well ok, I am sort of convinced, but I still can't help thinking that if you have alot of carbon buildup that maybe, juuuuust maybe, a piece or 2 finds its way where it shouldn't get to. I look at it this way, let's say the carbon is analogous to a piece of plaque in one of your arteries and is sitting attached to the blood vessel wall. With clot busting drugs, or mechanical device, you can break or loosen the clot but if some or all of those pieces floats downstream and catches on something, gets snagged, etc. you can get into some serious trouble......yes, I realize the arteries are WAY smaller than a cylinder bore but small metal particles (shavings) can destroy any engine, and I have to think that a piece of carbon that is hard enough to withstand the heat of steam, could also be something I would at least worry about.... but by the sounds of the majority of the posts this water steam/tranny fluid/ etc. seems to be AOK, and here I am thinking back to automechanics class and the constant reminders from the instructor to keep the internals of our engines CLEAN, CLEAN, CLEAN! from any foreign debris.
