2 Valvoline Restore & Protect tests

R&P is supposed to be designed to remove hard carbon piston deposits which are much hard to remove than sludge. Varnish is a different animal but per one of their lead engineers, it can clean up any carbon in the engine. It's designed to do it in a slow controlled manner.

You only ran it for 2,500 miles, which is not even 1 full OCI. It can take up to 4.

This is not a product you put in and within 1k miles the engine is pristine. Those products would be - BG, Valvoline Premium Blue Restore, Amsoil Engine flush etc.
 
buster said:
R&P is supposed to be designed to remove hard carbon piston deposits which are much hard to remove than sludge. Varnish is a different animal but per one of their lead engineers, it can clean up any carbon in the engine. It's designed to do it in a slow controlled manner.

You only ran it for 2,500 miles, which is not even 1 full OCI. It can take up to 4.

This is not a product you put in and within 1k miles the engine is pristine. Those products would be - BG, Valvoline Premium Blue Restore, Amsoil Engine flush etc.
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I think some of these products have a lot of synergy. I used BG EPR for the first and second oil change to the VRP. I haven't tore the engine down for a before and after but I do feel that the BG and products like it are great for removing softer carbon build up, while the VRP can go to work on removing/breaking down the harder deposits.

I'm nearly through my 3rd change with the VRP, almost 15,000 but that's likely nothing on a Theta II GDI with 98k when we got it. Feels like I put 50,000 miles on the VRP so far but I really like and plan on sticking with it indefinitely.
 
MrBaumTastic said:
I think some of these products have a lot of synergy. I used BG EPR for the first and second oil change to the VRP. I haven't tore the engine down for a before and after but I do feel that the BG and products like it are great for removing softer carbon build up, while the VRP can go to work on removing/breaking down the harder deposits.

I'm nearly through my 3rd change with the VRP, almost 15,000 but that's likely nothing on a Theta II GDI with 98k when we got it. Feels like I put 50,000 miles on the VRP so far but I really like and plan on sticking with it indefinitely.
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The BG product does look really good for a flush product. I would never use a flush personally. Only if engine was trashed.
 
buster said:
R&P is supposed to be designed to remove hard carbon piston deposits which are much hard to remove than sludge. Varnish is a different animal but per one of their lead engineers, it can clean up any carbon in the engine. It's designed to do it in a slow controlled manner.

You only ran it for 2,500 miles, which is not even 1 full OCI. It can take up to 4.

This is not a product you put in and within 1k miles the engine is pristine. Those products would be - BG, Valvoline Premium Blue Restore, Amsoil Engine flush etc.
Click to expand...

"It can take up to 4.", is incorrect. Valvoline states four or more.

" *Piston deposit removal when used as directed for four or more consecutive oil changes at standard maintenance intervals based on adapted sequence IIIH testing."
 
irollo said:
Could be 1-4 years
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If it's that slow (and it seems like it may be), it may not be very useful to many people for its cleaning properties since people tend to consider products like that after they have a lifter tick or some other issue they are trying to resolve. If someone uses it for a few oil changes, sees zero improvements, and then sells their likely already older vehicle, it didn't do them much good.

Also, let's not forget that cleaning abilities aren't unique to R&P. Just because someone saw marginal cleaning after using R&P doesn't mean R&P did anything special. Other quality oils may (or may not) have done the same thing or better, especially with more favorable usage conditions and/or more frequent OCIs.

To be clear, I have no issue whatsoever with the product, I'm sure it's a great general purpose oil and I see no reason to not use it. But it sure seems like their claims about its special cleaning properties compared to other oils are likely very optimistic.
 
Avery4 said:
If it's that slow (and it seems like it may be), it may not be very useful to many people for its cleaning properties since people tend to consider products like that after they have a lifter tick or some other issue they are trying to resolve. If someone uses it for a few oil changes, sees zero improvements, and then sells their likely already older vehicle, it didn't do them much good.

Also, let's not forget that cleaning abilities aren't unique to R&P. Just because someone saw marginal cleaning after using R&P doesn't mean R&P did anything special. Other quality oils may (or may not) have done the same thing or better, especially with more favorable usage conditions and/or more frequent OCIs.

To be clear, I have no issue whatsoever with the product, I'm sure it's a great general purpose oil and I see no reason to not use it. But it sure seems like their claims about its special cleaning properties compared to other oils are likely very optimistic.
Click to expand...
I think the cleaning ability is unique. Most oils with boosted detergent levels can clean up sludge, but can't clean piston deposits. That's the key difference. Maybe HPL and Amsoil SS can, but most oils can't.

So far, my opinion of the oil is that it's average at most things but does have a unique, deep cleaning ability, ....but it works slowly.

You only ran the oil for less than 1 OCI so your opinion of it isn't really valid. It appears you're setting it up for failure with just a 2,500-mile run. Additionally, it was actually cleaning if you looked close enough. Most people report a reduction in oil consumption, possibly indicating it is cleaning rings.

Unless this was fabricated by Valvoline, which I don't believe it was, this is some serious cleaning.


1731953607820.webp
 
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Avery4 said:
If it's that slow (and it seems like it may be), it may not be very useful to many people for its cleaning properties since people tend to consider products like that after they have a lifter tick or some other issue they are trying to resolve. If someone uses it for a few oil changes, sees zero improvements, and then sells their likely already older vehicle, it didn't do them much good.

Also, let's not forget that cleaning abilities aren't unique to R&P. Just because someone saw marginal cleaning after using R&P doesn't mean R&P did anything special. Other quality oils may (or may not) have done the same thing or better, especially with more favorable usage conditions and/or more frequent OCIs.

To be clear, I have no issue whatsoever with the product, I'm sure it's a great general purpose oil and I see no reason to not use it. But it sure seems like their claims about its special cleaning properties compared to other oils are likely very optimistic.
Click to expand...
A 2500 mile run is very very far from any type of test. My oil burner test is ongoing and will be a little less than a year long at my 5k oci’s. I’m holding off on posting detailed results until it’s complete. I will say slow cleaning is the safe way to clean an engine to avoid all kinds of problems. A lot of care needs to be done to “flush” an engine quickly which 99% of the public can’t handle. Honestly I would only flush an engine if I’m prepared for replacement if it fails. R&P, Amsoil SS, HPL are not flushes.
 
buster said:
The BG product does look really good for a flush product. I would never use a flush personally. Only if engine was trashed.
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My concern with solvent based engine flushes is that they make the oil super thin as they do their 15 minute cleaning.

The oil comes out of the drain hole super fast when draining, likely due to how thin the solvent made the oil.
It could be changing a 5W-30 to a 0W-8 (just a guess). That could cause engine wear.

I think it's better to avoid solvent based engine flushes and instead use slower products like HPL EC30 or Valvoline R&P.
 
Glenda W. said:
Plus now that we have mixed products, we’ll never know what did what. It does take some patience to complete a long term test.
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It does and most won't have the patience. People want instant results. I get it. I mean running 4 OCI's is quite a long time.

Think of the potential problems though that could arise had they made it stronger. Filters would be clogging on really neglected engines, leaks etc....would lead to a nightmare for Valvoline.

They created Premium Blue Restore so they're quite familiar with this process.
 
buster said:
I think the cleaning ability is unique. Most oils with boosted detergent levels can clean up sludge, but can't clean piston deposits. That's the key difference. Maybe HPL and Amsoil SS can, but most oils can't.

So far, my opinion of the oil is that it's average at most things but does have a unique, deep cleaning ability, ....but it works slowly.

You only ran the oil for less than 1 OCI so your opinion of it isn't really valid. It appears you're setting it up for failure with just a 2,500-mile run. Additionally, it was actually cleaning if you looked close enough. Most people report a reduction in oil consumption, possibly indicating it is cleaning rings.

Unless this was fabricated by Valvoline, which I don't believe it was, this is some serious cleaning.


View attachment 250428
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It's hard to say which oils do or don't reduce piston deposits since they aren't easy to inspect. Oil consumption can be an indication, but there's still too many other variables to say for sure, especially on a car with unknown history.

Yes, a longer term test would be ideal, but as I said, I'm going to pull the engine for a manual cleaning and refresh shortly, so there wasn't time for long term testing on that.

I personally don't consider that tiny bit of cleaning in 2500 highway miles proof that R&P has some special cleaning ability, especially without knowing the car's history. I've seen other oils do more cleaning over the same mileage in other engines, but that's obviously an apples to oranges comparison.

My friend's CRV is on its 4th OCI on R&P with no change in oil consumption yet. Could that change? Possibly, we'll see what HPL EC30 does. And without tearing down the engine, we don't know for certain that the oil consumption is due to stuck rings, that's just an educated guess since that's by far the most common reason the K series burn oil, especially that era with the warranty extension due to sticking rings.

Independent testing would be nice to see, especially since Valvoline provided no details that I could find on how the test was performed, over what duration, in what engine, etc. Even if the pictures weren't fabricated, that doesn't mean they are at all representative of real world conditions. For all we know, they could have (and likely did) create an unrealistic test just to get impressive looking results.

A control would have really strengthened their marketing too IMO. It would have been nice to see one or more common synthetic oils from other brands put through the same cleanup test on the same deposits formed the same way for the same duration and under the same conditions as a visual comparison of how their oil cleans better than others.
 
dubber09 said:
Pistons 1A and 1B as well as 2A and 2B don't seem to be the same pistons, wrist pin holes are different. Same for 3 and 4 samples. All have somewhat squished crowns in B samples?
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Yup, you are 100% right, those are not the same pistons, there are several differences between the top and bottom row.
 
Bill7 said:
My concern with solvent based engine flushes is that they make the oil super thin as they do their 15 minute cleaning.

The oil comes out of the drain hole super fast when draining, likely due to how thin the solvent made the oil.
It could be changing a 5W-30 to a 0W-8 (just a guess). That could cause engine wear.

I think it's better to avoid solvent based engine flushes and instead use slower products like HPL EC30 or Valvoline R&P.
Click to expand...
I don't think thinning out the oil for a 15 minute flush at idle is much of an issue. Lots of people are running around with plenty of fuel dilution with no immediate adverse effects. Most flushes are mostly kerosene or diesel, so I don't see how roughly a half quart of that would be worse than a similar amount of gasoline. I'd be more worried about potentially dissolving too much at once on a filthy engine.

On post #15 of this thread, 500 ML of Liqui Moly engine flush only thinned out that user's oil from 11.67 cSt to 10.35 cSt, so I don't see how that could cause any harm.

Even if the oil was thinned from, for example, an XW-20 to an XW-8, I highly doubt that would cause any measurable wear at idle. Remember that many engines run at very high oil temps (and therefore very thin oil) under sustained heavy loads without incident. 6 cSt heavily loaded up a mountain is MUCH worse than 6 cSt at idle.
 
I called Valvoline and asked them why the pistons looked different. Guys name was Steve. Was really helpful. He said he doesn't know but he noticed it too. Said he is going to reach out to his supervisor because he's curious too. Just an FYI.
 
buster said:
I called Valvoline and asked them why the pistons looked different. Guys name was Steve. Was really helpful. He said he doesn't know but he noticed it too. Said he is going to reach out to his supervisor because he's curious too. Just an FYI.
Click to expand...
I believe the LSJr R&P vid pistons were all the same. But it’s been a while since I watched it.
 
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