doing the flush with diesel.
Seeing the engine flush was £4 odd per 425ml tin reckon the diesel method would have been hell of a lot cheaper.

Asda oil is fine to use, it is or was made by Comma :wink:

Sometimes using to light/thin a viscosity will cause leaks just use a thicker oil.

in my opinion engine flush can be an engine killer, particularly with petrol engines, it removes the crud and blocks the mesh filter on the oil pickup pipe in the sump with terminal results. oil specifide for diesel engines has enough detergent to keep the engine clean with regular oil changes.

hi ya retro

i have all ways used diesel to flush engines with, cant beat it, a drop of cherry goes a long way dont waste ya money on expensive flushing oils lol.........pete

in the good old days of uncomplicated engines i used parrafin

Into todays costing market, bet parrafin is dearer than engine flush :wink:

On a serious note, last time I bought parrafin was from B&Q and seem to remember thinking that it would have been cheaper to have bought diesel for washing the engine parts

Price of Parafin from Homebase is £8.99 for 4ltr !!!

I wanted some for me greenhouse heater. NOOOOOOOO Chance!!!!! :evil:

Here we go Bobby wrinkly club moment and straying off topic, but it was my topic so I reckon I can :wink:

Can parrafin still be bought loose by the can full (gallon in £ s d language)?
As a kid, one of my chores was to have to go up to the local shop and buy the parrafin for the indoors heaters. Shopkeeper used to store the parrafin in a large tank in an out house next to the vegetables that were stacked outside his shop. Imagine that today with health and safety etc. rules.

Retro, you'll impress the youngsters when you clarify if the paraffin you bought was pink or blue (extra points for the words to the advertising song!)

I used an engine flush once on a Ford Pinto engine that had 110,000 miles on the clock - worse thing I ever did as smoke started seeping from everywhere, took a good few thousand miles to seal it all back up again.
I vowed never to use the stuff in any engine again.
Imagine my annoyance when my daily driver was dealer serviced and an extortionate bill was waiting for me, only for me to find £17 of the cost was for engine flush I didn't ask for.