The skinny on engine oil additives.....

[poltr1]

I have a car with a lot of miles on it. I want to improve my fuel economy and protect my investment by prolonging my engine's life. There are plenty of engine oil additives out there on the market. Some work, some don't. Which ones should I consider and which ones should I avoid?

Right now, my current front-runners are Prolong and Restore.

While doing some research online, I came across this page on carbibles.com regarding additives. They didn't have a lot of good things to say about additives, and many of them have been investigated by the FTC for false claims.

So....if you've used an engine oil additive, what are your experiences?

Comments

[zorya-thinks.livejournal.com]

I don't use an additive in my Accord hybrid, but I heard about this one on the Ed Schultz show on Air America:

http://www.ca40g.com/home.php?xid=17352e0bba1ac9d6bb5af376a85c6910

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty dubious about oil additives. If the oil additives were any good, the manufacturers of premium-grade motor oil would be putting that stuff into motor oil. It wouldn't be a "consumer-add" product.

I'd avoid.

Also, how many miles is "a lot"? I know you're about my age and to some of us cars with 70,000 or 80,000 miles are ready for the junkheap, 'cos that's the way it was back in the 70s. Nowadays cars can push 200,000 miles with good maintenance, assuming they don't rust out or get hit.

[poltr1]

The car has over 150,000 miles on it. It probably doesn't matter that much, but most of that is from highway driving.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

That's getting up there, I guess. Still, i don't think oil additives are going to help you any. Mostly, those things were good for getting rid of a used car back in the day, if it made excessive engine noise due to something like a spun bearing. Dump a bunch of STP in the crankcase, and hope the next sucker on the used car lot doesn't notice.

Today's engines are manufactured to much tighter tolerances, which is why they go with thinner oils these days. 10W-40 and 20W-50 used to be common; now lots of cars use 5W-30 and even 0W-30. Thickening up an oil like that with additives could actually be harmful, since the thicker oil might have trouble squeezing into the tighter clearances around bearing shells and that kinda thing.

[poltr1]

*nods* My car uses 5W-30 oil.

I think I mentioned this before, but my dealer offers the Envirolution engine cleaning as a way to get rid of engine sludge. Problem is, the dealer -- not the manufacturer -- recommends the service every 12,000 miles. I would think this would be necessary on a less frequent basis.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

It's less about extracting the sludge from your engine than extracting the money from your wallet. Here's what the Car Talk guys have to say about it.

[poltr1]

Yeah, I think you mentioned that.

Shame that the people who sell car supplies and services -- or anything else, for that matter -- don't proply vet what it is they're selling. :(

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

I think they know perfectly well what they're selling.

[horsewomann.livejournal.com]

I've never used additives in my oil, I just make sure that I use a GOOD oil. I prefer the Mobil 1 synthetic oil. Yeah, it's a bit more expensive, BUT you can increase you miles between changes from 3000 to 5000. I even had a mechanic tell me that as long as you change the filter ever 5K, you can actually run the oil for 15K. Not sure I'd care to stretch it that far, but it is really good oil. I just had to give up my Chevy Blazer last fall. I had 230K miles on it. It was rusting apart and most everything had been replaced on it, EXCEPT the engine. Even with that high of mileage, and a lot of it done in city driving during the early years (it was a 1990 vehicle), when they parted out the truck, the mechanic wanted to know when I'd had the engine replaced, since he thought that there was NO WAY that it could be in that good of shape with that many miles. It's not the first time a mechanic has said that about our vehicle's engine where we have always run synthetic in it. Just my two cents...