Any experience with liquid cleaners that claim to remove hard carbon?

B

Boyd Allen

Active member
Recently, there has been a proliferation of liquid bore cleaning products that claim that they remove carbon. Like many of you, who either have, or have access to a bore scope, I know that ordinary solvents don't touch the stuff. I am looking for any real, scope confirmed experience that you may have. I am not talking about powder fouling, but rather that baked on, glass hard stuff.
Thanks
Boyd
 
i do not let it become glass hard..but i do get carbon.
typically 2 wet patches of TEC will clean it out, and then go to copper remover.
no bore scope.
when i first started with moly bullet i did not know about the carbon issue.
my accuracy decreased over a one yr period, but still a new bbl.
when someone mentioned the carbon issue and TEC, i went out and got some....
the first wet patch cut so much carbon i had to beat it thru the bore!
so yes it took out year old carbon.
mike in co
( TEC is designed to remove cooked on carbon from combustion chambers in car engines. they probably get as hot as our powder, see a lot more "firing" than we do, and i'm some one can tell us about peak pressure, but i do know that gasoline is aprox 13 times more powerful than tnt. bottom line it works...and no i have used none of the gun product carbon removers)
 
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If I may, I believe that he was referring to General Motors Top Engine Cleaner. I also have a question about the TEC. Is the stuff that you are using old formula or new?
 
Top Engine Cleaner ( original) from GM does not remove the glass hard carbon. Yes, I have a bore scope. Actually I know of
no liquid that will.
 
Hi all, I have recently started to use the carbon remover that Johnson/ Evinrude outboards sell.. Only comes in a US gallon but is worth the costs imo.. Called Engine Tuner part# 777189, it is a dealer workshop pack .some say they don't have it but it is in the parts book.. All Motor related carbon cleaners work at a higher efficiency when worked hot and as such i use it in the barrel straight after a detail.. JR..Jeff Rogers
 
where does "glass hard" carbon come from ??
i have no issue with carbon..it comes and it goes...and tec works....
what are you guys doing to get carbon so hard that it will not come out with tec ?
i'm listening ??
my situtation was a 308 with 135 gr n 140 or 308 with 175's with a2520.....no carbon that will not go away. 223 with 53/52 at 3500/3600fps...same situtation.
mike in co
Bob Kingsbury said:
Top Engine Cleaner ( original) from GM does not remove the glass hard carbon. Yes, I have a bore scope. Actually I know of
no liquid that will.
Click to expand...
 
I have the original, sold in metal containers by GM. Part # 1050002. It does removes the surface powder fowling qiuckly, but
won't touch the hard black stuff, or the copper. You will get some light green coloring on patches and if you had a year in
between relays, it might desolve all copper streaks. Iosso and Rem Clean will get the copper and hard carbon or whatever it is.
Iosso becomes user friendly when mixed with a liquid, I use Kroil for no other reason that it is a light oil, and I have it. So says
my borescope. There may be some new , more exotic stuff that works, but I have a collection of cleaners that doesn't work and
I'm tired of throwing money at fancy bottles
 
bob,
maybe what you had was not carbon ??
my experience say it works.
ask anyone in the automotive field and they will tell you that carbon is removed, day in and day out with what is called "cold carbon" liquid cleaners. dip tanks full of the stuff making car parts all clean again. it will eat light alloys like pot metal and aluminium.
i will go back to my question, what are you guys doing to get "glass hard" carbon build up ??..is this a by product of n133 at high pressure ?? notice i'm not shooting any n133.
and yes i am using the original formula old metal can. i also have the subaru product and it works also.
mike in co
 
Mike,
I don't have the problem with 133. A friend had had a carbon ring happen when shooting ball powder (TAC) in extended sessions on a prairie dog hunt. He has a bore scope, and tried several methods for removing it. In the end, IOSSO was the only thing that worked. I know how to do that, but I am looking for a non-abrasive alternative for those times when I am not shooting 133, or I am trying to resurrect a used bore that I have traded into or bought. In the near future, there may be some other extruded powder on the market that I am interested in trying. Based on what I know, it may not be as clean as 133, and carbon may be an issue. That is another reason that I am doing this research. IMO frequent use of abrasives can be detrimental to barrel life.
Boyd
 
I use Carb Out made by the Foul Out & Patch Out people. I own a borescope and when I see a carbon ring beginning, I'll do a couple of passes and soak with Carb Out. Depending on the severity, I'll then take a stiff nylon or brass brush and just turn it right at the case mouth area several times. I use one of the non rotating brass rods for this purpose only and there will be no sign of carbon left. The trick is to not allow carbon to get to a glazed on condition.
 
I've used a ton of the GM TEC and it will clean the loose built up carbon out of a engine but it does not clean down to the bare metal on it's own. BG products has some really good cleaners that work very well but they are normally used under pressure, the 44K would be about 10x better than TEC but will still probably need to be used with a brush.

Mike.....dip tanks are not filled with TEC.
 
What I am removing is the black stuff in the first 6-8 inches of the barrel forward of the chamber. I really don't know what it is.
I can say that the toughest stuff to remove is primer fowling that comes from firing a case with no powder. On first glance, one would think that primer residue would be consumed
by the powder , but maybe not.
 
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Has anyone tried "Sea Foam"? I've been using it for about a year. Seems to work well on carbon.
 
Brian I have and yes it does. I did some tests with it last year to see if it would work or not and so far so good.
I cant attest to the carbon ring since I dont have a bore scope.
There are 2 types a liquid and a spray can. The uses on the labels are slightly different, spray can I have is called Deepcreep.
 
Its not my purpose to get anyones pants in a wad, But If you don't have access to a borescope, you don't really know. Before
having one, I scrubbed barrels with brushes and all types of cleaners. They all looked like the fenders on a new cadilac, when held
up to the light. Scrubbing till the patches were spotless white, no green, no black, not even grey. Revisiting some of those barrels
with mild abrasive cleaners produced charcoal patches. My initial thought was that this came from rubbing away steel, and yes there
is color that can be had there. Now with a borescope, Its easy to see that what was thought to be a spotless bore is just not so.
That black stuff can and does take on a mirror shine. I have no interest in the borescope companies, but I have to say, its an
education that ends old wives tails. A borescope is about the best Bull sniffer that can be owned.
 
Bob,
Investing in a borescope is probably one of the best investments I've ever made as I use it for everything. Checking a brand new barrel blank before and after chambering, monitoring throat erosion and cracking, verifying cleaning technique is o.k., checking the inside of cases for any cracks, checking the crown periodically are just some of the examples that come to mind. I can tell you that my cleaning technique changed once I started using a bore scope.
 
RAG said:
I've used a ton of the GM TEC and it will clean the loose built up carbon out of a engine but it does not clean down to the bare metal on it's own. BG products has some really good cleaners that work very well but they are normally used under pressure, the 44K would be about 10x better than TEC but will still probably need to be used with a brush.

Mike.....dip tanks are not filled with TEC.
Click to expand...

if you go read again...you will see that i said cold carbon...never once did i say tec.

what i was implying was that cardon can be removed chemically........abrasives are not necessary.
mike in co
 
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