I was always told that the whole ATF thing is for putting the engine in storage for extended periods of time . As far as pouring water in the carb goes, it will screw up your plugs if you're not careful. A way that has worked for me is to put water in a spreay bottle and do it that way.
I believe they call it "fogging the engine", which is done before storing it for a long period of time.
Dead Truck Buddie of mine put the high detergent ATF in his motor and when he was driving home it cleaned all the crap off his rings. There was so much junk coming out that he had to change the filter every 4 miles or so. Finaly all the crap came off the rings and he lost all compression and had to walk home.
charles Don't flush your engine!!!!! The problem is that you may loosen, but not remove, the built up crud. 300 miles later the chunkacrap breaks away, and you got a load of crap wandering around in your motor. Yeah, the filter will take a lot, but when it fills up, the bypass cuts in, and you have no filtering. If you feel compelled to clean your motor, pull the valve covers, and the pan, and give them a good cleaning. Change your oil frequently, especially if you make a lot of short trips, of less than 1/2 hr, and don't get a chance to boil out the condensation in the motor. I ran quick lubes for 20 years (as many as six at a time) and we never had, or heard of, an oil related engine failure. (a few lack of oil related). We did not sell flushes because I did not feel good about them for the customer. In summary, IMO, engine flushing does no good, and it has the potential to so some evil. YMMV
charles An ATF war story. A few years ago a friend from the Impala SS list/club, came to town and I treated him to a transmission flush, with our 100 % replacement machine. Out with the bad, in with the good. Well, our morons had never seen an oil cooler, and rather than plugging into the trans cooler lines, these cretins hooked up to his engine oil cooler, and when it was over, he had 5 qts of ATF in his motor. He drove it home, about 70 miles, before he discovered it. He replaced the atf with real oil, and drove the car for many thousand miles. about 3 years later, after many, many passes on the 1/4 mile, he spun a bearing. The lesson is that a load of ATF isn't gonna kill ya.
I’ve been doing frequent oil changes since I’ve owned the car (aprox20)… for about 3500miles the motor has 57700miles on it…. and the oil has less gunk than before…. So I’m thinking ill be safe if I drain the oil… replace it with ATF for about 10miles…drain and then clean valve covers and oil pan… then put fresh oil in….what do you guys think?
The best advice that I have ever had about cleaning out a motor is DON"T RUN CRAP OIL. If you run a good motor oil and keep it changed regularly then you shouldn't need to flush and all that garbage. This thread is starting to make me upset so I think I am going to quit reading this one.
New2maverick....Yep, that is true but when you buy a car from someone else, you dont have any control over it. Clean it out the best you can then start with good oil and change often.
I think if you have a car with decent mileage it probaly wouldn't hurt to flush. Now if you get a car with alot of miles on it and you dont know how it was taken care of i would definatly not flush it. In some cases that crud bulidup is the only thing keeping the motor together. Flush it and you could end up with gaskets leaking, clogged oil filters, pickup screens, and not to mention clogged oil passages which could turn into a tear down and rebuild pretty quick.
