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To answer your question I think you should just take it to have the test done and then find out if you need to do anything, don’t be afraid to be optimistic especially if you don’t have any performance issues that would indicate an emissions problem.
i use seafoam on my maxima and never saw an ill side effect. my engine does idle smoother after use and it cleans out the fuel injectors. you’re suppose to use it in the oil crank case, gas tank, and in the vacuum hose. after you pour it into the crank case, you should do an oil change no more then 200 miles after
^IMO, there a much better products than Sea Foam. Especially for the price. While I do notice a slight idle improvement during use in the fuel system, it does not last. Also, there are better engine cleaners(when added to oil), safer ones that don’t contain solvents; as well as better combustion chamber/piston head soaking chemicals. I don’t use Sea Foam for soaks with plugs removed, unless I didn’t have my preferred chemicals doing such a treatment.
As for stalling your engine with the ‘brake booster’ method and trying to get it to soak/cleanse the piston heads during ingestion, that will not get all cylinders evenly on many apps and only does minimal cleansing compared to actual foam cleaners that soak the entire cavatiy of the combustion chamber, at least a fighting chance of doing so. Of course, the cylinder at bottom dead center with the most volume to ‘make up’ for will have a hard time soaking near the valves but the piston head gets a good soaking in all cylinders either way.
Sea Foam is ‘safest’ and ‘best’ used in the gas tank as an Upper Cylinder Lube; it is mostly a pale oil(extremely light) with some ‘meh’ solvent that does not produce long-term benefits unless it happens to clean something up once. If anything, it may help with idle performance during use while running e-10 as the fuel; since most cars using E-10 regularly don’t ‘necessarily’ have a direct cleanliness issue from ethanol content. There is more of a ‘feel’ improvement when an older app that uses it in the gas tank gets but it does not last because what you feel is not cleansing, but rather it’s UCL properties being that it’s mostly a very light oil that won’t take down your octane rating when used as directed.
For actual cleansing, there are better in-tank fuel products; however again what you may wind up getting is during use effects from UCL of such products; especially if cleansing of the fuel delivery system wasn’t problematic in the first place.
Therefore, if you like UCL feel during use buy what’s cheapest. A lot of folks like TC-W3 certified 2-stroke oil since it’s cheaper than most other products and you are only to add a very small amount(for instance, 1 or 2 ounces max to 10 gallons). It is a bit thicker than pale oil; so risk of OD and octane retardation may occur. If you dose right, you’ll get UCL benefits and if you are going through enough tanks of ethanol containing gasoline in quick order there should be no cleanliness issues; unless of course you are a newer DI app that has the intake valve deposit issue which is more of a design issue, IMO.
Hard to get a FSC to clean the backside of the intake valve. Those apps generally are having more issues with fuel dillution on the other hand.
Some of this can be taken as general conversation. The context is your app. My point is to make the point that each chemical/additive is a tool. Some is snake oil, others have moderate use with varying degrees of ‘actual’ value vs. cost.
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