Can you clean the carbon buildup in exhaust?

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Oct 16, 2011
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I have a 91 FJ80 and I have changed lots of parts on it and it is currently running great, 220K miles. My question is I noticed that there appears to be lots of black buildup in the tail pipe which I'm assuming is carbon build up. It is very thick in the the tail pipe. Is this something that should be cleaned or should I just leave it alone? Can it be cleaned and how do you do it? I saw another thread about seafoaming the engine?
Any input is appreciated.
Thanks
 
There isn't any way I know of to clean out the exhaust. The seafoam will be a vapor by the time it hits the exhaust and won't do anything. What do you mean by thick?
 
It's not easy to do for sure. Your best bet is to make sure your not running rich. Black build up is mostly carbon build up from running rich or burning oil. If it's not smoking it's most likely running rich or it's been a city rig. Very rarely run at temps to it hot enough to burn off the excess fuel in the exhast. Was this a city driver?
Sounds like you need a good road trip.
Next time you are going to run for a long road trip (engine temp nice and warm/hot) you should run a tank of prem gas with injector cleaner like B44 in your tank and some octane boost like 104+. This should help clean some of it out other than that there is little to do to clean it out. It will only get clean by running at hot temps to burn it out. You may want to look at advancing your timing as well.

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De-smog it if you can where you live. The EGR puts tons of carbon into the intake.
 
Thanks guys and thanks Offroad4x4, yes for the most part I would say it was a city rig. It does have 220k miles and I bought it from a doctor that was the original owner, had very small street tires and had never been used offroad or anywhere off the asphault. I think he took "okay" care of it but it had plenty of bad parts like plugs, distributor, etc. .When i bought it, it was running rough at start and then ran fine after warming up, I've changed the plugs, distributor, rotor, AFM, PCV, vacuum hoses, fuel pump, fuel filter, cleaned the throttle body and the cold start injector. It does run very good now and I found a main vacuum hose that was disconnected which fixed the idle and initial rough running problem. He did have lots and lots of receipts for work he had done on it over the years, including having all the gaskets and seals replaced in the past couple of years so it doesn't leak any fluids.

Yesterday while working on the rear bumper I noticed the buildup in the tail pipe, it seems to be very thick, probably 1/8" of just black carbon CRAP, I scraped some out with just my finger and there was plenty of it, I'm not so worried about getting the exhaust pipe cleaned but more of fixing the problem of putting out that kind of carbon residue.

I know I need to do the high octane gas and I currently have seafoam in the gas but the only running it has gotten is at my house because I've been working on the engine every since I bought it. It probably needs to just be "RAN" kinda hard to blow some stuff out.
 
What is de-smoging it?????

Removing the EGR, air injection, and related pollution-related engineering kludges that Toyota put on in a desperate effort to make the hideously inefficient F-series engines marginally less offending so that they might pass existing standards until they could come out with the newer 1-FZ family of engines. There's a thread on de-smogging a 3FE either here or in the 60 forum.
 
What is de-smoging it?????

No worries, no need.:hillbilly:

... I know I need to do the high octane gas and I currently have seafoam in the gas but the only running it has gotten is at my house because I've been working on the engine every since I bought it. It probably needs to just be "RAN" kinda hard to blow some stuff out.

No need for boutique fuels or additives, it is a tractor motor, made to run in third world countries on sketchy fuels. There is zero benefit to running high octane fuel.

Most carbon/sludge motors are from driving habits, almost all from driving short trips, especially cold weather. The motor never gets a chance to fully warm up, always running in cold start mode (rich), more importantly never runs any significant time fully warm. This is one of the worst things that you can do to a motor. Most often the "fix" is to drive it, take it on some trips and it will clean itself.
 
1/8 inch isn't bad. Like tools said the best way to clean it is probably to take it on a road trip. A long drive will get the exhaust hot enough to remove most of the thick build up.
 
1/8 inch isn't bad. Like tools said the best way to clean it is probably to take it on a road trip. A long drive will get the exhaust hot enough to remove most of the thick build up.

My 92 always ran better after long trips, or even just running all day.

I took it to an offroad event that was 10 hours away within the first 2 weeks of ownership and I swear by the time I was doing the return trip home it was like a whole new Land Cruiser!
 
You don't need to run prem gas 24/7 just for the clean out.
Even tractor motors need a good clean out once and a while. Most tractors get used under a heavy load plowing or pulling which cleans it out. You need to run a clean out tank every once and a while to keep it in tip top shape. After all PM is the key to lower owner cost and a long rig life.
I've found that the longer the road trip the better it cleans it out. (100 mile min trip)

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There is zero benefit to running high octane fuel.

Unless you advance the timing to get better mileage out of it. But even then you're looking at maybe only a bit better than break even.
 
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