pnut

My understanding is that black soot (the more, the worse) is a sign you are running far too rich and it's bad not only from wasted gas, but likely other factors negatively affecting the engine.

I do have a 93 octane bamatune and CAI.

I was reading an interesting article about a guy who can judge how well a car is tuned by putting his finger in the exhaust pipe and looking at the nature of the gook in there.

avengence

Mine has black soot. Enough in there to turn the pipes black after about a week.

onederful100

you are going to get black stuff in the tail pipe no matter what. there is no black stuff in mine bc i clean it out, my a/f is perfect bc i measure it w/ a wb a/f. that is the only way to judge the a/f mixture. i would not take my mustang to get tuned by a guy who puts his finger in my tailpipe.

Riptide

The finger in the tailpipe trick is akin to smelling or checking the color of motor oil and determining whether it needs changing or not.

IOW it's probably a bunch of nonsense and about as non scientific as you can get.

digitalcos

Threads like this remind me just how young the legal driving age is.

07musclemustang

wow about a dime worth too many 2cents

no you cant tell as it is normal, if you clean it all up and then after driving 5 miles its all black again then yeah theres probably more then rich going on.
i clean mine every now and then and there not bad at all,

a finger on a tail pipe is not a datalogged W/B A/F

mygt500

OK guys this thread was brought to my attention and I deleted some posts.......keep the rude and demeaning comments to yourself and if I find that someone has remarked about me removing posts that are not TECH or appropriate for the forum I will close the thread and the member wil be on PA......think of the forum rules and I know a couple of you were just joking. carry on.....if you have any comments, questions, or concerns let me know via PM

sonicmetalicS197

I sowwy

mygt500

I know you were kidding but some members may have taken offense for whatever reason.....now enjoy the forum!

onederful100

sorry about that, guys. my sense of humor can get offensive sometimes. back on topic.

there is a friend of mine that tunes his vortech SC fox body by smell and the color of the exhaust smoke. he never dynotuned or nothing, runs 8 psi on a non-ic vortech for over 5 years w/out problems and puts out just over 400 rwhp @ our last dyno day w/ black smoke and strong smell of gas, turned the wall in back of the dyno all black from the smoke, so he says it's running a bit rich. its not the best way but it works for him, and he's a mechanic too.