Oil addatives????

[John White]

I have several vehicles, including a dozer and BH. I hate to think what it would cost if I had to replace a engine. Some are getting up there in miles. I know most of us have been to the county fairs and seen the fellow with the straight 6 engine run it with no oil or water and it wont lock up. I know Wynn's makes one, so does JB. And I am sure of a dozen other brands. What are your thought on these additaves. Are they worth the cost? I wonder if the concentration they add is the same as recommended on the can. I recently had a head gasket go on my Ford ranger and did not detect it for awhile. So unfortunaly I drove it, not realizing the problem till it got hot, of course anti-freeze in the crank case. I replaced the head gasket and new oil. So far, ok. But would one of these addiatives gave me a little more portection. I know with oil at $4 a quart or more and most of those additives at around $20 a can. That adds to the overall cost. And that is what all of are trying to avoid. And if so, which brand is the best. Any oil co.'s ever run any tests. I know Wynns says theirs is the best and JB says the same thing.

 

[ray66v]

In this day and age, it is ridiculous to think that the additive companies have something meaningful, the oil makers don't already put in oil for ordinarily usage.

The only time I would use an additive, is if I wanted to try and modify the oil, because I had a special need like reducing oil burning, in a worn engine.

 

[daman1]

There are some good additives(mainly anti-wear,esters for seal conditioners) yes it's true but no miracles in a can, you run with out oil or severely over heat you'll have damage.

in short stick with a good name brand oil that meets your API spec and you'll be fine.

if talking your diesel engines any 15w40 will work,but i'd stick with any of the "big three" Delo,Delvac,Rotella and you'll be fine.

my self i run all synthetics little added performance against high oil temps,oil oxidation and cleaning.

 

[sw03]

I have been running LC20 in oil for years..Very good product and UOA show it works nicely.

 

[Soundguy]

I have several vehicles, including a dozer and BH. I hate to think what it would cost if I had to replace a engine. Some are getting up there in miles. I know most of us have been to the county fairs and seen the fellow with the straight 6 engine run it with no oil or water and it wont lock up. I know Wynn's makes one, so does JB. And I am sure of a dozen other brands. What are your thought on these additaves. Are they worth the cost? I wonder if the concentration they add is the same as recommended on the can. I recently had a head gasket go on my Ford ranger and did not detect it for awhile. So unfortunaly I drove it, not realizing the problem till it got hot, of course anti-freeze in the crank case. I replaced the head gasket and new oil. So far, ok. But would one of these addiatives gave me a little more portection. I know with oil at $4 a quart or more and most of those additives at around $20 a can. That adds to the overall cost. And that is what all of are trying to avoid. And if so, which brand is the best. Any oil co.'s ever run any tests. I know Wynns says theirs is the best and JB says the same thing.

ditto what ray66 said.

as for your coolant in the crankcase for a while.. I'd have changed the main and rod bearing shells as they are possibly close to being wiped out... coolants hard on them..

for the average vehicle, run a specified grade clean oil and service it and your filters at reccomended times.. even 4$ fram filters and 11$/5qt supertech 10w30 oil should be fine... for extreme duty machines like towing rigs , etc.. some more money in fluids likely has some tangible benefits for you..

soundguy

 

[brucew44guns]

If you ever had opportunity to go to a major oil company sales meeting, I'm talking a meeting where distributors and sales guys meet with company reps to discuss products, trends, maintenance, etc, a question like yours usually comes up.
Mobil, Shell, Chevron, Conoco and probably all the rest, will quickly advise not to use additives in their crankcase products. The oil company spends a lot of money testing, and they pay big money to the additive company that sells them the package. They don't want foreign witch brews added into their excellent blends. The idea that you would buy a new KW, run Delvac 15-40 in it, but you dump in a gallon of Lucas just because you love your truck, is not sound thinking, at least not to Mobil Oil or the others. I tend to agree. I sell Conoco Power D 15-40 to a firm who blades county roads with Cat graders. They go 500 hours between changes, (at 50 MPH on an over-the-road truck that is 25,000 miles). The oil analysis at change comes back perfect, everything looks great, so why would anyone dump in Bardahl, Lucas, Alemite CD-2 or some brew like that?. Use a quality product, it will work.

 

[Egon]

If you ever had opportunity to go to a major oil company sales meeting, I'm talking a meeting where distributors and sales guys meet with company reps to discuss products, trends, maintenance, etc, a question like yours usually comes up.

I can recall hearing a rep. from one of the majors saying the additives were real good money makers. He also said that they weren't required. I also got the distinct impression that the makers and sellers of the additives may have been owned by the majors!

 

[DEWFPO]

When you start using additives your basically entering into a very expensive chemistry experiment, on your nickel. Oils are complex and they require allot of testing to make sure they do what they are supposed to do and do not do what they are not supposed to do. To add other chemicals into this mix is like betting in Vegas. You are changing the chemistry of what has been tested and guaranteed. It may not cause a problem and it may help but you are taking a chance. You said the equipment is expensive, why chance it? Just perform the mfr's recommended maintenance with quality products and you should be fine for a very long time. An upgrade to synthetic lubes can help and is not a chemistry experiment in the making.

DEWFPO

 

[twarr1]

Use a good quality oil and filter and change them regularly. It's really that simple.

 

[crashz]

Generally I agree with all above. Any API certified oil and decent filter will offer much better protection than oils produced 10 years ago. With regular maintenance, your engines should not need and probably will not see any differnce with any additive.

That being said, I like a clean engine. I personally have seen great results with Lube Control and AutoRX. I've used both in my daily drivers and have noticed very little difference (as they were maintained well), but in two very neglected cars, I've seen phenominal results. So on engines that may have a sketchy past, I run a cycle of AutoRX. I plan on doing a compression test on my dump truck, run a round of AutoRX through it and test again.

 

[brokenot]

Oil additives are not needed. No matter what cocktail an additive company comes up with, the question no additive salesman will ever be able to answer for you is this:

Since you don't know which oil I'm using now, you don't know what additive package is in my crankcase now. Therefore, how in the world can you recommend an additive package for me?

Most aftermarket sales pitches can be debunked in a similar fashion. A couple of weekends ago, I helped my nephew out by installing his new "tuned" exhaust system on his F-150. We dropped out his OEM stuff, and as I was wirefeeding all of the bits together we were talking. I was his age once too, so I never approached the situation from a know-it-all perspective or anything....I just asked a few questions in the hopes that future purchases would be given more consideration. (i.e. this stuff wasn't cheap, he doesn't have a money tree in the backyard, and he was counting on some big improvements.) He had *sort of* fallen victim to the marketing tactics used by sellers of the aftermarket bits.

Long story short, how "tuned" can an exhaust system be when it's simply installed on a vehicle it happens to fit? The manufacturer has no idea what other things may or may not have been done to the truck. They have no idea whether it's bone-stock, they don't know how it's driven, what gearing it has, what type of fuel is used....nothing. So their exhaust is "tuned" to what?

Same thing applies to oil additives. There is no way they can know what's appropriate without knowing what's in the oil you're using now.

And even then, you'd have to assume they have a better idea of what's appropriate than the engine manufacturer that recommends an oil classification, and the company that makes an oil to that specification.

 

[Mace Canute]

I would never use any oil additive that you find on the shelves of a big box store, but I do use an oil additive made by Texas Refinery corporation, the same company that makes the oil I use. It's called "Pro-Tech Engine Treatment with ATM". A couple of years ago, my old 1994 Chevy 350 started to have slight lifter noise when I first started it up on cold days. I dumped a pint of it the engine, and it cleaned up that problem. I bought the truck used back in 1998 when it had about 185,000 km on it, today it has 240,000 km. You can see I don't put many kms on it in a year but the kms I do put on it tend to be "severe service", such as starting it up and driving off right away with zero warm up time, and only short trips of a few kms. Tough on it in winter months since it's rarely plugged in. Ever since then I have always added a pint of it every oil change since it did work for me.

Another instance of where an oil additive actually worked just came to mind. Decades ago, a friend and his dad used to haul used oil and had trouble with the differential in their tank truck, it was heating severely, so much so they said they couldn't put their hand on the housing, even with an empty tank. They bought a couple of cans of Moly-Slip and dumped them into the differential. He said that even with a full load of used oil, when they got back from a 100 mile trip, they were able to hold their hand on the housing. The Moly-Slip addition had quite a bit of molybdenum disulfide in it and it got them back home where they could properly fix the diff. After hearing that, I used to add a can of it to my diffs "just because".

I don't think it's accurate to say all oil additives are useless. Just like fuel additives where most are snake oil and only a handful actually work, I believe only a handful of oil additives actually work also. I'm also of the shared opinion that using a quality oil is the way to go rather than trying to boost the capabilities of a poor quality oil by using additives.

 

[Car Doc]

I use and sell a small amount of metal conditioning product called ER (energy release) in my repair shop and have for over 20 years.

I always and honestly say oil is all you need and keep it clean and I dont go out of my way to sell the stuff it is a tool for me and saves some of my customers larger repair bills sometimes.

I have however seen amazing results on certain applications where for instance a power steering pump is noisy because the pressure relief valve is sticking or a hydraulic lifter is sticking where there is super close tolerances I see an improvement when using ER almost 100% of the time.

They took zinc and other friction reducers out of motor oils because roller lifters that most every engine uses now don't need it and this is another reason additives are necessary where you have a newly installed flat tappet cam they wont break in 2/3 of the time.

 

[rjkobbeman]

I would never use any oil additive that you find on the shelves of a big box store, but I do use an oil additive made by Texas Refinery corporation, the same company that makes the oil I use. It's called "Pro-Tech Engine Treatment with ATM". A couple of years ago, my old 1994 Chevy 350 started to have slight lifter noise when I first started it up on cold days. I dumped a pint of it the engine, and it cleaned up that problem. I bought the truck used back in 1998 when it had about 185,000 km on it, today it has 240,000 km. You can see I don't put many kms on it in a year but the kms I do put on it tend to be "severe service", such as starting it up and driving off right away with zero warm up time, and only short trips of a few kms. Tough on it in winter months since it's rarely plugged in. Ever since then I have always added a pint of it every oil change since it did work for me.

Another instance of where an oil additive actually worked just came to mind. Decades ago, a friend and his dad used to haul used oil and had trouble with the differential in their tank truck, it was heating severely, so much so they said they couldn't put their hand on the housing, even with an empty tank. They bought a couple of cans of Moly-Slip and dumped them into the differential. He said that even with a full load of used oil, when they got back from a 100 mile trip, they were able to hold their hand on the housing. The Moly-Slip addition had quite a bit of molybdenum disulfide in it and it got them back home where they could properly fix the diff. After hearing that, I used to add a can of it to my diffs "just because".

I don't think it's accurate to say all oil additives are useless. Just like fuel additives where most are snake oil and only a handful actually work, I believe only a handful of oil additives actually work also. I'm also of the shared opinion that using a quality oil is the way to go rather than trying to boost the capabilities of a poor quality oil by using additives.

I'm just now starting to read the literature of TRC's other products. I use their Moly C&C grease and think it is some **** fine stuff.

 

[JDL538]

I have had Street Rods and corvettes all of my adult life, when they sit they will bog and run badly, i put carb cleaner down the barrel and they run like new every time.
I have been doing that for more than 50 years and it works everytime.

 

[Mace Canute]

I'm just now starting to read the literature of TRC's other products. I use their Moly C&C grease and think it is some **** fine stuff.

Yep. It stands up very well against all others. I always say it's the second best grease I have found, just because I haven't found the best yet.