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Piston Soak on a Ford Contour/Mystique/Mondeo?

N

Nickdfresh

CEG'er
Joined
Feb 24, 2010
Messages
30
Has anyone ever done a piston soak using a product like Marvel Mystery Oil, Seafoam, or Berryman's Chemtool? It's something typically done on the 1.9L SOHC/DOHC Saturn engines (SL1, SL2s) to mitigate a design defect on them. But the spark plug positioning on the 2.5L Duratec engine makes this car a candidate. I'm doing the plugs on the car in the near future, so I'm wondering if anyone has had any good, bad, or ugly experiences or if anyone posting has ever done it at all...

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no, no one has done this before. I would say that this engine isn't a canidate. The 4 cycliner pictured will have what ever you pour into the cylinder cover the whole piston where as in the V6 it will not.

What is the point of this anyway? it doesnt make any sense to me. it just seems like it will wash out the piston rings of oil, and you don't want to do that ....
 
I'm not a mechanic and am only knowledgeable as far as tune-up and light maintanance stuff.

But the Saturn SL series, especially those made before 2000, were prone to very excessive oil useage (with some using as much as a quart every 300 miles or so). I've heard differing reasons, but some thought that the ring pack was a poor design and that the cars were improperly cooled leading to coking on the pistons followed by sludging and oil blow-by. One of the supposed remedies was to do the "piston soak" using MMO which would supposedly loosen any deposits and clean the upper part of the motor. People reported mixed-to-positive results and I did reduce oil consumption on my old Saturn. But as you said, no one here has done this and I won't do it as well as we're dealing with a totally different engine...
 
Yeah, I used to do that on my Saturn all the time. It won't work on engines whose pistons aren't completely vertical, so it has to be an inline configuration, not a "v"

Seafoam is usually the preferred method of top-end cleaning on these engines. It goes into the intake tract as a foam, so it doesn't all run down to the lowest point like a liquid would.
 
My GF has a Saturn SL2 (2001), this thing goes through oil like nothing I have ever seen!!........Ill be trying this trick today
 
imnotacop420 said:
My GF has a Saturn SL2 (2001), this thing goes through oil like nothing I have ever seen!!........Ill be trying this trick today
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Least I helped someone. :D

Join Saturnfans.com if you haven't already. There's a bunch of tips there. After the piston soak, you might want to try a high mileage oil like Valvoline MaxLife. Some also claim that using a "thicker" (at temperature) synthetic like Mobil1 0W-40, M1 HM, Shell syn Rotella 5W-40, or Castrol SYNTEC 0W-30 lessons the problem somewhat. But don't pour synthetic in a burner if it doesn't work...
 
IIRC I am a member over there, helped me a few times with some Ion problems she had in the past. We usually put in high mileage oil, but she goes through about a quart every 300 miles.
 
You might want to start the car up after sundown down after the soak though. It will smoke more than Cheech and Chong's van when they open the doors. :)
 
I've heard people recommend that you take off the cats if you seafoam an engine, due to reports of crud coming out of the engine that could potentially block up the cats.
 
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