Calamine: everything you need to know

Calamine is a precipitate that accumulates in engine and will eventually score it. Hence, it will affect the performance of your engine and can be disastrous in the long run if not removed.

🔍 What is Calamine?

Calamine is black soot which accumulates over the kilometers that you travel in your car. Occurs during combustion of gases. carbon residue will be placed in several different locations: cylinders, valves, EGR valve, piping and muffler.

The accumulation of unburned fuel and oil will be more or less important; its amount will vary depending on 5 main factors:

• Fuel quality : if not of good quality, scale will form faster;
• Duration of trips : Repetitive short trips generate more carbon dioxide than long car trips.
• Frequency descaling : if you have never done one or the last one did a long time ago, the formation of carbon will be more important;
• Frequent starts and stops : This type of driving, which is quite common in urban areas, leads to engine pollution over time;
• Regularity of phases of low engine speed : if you use the engine frequently at low rpms, it will contribute to the formation of carbon deposits.

The appearance of calamine will lead to change the way your car works due to the fact that it loses performance, it causes difficulty in starting and causes excessive fuel consumption.

💨 How to clean carbon deposits in an injector?

Calamine can also attach to your injectors and cause them to clog. If you clean them regularly, you can extend their lifespan.

Indeed, using injector cleaner cleans the entire injection system, cleans the combustion chambers of the engine and removes residual water in the fuel. There are two different cleaning modes for your nozzles:

1. Preventive mode : As the name suggests, prevents complete clogging of the nozzles. Typically, this is done every 5-000 kilometers;
2. Treatment regimen : This is preferred when you find that there is calamine in your injectors. This could be caused by decreased engine performance, excessive fuel consumption, or black exhaust fumes.

Nowadays, many brands of nozzle cleaners sell products that are directly suitable for nozzles. two modes... This allows the nozzles to be safely cleaned and quickly disposed of soot.

💧 How to dissolve limescale?

To dissolve carbon deposits from all over your vehicle, you need to start descaling your garage. This allows, in addition to cleaning the car, to identify the source of the formation of carbon deposits and eliminate it in order to prevent its reoccurrence.

This could be due to an exhaust gas recirculation valve, a lack of engine oil, or a clogged diesel particulate filter. There are 3 different methods for descaling:

• Manual descaling : performed by disassembling each element of the engine in turn, this is popular when the engine is damaged due to the presence of carbon dioxide;
• Chemical descaling : the cleaning agent will be injected into the injection circuit when the engine is idling;
• Descaling with hydrogen : This method is guaranteed to be free of chemicals and allows hydrogen to be injected into the vehicle through a dedicated station.

Thus, descaling allows deep cleaning of your engine, the injection system, but also the exhaust system.

💸 How much does descaling cost?

The descaling cost will depend on the descaling method you choose. Indeed, manual descaling is much more time-consuming than chemical descaling, for example. Average descaling costs between 90 € and 150 €.

This is a maneuver that requires equipping a station provided for this purpose, not all garages have it. Find out in advance about the garage owners who offer this service near you, you can use our garage comparator to find the one with the best price!

Carbon is a deposit that can reduce the performance of your engine and injectors if not treated in time. Thus, it is very important to carry out regular cleaning and consult a professional for timely descaling. Cleaning your injectors more often will slow down the build-up of carbon deposits and increase the life of other engine parts!