4.3L Vortec Engine "Hiding" Oil

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Originally Posted By: 91344George
Best thing to do is start out with the very basics. I would recommend a quality HDEO oil like Shell Rotella or Mobil Delvac hopefully these high quality high detergent oils might help solve the problem.

I would NOT recommend you put ANYTHING like MMO, Lucas, ect into your crankcase. Period. After all if these things were so great the auto makers would be recommending them, BUT THEY ARE MOST CERTAINLY NOT AND ACTUALLY DISCOURAGE OWNERS FROM USING ANYTHING BUT A HIGH QUALITY OIL WITH THE CORRECT SPECIFICATIONS.


Yeah, That's why I'm hesitant to throw any hardcore cleaners in the engine. I picked up 5 quarts of Pennzoil High Mileage yesterday, does the 2 you mentioned have a higher detergent content?
 
So I paid a visit to the auto parts store to see what they had and ask a bunch of questions and I ended up buying 6 quarts of oil and 1 quart of transmission fluid. I figured I would try out the old trick of dumping 1 quart of transmission fluid in with 4 quarts of oil and see what happen after running that concoction for 15 minutes. I probably could have run it longer, but decided to stop at 15. I had it in neutral with the parking brake set to get any load off the engine. The oil after I changed it was slightly darker than when I put it in. I still have yet to cut into the oil filter. Although one interesting discovery I found out while changing my filter was that the filter failed around the top of the filter and was leaking, and this was a Napa Gold filter
shocked.gif
so that was a pleasant surprise, I did notice my oil was high, but not as high as it should have been with the extra oil I put in it. So the true test will be tomorrow when i got to work, it is suppose to be pretty cold tonight so we'll see what happens. I replaced the transmission mix with PYB (Pennzoil Yellow Bottle) and a Purolator filter.
 
It's a old falsehood that transmission fluid will flush out sludge, hate to say it, but you wasted money and oil...
 
Originally Posted By: 91344George

I would NOT recommend you put ANYTHING like MMO, Lucas, ect into your crankcase. Period. After all if these things were so great the auto makers would be recommending them, BUT THEY ARE MOST CERTAINLY NOT AND ACTUALLY DISCOURAGE OWNERS FROM USING ANYTHING BUT A HIGH QUALITY OIL WITH THE CORRECT SPECIFICATIONS.


The reason car manufacturers don;t recommend additives, is because engine oil issues generally don't occur during the basic new car warranty period.

You could bet your entire piggy bank that if newish vehicles started suddenly hiding two quarts of oil, they would be promoting specific additives.

There are multiple additives that work well. But you need to find the proper additive for the issue at-hand. You also need to sort-out the good additives from the subpar additives.
 
Try a nice ester based oil such as redline and change at 5K for two/three OCI'S that will clean your sluddger up you could have done this for the price of oil/filters, lucas, and ATF changes.
 
Originally Posted By: jrd929
Originally Posted By: 91344George
Best thing to do is start out with the very basics. I would recommend a quality HDEO oil like Shell Rotella or Mobil Delvac hopefully these high quality high detergent oils might help solve the problem.

I would NOT recommend you put ANYTHING like MMO, Lucas, ect into your crankcase. Period. After all if these things were so great the auto makers would be recommending them, BUT THEY ARE MOST CERTAINLY NOT AND ACTUALLY DISCOURAGE OWNERS FROM USING ANYTHING BUT A HIGH QUALITY OIL WITH THE CORRECT SPECIFICATIONS.


Yeah, That's why I'm hesitant to throw any hardcore cleaners in the engine. I picked up 5 quarts of Pennzoil High Mileage yesterday, does the 2 you mentioned have a higher detergent content?


Yes, they do have a much stronger detergent pack that sounds like just what you might need.

Take the PHM back and pick up Shell Rotella T5 or the Mobil Delvac . Either will do a much better job of cleaning . Use a couple of these HDEOs for the next couple of oil changes and than you can go back to regular detergent products like the PHM you just bought.
 
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Originally Posted By: jrd929
If I don't use the Lucas Oil Treatment, I get really bad lifter noise for about 5 or so minutes before it starts to finally dissipate. With the additive I get lifter noise for a few seconds and it goes away quickly.


Piston slap. Try Pennzoil Platinum 5w30 for the rest of the engine's life to clean it.
 
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I have had success every time I have used AutoRX and I stand behind the product. It cleans well, without harsh solvents, over a couple of oil change intervals in most cases.

I also use MMO and that seems to work well too, although I prefer to utilize that product in my gas.

Transmission fluid in the oil....the old timers clean. It may, at one time, offered a benefit in cleaning over the motor oil of the day, but that has not been the case for a long, long time. It's not designed to survive in an internal combustion engine's environment, and may cause more harm than good.

The PYB 5W30 is sound advice for your application.
 
How long after you shut off the engine are you checking the oil level? Some owners manuals for certain vehicles recommend checking the oil after the engine has been fully warmed up, and shut off for 5 minutes, otherwise an inaccurate reading might be obtained.

Maybe your owners manual says something like this?

Anyway, chances are the oil is pooling in that head, and not draining back down quick enough. I wonder if there's another drain port below that cylinder head that is clogged up that you can't see.

If you can pop off the oil pan easy enough, it might be worth seeing how things look under there, and cleaning out any carbon build up at the drain ports.

BC.
 
I had a 89 chevy 1500 with a 4.3L vortec. Same thing. Cant check the oil on anything but a perfectly flat surface or it will show under or over by over a quart! As far as Lucas, thats straight up syrup, will take forever for that stuff to make it back to the pan. Its a good sludge add too. Makes the engine surface nice and sticky. Kreen worked the best to clean the oil galleys. It liked PYB, never tried M1 HM like I used now, wasnt around then.
 
wow, all sorts of recommendations in this thread.

I would recommend going with a thick HM oil, Lucas as the previous poster mentioned is straight syrup. I'd go with M1 HM 10w30, it's good stuff. It will clean up a lot. There was a poster here who put up pics of his RX300 under the valve cover after 2x 3K OCI's using the M1HM and it was a lot cleaner.
 
Originally Posted By: TFB1
It's a old falsehood that transmission fluid will flush out sludge, hate to say it, but you wasted money and oil...


Well, I'm not gonna say it failed to do anything yet, as this morning was around 15 degrees and normally I would have really bad lifter noise, but when I started it this morning, there was no lifter noise.
 
Originally Posted By: Bladecutter
How long after you shut off the engine are you checking the oil level? Some owners manuals for certain vehicles recommend checking the oil after the engine has been fully warmed up, and shut off for 5 minutes, otherwise an inaccurate reading might be obtained.

Maybe your owners manual says something like this?

Anyway, chances are the oil is pooling in that head, and not draining back down quick enough. I wonder if there's another drain port below that cylinder head that is clogged up that you can't see.

If you can pop off the oil pan easy enough, it might be worth seeing how things look under there, and cleaning out any carbon build up at the drain ports.

BC.


If I waited long enough yes the dipstick would show it, but I should not be getting a "low oil" light either way.
 
Originally Posted By: LeakySeals
I had a 89 chevy 1500 with a 4.3L vortec. Same thing. Cant check the oil on anything but a perfectly flat surface or it will show under or over by over a quart! As far as Lucas, thats straight up syrup, will take forever for that stuff to make it back to the pan. Its a good sludge add too. Makes the engine surface nice and sticky. Kreen worked the best to clean the oil galleys. It liked PYB, never tried M1 HM like I used now, wasnt around then.


Yeah, I am running PYB now, and it seems to like it over the Valvoline High Mileage stuff. No Lucas Oil Treatment this time. I'm going to see how the next few thousand miles go and then go from there.
 
Originally Posted By: jrd929
Originally Posted By: TFB1
It's a old falsehood that transmission fluid will flush out sludge, hate to say it, but you wasted money and oil...


Well, I'm not gonna say it failed to do anything yet, as this morning was around 15 degrees and normally I would have really bad lifter noise, but when I started it this morning, there was no lifter noise.


That is exactly what I have heard from a few older guys before. Even my dad said he had a noisy lifter years ago and tried the transmission fluid trick and it went away and never came back. Lets face it it worked for you so far and running a quart for a short period of time should not hurt anything. I wouldn't do it for a long period of time but a few minutes ehhhhh what the heck.
 
A 16 oz bottie of MMO is all that's needed - along with 5w30. Leave the MMO in for the entire OCI. Repeat as necessary.

Two OCI's did the trick in my Chevy S-10 4.3L
 
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