Are oil additives any good? I don’t know if any of you are on BITOG (bobistheoilguy.com) but a debate has been going on for several years over there on oil additives. Some consider them snake oil, some consider them a good idea, while the rest are somewhere in between. I’ve read all the various posts on the topic and decided to see for myself with real world experience. I’m lousy at taking before and after pictures with my projects, but here’s my experience. This experiment took a while, and I don't have any fuel mileage numbers.

The test subject: my grandfather’s farm truck, a 1983 Miser pickup with 138K hard miles on it. I consider being used to haul hay/feed/animals/tow a tractor and being driven 20 yards at a time, then shut off, repeat, day after day after day, to be hard use. Farms don’t sleep! But all that stop and go means the engine was so full of carbon that even the dipstick was coated in it! The engine had a lifter tick even when warmed up, and since it had been so abused anyway I decided to make it a test bed to see if additives made any difference. This is not a scientific test by any means, and the cumulative effects may have contributed to one another, but here’s what I observed:

Lucas: waste of money. It didn’t slow the leaky front main and valve cover seals like it advertised, and didn’t quiet the ticking lifter. Your results may vary, but it didn’t do anything in the 3000 miles it was in there. The leak didn't get worse, but it didn't get better either. Well, leak is too strong a word, it was more like a misty goo that coated everything along the front of the engine and the cylinder head.

Marvel Mystery Oil: This one surprised me. I changed the oil and substituted 1 quart of MMO for regular WalMart brand 10W40 and ran it for a complete oil change interval (3000 miles, more or less). The ticking lifter went away almost immediately, and the oil fill cap cleaned up a bit. There was still a bit of carbon on the dipstick, though some of it wiped off the dipstick and cap with a rag.

After this, the head gasket went. I don’t know if either additive caused it, contributed to it, or it was a coincidence, or if it was because of the Italian tune-up I gave it (floor it!) but when I pulled the head I couldn’t believe it. The head and valve cover looked worse than my barbecue grill! I scraped what I could off the pushrods and valve cover, and put everything back together. This engine was in worse shape than I expected, and I learned that my grandfather went seven years between oil changes! So I changed the oil and filter and let ‘er rip for a good, long interstate drive. The ticking lifter returned after a couple of days.

At the insistence of an old timer, and mainly to use up the old bottle I had sitting on the garage shelf, I topped off the oil with a quart of Dexron. The lifter stopped ticking before I got out of the driveway, but otherwise there was no difference in how it drove. Or in the amount of oil that droozled out. His claim was that ATF had detergents in it that would aggressively loosen the carbon inside, but several people on BITOG claimed that was an old myth. What I can say is the ATF did nothing; I dissect all my oil filters when I do an oil change, and while I was happy there was no copper in the pleats of the old filter, I was disappointed there was no carbon either.

So at this point I just added a decent quality oil and filter (Fran sucks) and to this point, the ticking has not returned. What I’ve learned from this experience is this: You can use additives if you want, but the only one I’ve seen work reasonably well is Marvel Mystery Oil, but none of them could compare with just regular oil and filter changes in the first place.

I wish I had before and after pictures on this, but unfortunately I didn't take any.

Have you tried Rislone? It worked for me to clean up the piston rings and slashed the oil use of my '97 Neon from a few years ago.

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Joshua

No, but I might try that one though. This engine has a ton of blow-by and carbon, and I'm sure the rings are so full of carbon they can't seal. When I had the head off I cleaned the combustion chambers and piston tops, and the cylinders themselves looked good and there was no ridge at the top of the bore. I'd really like to save this engine with nothing more than a gasket set if I can get away with it.

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If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

See here.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

As usual, Dan, that was a very good read. Kreen has been mentioned a lot on BITOG and some swear by it, while (predictably) some say it did not perform as well as they had hoped. "Those" seem to be Saturn owners more often than not. Seems Saturns are sludge monsters.

I may have to give it a shot when I get the chance. Right now, the truck has work to do and I just changed the oil and filter this morning before work. Thanks for the link.

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If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

If the engine has good oil pressure and compression, it can be saved.

A correct temperature thermostat combined with long highway drives and decent oil is a good way to de-gunk the engine. MMO worked well to free up a stuck lifter in the slant in my brother's 83 Dodge van. I would add a quart of MMO at your next oil fill/change and just drive it. Remember that hydraulic lifters in the slant are fed oil through the pushrods. You might try to figure out which lifter is sticking and clean the pushrod.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

Most of the garbage inside the engine is not harming anything while it is stuck in place. Moving that junk to the bottom of the pan can cause oil starvation or as Dan wrote "Sweeping large amounts of dirt and crud from its resting place into the oil filter, which plugs and goes into bypass mode, sending the cräp directly to the bearings and quickly failing the engine."

Rislone is relatively slow, but it did what I wanted which was to free the oil rings and apparently did so without damaging anything. You have a truck which runs and drives. Proceed with caution and you're likely to keep it running and driving. If there were less build up I would recommend Kreen, but I fear that Kreen would cause too much to come loose.

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Joshua

Well, so far the ticking lifter noise has not returned, and the oil pressure (I have installed real gauges) is a steady 50 pounds while I drive. I filled it with Rotella T heavy duty diesel oil (supposedly has lots of stuff old flat tappet engines like, from what I read on BITOG) and a couple of people said this oil has a good detergent package, but isn't crazy aggressive, so it's not likely to drop big chunks of crud all at once. I also used an oil filter specified for a Ford 302, which gave me a little more oil capacity. The plan is to take her on a long highway drive this weekend, and see what happens.

If she shows signs of cleaning, I'll just do a shorter oil change interval, like 1500 miles, and then reevaluate. If not I'll try Dan's "soup" and then drop the oil pan. Gotta do that any way to replace the gaskets. I do think this engine can be rescued with just a thorough degunking and some new gaskets.

What about using a parts cleaner pump from Northern Tool etc? Make a spray bar and place under the valve cover. Using the pump drip the solvent and let drain out into the oil pan, recirculate the solvent, maybe overnight. Have enough depth in the pickup tank that contains the pump so that sludge settles to the bottom. Don't operate the motor with any solvent in the oil pan. Remove the oil pan and clean out the sludge and pickup screen.

I wouldn't do it .

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1964 dart

See Widman's Bottom Line Recommendations 10, 11, and 12:

Selection of the Right Motor Oil for the Corvair and other Engines

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1965 Plymouth Barracuda,
225 engine, Quadrajet, HEI, Dutra Duals, 904 Torqueflite, 2.76:1 axle, Addco front bar
Rods & Relics - Fort Erie, ON / Collector Car Tech

This thread is for older vehicles but I have seen a slant six with worse sludge than this motor

http://p15-d24.com/topic/38762-oil-sludgenon-detergent/

So, like I promised, I drove a lot of miles this past 3 day weekend. We went to the county north of us to watch my granddaughter's tap dance recital, then went to the mountains about an hour north of there to relax and go to a drive in theater. That was a lot of fun! We came home and the next day we took some kids to the lake for a swim, then home for a cook out. On Monday I went down to see an old school friend who lives an hour south of here. I varied my driving style between ITU mode (Italian tune up) to GGTB (Grandma goes to bingo) and it revealed two things:

1. I need a new distributor cap and rotor, as it breaks up on long hills. I cleaned the contacts and it helped a lot;

2. After only a couple of miles, the ticking stopped. Except;

3. The ticking returned a dozen times louder yesterday morning after it cooled overnight. It's definitely the #6 exhaust.

So my next course of action is probably going to involve removing the #6 exhaust pushrod to see if debris in lodged in there. Might as well remove any crud that might be present while I'm at it.

But did the diesel motor oil remove any crud from the engine? Seems like it did. I don't have a before picture, but here's an after picture from a couple hundred miles of use:

<img src="http://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/150x100q90/909/jMzzpp.jpg" border="0">

Trust me, that's a lot better than it was 200 miles ago. But my fear is now some of the particles got past the filter and into the pushrod or lifter. I really don't want to pull the head off this thing.

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If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

You don't have to pull the head to remove the pushrod.

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Casually looking for a Clifford hyperpak intake for cheap.

But I would to pull the lifter. Hope whatever is causing the ticking is stuck in the rocker shaft end of the pushrod.

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If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.