Arthur Pfenninger wrote:
> To determine if you have a vacuum leak spray carb cleaner on the
> suspected area while the car is running. If the speed changes you have a
> leak.
From my experience, this works well. The speed will go down
if you get the leak. A bit of carb cleaner near the intake
can make the engine cough and then quit right away, in fact.
However, something else I noticed is that spraying it
on the intake manifold will cause the idling to slow
down a bit, even without leaks. I suspect this is because
the evaporating cleaner cools an intake pipe briefly,
which causes "cold running"-type symptoms for a second
or two.
So use it, but if your idle slows down when you get some
on the intake manifold, that's probably not a leak if it's
barely noticeable and goes away about the same speed as
the cleaner evaporates.
> Do this before the car gets hot to avoid a chance of a fire.
Extra precaution never hurts, but is carb cleaner so flammable?
Since it seems to kill the engine if the intake gets a whiff
of it, I would seem to think "not really". Maybe I'm a reckless
hooligan but I've never had a problem. I kind of prefer doing
it while the engine is warm so that the idle is very smooth
and changes are most noticeable.
--
Trevor Boicey
Ottawa, Canada
tboicey@brit.ca
http://www.brit.ca/~tboicey/
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