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Oil additives???????

badmix

badmix

1/2 ton status
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Ok, my K5 has 125k on it, uses a lil bit of oil on long interstate runs, nothing I didnt expect, etc. no biggie. Here is my question. I need to add 1/4-1/2 quart of oil but I also need to change the oil. Ive heard some conflicting studies on oil additives and when you should actually put them in. Ive heard do it during oil change and ive heard to do it b4 an oil change cuz stuff like RESTORE can clog up the oil filter, so you want to do it b4 you change the filter and oil.

Any truth to this? Jus wondering.

comments, suggestions, concerns. :D
 
I have heard of people having good luck with the Restore brand stuff. Never used it personally. Seams kind of a gimmick, if I remember right you have to use it every oil change. I dont believe in a fix in a bottle type thing. Im sure there are things that work, but it hard to say.
 
I know there is no cure in a abottle. but with the mileage of my motor, I figured it cant hurt, they arent that expensive and I dont put enuff miles on my truck that it gets tons of oil changes anyways.

My main question was to put it in b4 or after I change the oil. I know most say to do it during your oil change, but that stuff had to get in the oil filter and that is what my concern is. If my filter is clogged and used up now, than it wont be any issues to add this stuff now, drive it for a lil while and then change it.
 
The Restore stuff is to be use with a new oil change, if I remember correctly. I hear people rave about the Lucas brad stuff. Might give that a try if your looking to just add between oil changes.
 
Restore is just an engine honey. It thickens your oil. I've used it on high mileage smoking engines before, but never really saw the benefit of that over adding gear oil. I actually had one engine burning nothing but gear oil. The tolerances were so far gone on that one, that once I had a replacement I tried to blow it up, but it wouldn't go. It stopped smoking and wouldn't blow.

If your rig is only burning a pint on long trips I wouldn't worry about it. I would start thinking about a replacement, but I've ran engines for over 300,000 having to add a quart every other tank. I started running 10W-50 on the higher mileage, but for just the same reason that you want to run additives. I'm not knocking running additives, some people swear by them, I just don't see the benefit when you can run thicker oil for cheaper.
 
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I actually was running a 1qt of lucas per oil change and 10w40 high mileage oil. My truck runs great , for being a 305. It jus burns/leaks a lil oil on long trips. If I putt around town its not bad at all. If the truck hasnt been ran for a couple weeks, ill be some white smoke during startup, but it only happens once every 10-15 start ups. I know my motor is worn, but jus tryin to milk it for all its worth.
 
I would just run it how it is then, keep using the Lucas and oil you are now. Put back a few bucks here and there and save for a new motor or rebuild. My g/fs K5 use a bit of oil maybe a quart between changes. And smokes on start up if its been sitting for more than a few days. As long as it doesnt get worse, Im not touching the motor till it blows.
 
Most of those types of "additives" seem to be hoping people buy them "because it can't hurt" and because in the grand scheme of things it's not that expensive if you just do it one time. So while it's $5 (or whatever) for you now, couple hundred bucks a day, if not a whole lot more, it's obviously going to add up for the manufacturer.

To be honest, unless it was a motor I just didn't care about, I would't want to dislodge any of the junk that is almost certainly stuck to various parts of the motor. Filter isn't the only consideration, since it will bypass, but you run the risk of clogging the oil pump pickup and the oil drainbacks in the heads.

If anything, if you can get a product that is supposed to stop a motor from leaking oil like they do for power steering or transmissions, I'd give THAT a shot. I accidentally discovered that those can (and did in my case) work to stop oil leaks, within reason. That at least has a chance of working, since most leaks on a high mileage, original engine are due to the seals wearing out.
 
dyeager535 said:
Most of those types of "additives" seem to be hoping people buy them "because it can't hurt" and because in the grand scheme of things it's not that expensive if you just do it one time. So while it's $5 (or whatever) for you now, couple hundred bucks a day, if not a whole lot more, it's obviously going to add up for the manufacturer.

To be honest, unless it was a motor I just didn't care about, I would't want to dislodge any of the junk that is almost certainly stuck to various parts of the motor. Filter isn't the only consideration, since it will bypass, but you run the risk of clogging the oil pump pickup and the oil drainbacks in the heads.

If anything, if you can get a product that is supposed to stop a motor from leaking oil like they do for power steering or transmissions, I'd give THAT a shot. I accidentally discovered that those can (and did in my case) work to stop oil leaks, within reason. That at least has a chance of working, since most leaks on a high mileage, original engine are due to the seals wearing out.
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I can understand this. I didnt think about the oil pump.
 
Only reason I mention it, is because the '83 I bought had a 305 in it. I drove that thing for awhile, making sure to do oil changes, but the valve covers leaked. So I pulled them. I don't think there was a single spot on that head where I could see cast iron, there was so much coked up oil in there.

Most places it was about 1/2" thick. Had just one chunk dislodged, the drainback hole in the back of the head could have easily been plugged, or a bunch of smaller ones could easily have made it to the oil pump pickup screen. See lots of those with strips of silicone stuck to them.

Likelihood of it happening? Probably not very high. Problem if it does happen? Pretty big. :)
 
badmix said:
Ok, my K5 has 125k on it, uses a lil bit of oil on long interstate runs, nothing I didnt expect, etc. no biggie. Here is my question. I need to add 1/4-1/2 quart of oil but I also need to change the oil. Ive heard some conflicting studies on oil additives and when you should actually put them in. Ive heard do it during oil change and ive heard to do it b4 an oil change cuz stuff like RESTORE can clog up the oil filter, so you want to do it b4 you change the filter and oil.

Any truth to this? Jus wondering.

comments, suggestions, concerns. :D
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IIRC, RESTORE is mainly for attempting to restore your ring seal to help with leakdown / blowby on tired engines..seeing as it's a petroleum product, I wouldn't expect its effect to last very long before it was rendered useless by combustion.

your oil "conditioners", " stabilizers", "improvers", and whatever else they are called, just thicken the oil in an effort to slow down leaks, or quiet stuff down.. the drawback to those is that when they see combustion temps, the miracle additives fall out of suspension, and they often contain crap like chlorine, PTFE ( teflon), and god knows what else..that's when you have to worry about corrosion, deposits, and filter clogging.. or maybe you don't have to care, but that's what happens..

If you're concerned about leaks, and are prefer using an inexpensive oil, you can also opt for a " high mileage vehicle" oil - those contain an abundance of seal swelling esters, and they can slow your leak down, but you are playing russian roulette. they may not be able to overcome your leak ( or source of oil consumption) anyway, and seals can only take so much swelling,so leaks can get worse later.

one last thing about our trucks using oil - check your PCV valve.. if it's gunked up, and you're regularly losing oil, what you have going on there is the solvents in your motor oil are outgassing..over the counter oils (including synthetics) contain more solvent than ever ( gotta pay for those cool commercials somehow ) so the overall oil level eventually goes down.. there's not much you can do about that..

If it were me, and I was morally opposed to spending ten bucks a quart on a superior oil, I would just run whatever wally world had on sale, change it out every two thousand miles with the filter, add as needed, and not worry about it.
 
The additives that go in right before an oil change would be something like ATF. ATF has a lot of detergents in it and the idea is to free the sludge in the motor, and have it all caught in the old filter. There are products you can buy that are pretty much the same thing but ATF works well, is cheap and won't hurt the motor.

One counterpoint to what Dorian (dyeager) said is that the sludge can clog oil passages and cause low oil pressure. I have seen ATF fix that problem several times. I suppose there is the chance that breaking the sludge loose can clog a passage too but I've never seen it.

IMO any time sludge is in there in the first place is because the oil had not been changed enough. When my motor was pulled at ~170K it didn't have any sludge in it. My dad was the original owner and the oil was changed every 3 months.

I looked up restore because I thought I had heard that it was pretty much oil with metal suspended in it. Sounds bad, but here's a magazine article saying it worked well for them.
 
Yes, I certainly wouldn't say that my experience is the only possible. Since I couldn't even see anywhere, no idea how the passages looked.

Do motors actually "sludge up" though? I haven't had hundreds apart, I've just never seen anything that I could see some sort of "cleaner" getting out in a liquid form. I'm thinking of stuff like the slurry that ends up in tranny pans, which if in an engine I could imagine a cleaner somewhat working on.
 
I kid you not, saw it with my own eyes. When I was first pushing parts I would run with the delivery guys. We stopped a one of the shop to drop off parts. The owner was taring apart the motor on a two or three year old '91 K5. The guy that owned the K5 NEVER changed the oil, just added when it got low. Well it started to leak oil, so he took it to the shop to have checked. It ended up being the oil filter, it had rusted threw. So the shop changed the oil new filter and sent him on his way. Two weeks later the motor toasted. The valve covers were solid sludge you could see the open spots where the rockers keep it cleaned away. Oil pan was the same way. Maybe an extreme case but it was sludged up.
 
dyeager535 said:
Yes, I certainly wouldn't say that my experience is the only possible. Since I couldn't even see anywhere, no idea how the passages looked.

Do motors actually "sludge up" though? I haven't had hundreds apart, I've just never seen anything that I could see some sort of "cleaner" getting out in a liquid form. I'm thinking of stuff like the slurry that ends up in tranny pans, which if in an engine I could imagine a cleaner somewhat working on.
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The detergents "dissolve" the sludge per se. Ever seen paint/laquer thinner poured on something greasy? Its kinda like that.
 
Oh yeah, I know what the idea is behind the cleaners, I'm just saying that what I've seen in limited experience, has been essentially carbon deposits, not any sort of thickened oil. (or sludge like they advertise on tv)

Not exactly sure why the 305 was so bad, probably a combination of running hot, poor maintenance, age, EGR, and so on, but it wasn't something that a cleaner would seem to have a good chance of dissolving and just "washing away" and being picked up as little particles in the filter.

Probably not a good idea, but I didn't know any better, so I took a paint scraper to it and got as much out as I could. This stuff was rock hard.

I'm kind of curious to hear from our engine builders on this, what they see, and what they think. As soft as the cranks are, is a piece of this carbon going through the oil system going to cause a problem? (assuming the filter is bypassing a percentage)
 
The "sludge" I have seen inside motors is similar to what you would see building up around a leaky seal. Gooey and black.
 
Do not use engine restore!!!

I used it last year thinking it might help. I added it with the new oil for 2 oil changes. It made my oil pressure overall drop and I think I burn more oil now as a result.

Restore has little metal flakes in it that like to ruin your engine. My engine is still running strong today, but that restore crap definately took life off of it.
 
Chevy305 said:
Restore has little metal flakes in it that like to ruin your engine.
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Just because it has metal in it doesn't mean it will ruin your motor. In fact, many people that break in motors (with regular hydraulic cams) make sure to use an oil with lots of zinc in it (like Rotella).

I am in no way affiliated with any additives but what your motor did isn't necessarily because of what you added to it.

Then again, don't expect any additive to fix all of your problems ;)
 
Nearly every engine I have ever torn apart had some amount of oil sludge in it. Pretty common on the valve train, as well as in the valley. Regular oil changes prevent a lot of the sludge from forming, but it still forms. Chevy engines are famous for the small amount of smoke when starting after a period of sitting. This is because the engines sit at a slight angle, lower in the rear of the engine, and that allows the oil to drip into the cylinders once the valve seals wear.

Additives, in my humble opinion, are a band aid and should be treated as such. The amount of oil you are talking about burning is pretty normal for a worn engine. If there are no obvious leaks, running an additive to help prevent the oil burn, is probably not going to help much. A seal restorer with a lot of esters, may help some with the oil run down the valves, but can also cause premature failure of other seals.

ATF can help clean carbon deposits, and other sludge from the engine, but will not clear it from the entire engine.
 
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