Review – Max Atomizer Fuel Treatment from Royal Purple

Fuel injector cleaners, fuel stabilizers, additives of all kinds are on the market. It is a crowded category that can be hard to muddle through and make choice on what is right for you. Let us help.

So here is the spiel from Royal Purple: Royal Purple’s Max-Atomizer is a fully-synthetic, highly concentrated, high performance fuel injector cleaner. It is specially formulated to solve problems with today’s direct injection engines, but can be used with any type of fuel injection. Max-Atomizer contains highly concentrated polyether amine (PEA) detergents that quickly clean clogged and coked injectors, restoring 100% of injector flow. This optimizes injector spray patterns and better atomizes fuel as it enters the combustion chamber. The result is improved fuel economy, enhanced power and performance, reduced emissions, smoother idle, and quicker / easier starts. Max-Atomizer is the only fuel injector cleaner that also stabilizes ethanol, which chemically breaks down to cause harmful effects to an engine.

That all sounds awesome. The problem for most of us is that it’s all snake oil unless you can quantify what it’s doing. Short of ripping an engine apart and checking for microscopic build up in an injector we re left with a seat of the pants test.

Well – we didn’t tear an engine apart but we did do some road testing back to back to see if we could find a measurable difference.

Before

The test vehicle is a 2015 Jeep Wrangler that has 24,000 miles. It was perfect to add some Max Atomizer to and see if we could measure a performance difference. We drove a full tank of gas through the Jeep, added the atomizer when we filled up, and drove that entire tank. That eliminates some of the variables of different temperatures, days of sitting stagnant, and weather. That initial trip netted 17.01 MPG. We hand calculate all fill ups for an accurate record and the mileage is checked with GPS.

After

Before the Max Atomizer we had a minor hesitation off idle, probably due to the Ethanol gas that we are forced to run these days absorbing water. We have been deluged with rain recently and big temperature swings. A perfect recipe for condensation in your gas tank.

What did we experience? Well, for one the hesitation went away. Considering the Jeep JK’s penchant for inconsistent throttle response having that clear up makes a big difference. We have had similar results with other products over the years. Including products as simple as cheap dry gas.

For the first time when using a cleaner/fuel treatment we actually saw an increase in fuel mileage. It wasn’t an amazing increase but it was still an improvement. We went from the 17.01 to 18 MPG. This was all highway testing, we ran the same route, and on the same day. That’s a 5.5% increase in mileage. No that is not a lot when you just stare at the number, but for every 100 miles that is 1o miles of extra range. At roughly 300+ miles per tank that’s a 30 mile increase in range.

Verdict

Priced at a very reasonable $5.38 on Amazon and available with Prime shipping it’s cheap insurance for your fuel system. The performance numbers are nice and might offset the cost of the additive. The stabilization of the fuel combined with the performance makes it a great deal. You cannot discount how beneficial stabilizing Ethanol blended fuel can be for your vehicle.

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