Oil Treatment

[slimmyslim1420]

I was wondering if any of you guys use any oil or engine treatments on your KL-ZE? I used to use RESTORE for a v6 on my 1.8 but I'm not sure if I should use that or anything else on my ZE. Whenever I had thr restore in my engine it was a lot more quiet, and so I was curious if it would be ok int the ZE.

[slimmyslim1420]

Bump.

[93_mx3_gs]

Whatever you do don't use LUCAS, I've heard some bad info on them.

I would recommend Z-MAX I guess.

[mitmaks]

lucas works, Ive used restore in old engines, it worked too, anything else is just pure crap. Especially anything that puts teflon coating inside your engine, dont do it, youll need rebuild sooner than you think

[slimmyslim1420]

Anyone else care to comment?

[neumann]

Lucas Oil treatments are not great. They have a tendency to foam, which is not what you want. Lucas Uppercylinder Lubricant is probably an okay fuel additive, but overpriced. Chevron Techron or Pennzoil Gumout Regane are better if you can get them. FP60 from Lubecontrol is better yet.

Any of the PTFE (Teflon) additives are total crap and a bad idea. DuPont, the makers of teflon will tell you that it has no business inside an engine sump. They didn't want to sell to these snake oil salesmen but were forced to sell Teflon to Duralube, Slick 50 et al after litigation about 15 years ago. Ironically in the interim the FTC has cracked down on the shysters and now Slick 50 and Duralube and many others have no PTFE, making them less harmful, but still a waste of money.

Zmax is not good. It is a chlorinated paraffin and over the long haul could have corrosive effects. It may actually enhance lubricity - so could chlorine bleach - but it does not belong in an engine.

Speaking of chlorine, beware of anything that is marketed on the basis of a Timken bearing test (one of those "how many pounds of pressure on the ball bearing deals). People forget that a lubricant designed purely to deal with friction is not actually suited to the heat and carbon produced in an Internal Combustion Engine. A great gear oil may not be a great IC engine oil.

Conversely great Heavy Duty Diesel engine oils are often great gasoline engine oils. While some may be high enough in ash to have negative effects on the catalytic convertors of gas powered cars, the diesel engine oils usually have moire detergency than PCMOs. I think one of the safest ways to "clean" an engine is to run a few short oil change intervals on a diesel engine oil.

Restore and other products based on particulate soft metals are an exteme bandaid for mechanical issues. If you really have a need for these things the engine may be pretty far gone. Depending on what the issue is you might be better just letting it consume, burn, leak oil and top it up.

Speaking of oil leaks, the best prduct for cleaning an engine is called Auto-RX and is marketed by the developer in Florida. It is based on organic esters and is very gentle and slow acting.

Some people may benefit from an engine flush using products like Seafoam, Marvel Mystery oil, kerosene in the crankcase, but you risk damage. Some people swear by ATF in the oil, but that seems baseless.

As a routine additve for oil, there are a number of products that may be useful as Anti Wear agents, and contain larger percentages of common additives in blended oil. Zinc, Phosphorous, soluble molybdenum disulfide (not particulate suspsension), boron, calcium etc being common. Even commodity brands like STP or Valvoline are probably not bad, and may actually be good for newer API SM rated Passenger Car Motor Oils to put back some of the AW and EP agents removed to meet SM/GF-4 spec.

The overall quality of PCMOs today is much better than 10 or 20 years ago. It is hard to find a bad motor oil, unless you pick up some moronic non detergent SA oil. Every current oil meeting API SM or ILSAC GF-4 is comparable to the highest quality oil availabel 10 years ago. Many cheap motor oils are now largely or all Group III basestocks and the additive packs required for curent soecs really eliminate crappy product. The one other caveat is that the hurricanes in 3Q 2005 have actually impacted the refining operations that produce motor oil basestocks, and there may be impact on product quality for a short period.

The best routine oil additive available is Lube Control LC20.

You can go crazy arguing over thick vs thin oil and some of it really depends on the engine. Likewise the benefits of synthetic oil may depend on the usage. Sure a full PAO or Group V synthetic is going to be better than conventional oil, it will be better at temperature extremes, cover a wider viscosity spread without unstable viscosity improvers etc. but whether it is worth it depends on your engine and you usage.

If you are actually interested in reading all about automotive lubrication and fuel issues go to
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com

[jschrauwen]

WOW!!! Mr. Neumann you appear to know your stuff!! This write-up is definitely FAQ material. Your first name wouldn't happen to be Bob, would it? - http://www.bobistheoilguy.com

[den]

All I can say is that I use lucas oil 20/80 ratio with regular 10w30 oil and it made my 273,000 km engine more quite, smoother idle and maybe a little bit more poweful. I used zmax once and it didn't show any improvements or what so ever to my egine. I wasted 40CAD on that s---.

[slimmyslim1420]

Yea I think that should go in the FAQ as well. Thanks for the info man. I have to say I learned a thing or two.
thanks, Damon

[ikarus1]

Auto-RX is an excellent product for rejuvenating seals in high mileage cars. It also cleans piston rings of carbon build-up, which in turn leads to a great combustion seal, which in turn can lead to more power/better economy. It's psuedo-expensive for an "additive" but in reality it's cheaper than a mechanic's labor-hour rate. It is a gentle cleaner, unlike kerosene/solvent "oil flushes" and it doesn't flush a bunch of crap thru your oiling system all at once. It's truly a beautiful product invented by a good guy.

http://www.auto-rx.com

Also, you can use it in your tranny or basically anything that uses some type of oil.

[neumann]

Thanks slimmyslim and jschrauwen. If I knew anyone would pay attention I would have checked my spelling Actually I mainly responded because I saw slimmyslim's two bumps. I figured you really wanted some info.

ikarus1 I agree with your Auto-RX reference and mentioned it in my post. Being a newbie to this board (and to the MX-3), I was not sure about the policy on linking commercial URLS but i have made it a practice to run an Auto-RX cycle on all my new used cars. Then I run LubeControl LC20 in maintenance mode. Auto-RX does a great job of cleaning sludge, ring packs and conditioning seals. LC20 removes varnish, slows the oxidation of oil and enchances lubricity. http://www.lubecontrol.com

I like the statement about Auto-Rx being pseudo expensive. A lot of people will balk at the price (about $25) or the fact that you have to buy it mail order or online, but as den points out he dropped $40 on worthless Zmax, and the best you can hope for with that product is that is hopefully did not corrode your engine.