Auto-Rx mixed with Redline

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Originally Posted By: 92GTA
I might. I was also planning on changing the filter at 1,500 and 3,000 until I drain at 4K or 5K. He also said to use 2 bottles because of my mileage so that's what I ordered. Then during the rinse phase I'll just use straight Redline for probably another 4-5K. Then finally after that they said to add another 5 ounces or so the Redline the final fill after the rinse phase.


You are going to use REDLINE for the Rinse Phase, have you checked with Frank about doing this, you are supposed to only use a cheap DINO OIL for the Rinse Phase.
 
Originally Posted By: 92GTA
Didn't say that here:

http://auto-rx.com/pages/heavy_sludge_app.html

It only mentions a Group III oil when mixed with Auto-Rx implying the clean phase, not rinse.

Maybe there are different rinse instructions on another portion of the site I missed?!


I see that it did not say it in those instructions, I would strongly advise that you contact Frank via e-mail on this subject.
 
Originally Posted By: 92GTA
Ok, good catch! I'll look over the whole site before I do so I don't waste his time.

Thanks!


You obviously bought the product from Frank, and you are right in that he did not specify DINO OIL for the Rinse Phase in the Sludge Application, maybe if you e-mail him he will correct it.

We all just want you to get the best results with using arx.
 
It's not PAO that you don't want so much with RX but ester as RX is mainly esters and they compete. RX and an ester oil cost me a major failure (and a small fortune) in one of our engines (seals). If you don't mind that possibility go for it. After 8 years with RX not a mistake I'll make again.
 
Originally Posted By: sprintman
It's not PAO that you don't want so much with RX but ester as RX is mainly esters and they compete. RX and an ester oil cost me a major failure (and a small fortune) in one of our engines (seals). If you don't mind that possibility go for it. After 8 years with RX not a mistake I'll make again.

Good info. Sprintman! I know one of the reasons PAO is used in most if not all ester-based oils for seal balance. I wonder if the auto-rx may possibly throw a carefully formulated ester oil "out of whack". 100% speculation on my part, just thinking out loud.
 
Originally Posted By: saaber1

Good info. Sprintman! I know one of the reasons PAO is used in most if not all ester-based oils for seal balance. I wonder if the auto-rx may possibly throw a carefully formulated ester oil "out of whack". 100% speculation on my part, just thinking out loud.


I've elected to stop using an ARX maint dose in GC (contains esters) due to some personal theories on this.

1. When "rinsing" a measuring cup used to measure ARX with GC, GC surrounded the ARX and it formed a ball suspended in the GC. This has not happened with other oils I've used. I have no evidence that this was taking place in my engine after thorough mixing. I posted here about this observation and received replies that people have tested ARX in GC including time in the freezer and it never separated. That doesn't mean that the chemistries aren't competing and ARX is effectively defeating GC or vice-versa

2. My 1998 BMW has seen synthetic it's entire life. Under the previous owner Pennzoil 5W50 (a choice of a mechanic we shared who was a good personal friend of the PO) changed every 5000km for about 50-60k km. I switched to M1 0W40 also changed every 5000-6000km or so for another 50-60k km. Later I switched to GC for the last 50-60k km. During my stint on GC I have extended my OCI to ~8000km, done UOAs, and ran a round of ARX in dino HDEO (old instructions) for general clean up and to try to quiet one noisy HLA. After the ARX round I went back to GC with a 3oz or 4oz maint dose of ARX (7L sump).

ARX did not completely quiet the lifter but improved it greatly. No further progress was ever made with GC+maint dose. I was pulling the VC for a job this summer and I found what, for my choice of oils, OCIs and maintenance habits, an unacceptable level of varnish. Yes, yes, it's only cosmetic blah blah, but it shouldn't be there considering the history.

This summer I ran a dino HDEO 15W40 again with a 4oz maint dose just for the heck of it and because I expected to lose some oil during this work on my variable valve timing equipment. The lifter made progress and gradually got quieter over the summer with the same dose of ARX used for years in GC which made no improvement.

M1 and GC even without any ARX should have kept varnish at bay. I'm entertaining the theory that the esters in GC and ARX couldn't do their thing in the presence of one another.

I have no scientific proof, but I'm dropping the maint dose when running GC and I'll see if anything changes or continues to improve. GC is such a "mystery" fomulation which I believe people have confirmed contains PAO, POE and all kinds of things defying a straight classification.


3. Frank chimed in on my thread about the measuring cup. Honestly he kind of did his "usual" - not reading everything in the thread but defending ARX to the death assuming I was some kind of noob who couldn't read his instructions. He claimed later that I didn't mention I was using GC, which contains esters. I replied that it was in the thread title, the first paragraph of my first post, and pretty much mentioned in every paragraph following... Then he said relax, ARX will be fine. Well.... I'm still a believer in ARX, but there must be some fundamental properties and/or incompatibilities and this may be one of them. I've thought about running some straight Redline for a while to see what happens.
 
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Sounds to me like it would be a good idea to use it with dino oil in the clean and rinse. Also from a quick read of what you're saying, it might be best to watch what synthetic oil you add it to as a maint dose.

Honestly I think a good synthetic oil after a cleaning and rinse with A-rX and a dino oil should be left alone. JMO
 
Originally Posted By: ADFD1
Sounds to me like it would be a good idea to use it with dino oil in the clean and rinse. Also from a quick read of what you're saying, it might be best to watch what synthetic oil you add it to as a maint dose.

Honestly I think a good synthetic oil after a cleaning and rinse with A-rX and a dino oil should be left alone. JMO


I guess you are saying no Maintenance Dose of ARX.
 
I'd be careful with adding a maint dose to a synthetic other than a group III. I base this on what Craig in Canada observed in his above posting. There is the mystery that surrounds what exactly synthetic oils are made of. Group III is pretty much cut and dry the others are anyone's guess. JMO
 
There has been some testing by someone with either M1 or Amsoil and they found better long term oil analysis results while using the ARX maintenance dose rather than synthetic oil alone. I do not have a link handy. Maybe this is more of an issue with GC or RL?
 
Originally Posted By: bmwtechguy
There has been some testing by someone with either M1 or Amsoil and they found better long term oil analysis results while using the ARX maintenance dose rather than synthetic oil alone. I do not have a link handy. Maybe this is more of an issue with GC or RL?


That was the point I was trying to bring out, it appears Craig in Canada had a problem. Since what I've read and heard from other members A-rX is supposed to be safe as a maint dose with any and all oils. The info above says otherwise. It would be best to know before adding it to synthetic oil what the outcome is going to be. It could be an issue with RL and GC, how about Amsoil, RP? PP should be no problem?????????? JMO
 
Originally Posted By: ADFD1
Sounds to me like it would be a good idea to use it with dino oil in the clean and rinse. Also from a quick read of what you're saying, it might be best to watch what synthetic oil you add it to as a maint dose.

Honestly I think a good synthetic oil after a cleaning and rinse with A-rX and a dino oil should be left alone. JMO


That's pretty much what I'm saying. It's all just conjecture on my part, but I have my reasons. People use M1 and GC to "clean things up" with no other additives, and while these oils were in use for 110,000km over the last 8 years at overly short intervals (it's a 6-month OCI, basically) varnish formed. Furthermore, years with GC+ARX maint didn't do anything to improve a lightly ticking lifter but a couple of months with dino HDEO and same ARX maint dose noticeably improved it. Of course the lifter tick might have been eliminated entirely in my clean/rinse if I followed the newer, longer instructions which were not out yet.

As I said, I'm still an ARX supporter (it has noticeably cleaned up things for me and others I know and recommended it to) but I'll be knocking it off with the maint dose in GC for a while to see how it goes since GC has been clearly stated to contain esters in BITOG circles.

I'm not necessarily worried about it being "unsafe". I don't want to reduce the effectiveness of either product.

I may decide to either run Redline, or do a "Sprintman" ARX clean/rinse next summer (the only time I can run dino because I need ACEA A3, dino, but winters are cold) but I don't think I can put on enough miles to get it done. I'll think about it during the 5 cold months to come. I've also been thinking about just having a go at Rislone of Swepco 502.
 
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Craig if it is varnish you are looking to clean up after the A-rX treatment why not try either 1 qt of MMO or a pint for the last 1000 miles of your OCI? This way you can use your favorite oil, it mixes with any kind of oil.

Adding a pint you won't have to drain out any oil. If you decide to add a qt I would suggest removing the filter and draining it, or loosen up the drain plug and drain out about 1 qt of oil, and replace it with MMO. A few 1000 mile runs as I suggested will clean that engine up nicely. Or pick your favorite less expensive oil and run a qt of MMO for the full OCI. It helps big time during the cold winter starts.
 
Originally Posted By: ADFD1
Craig if it is varnish you are looking to clean up after the A-rX treatment why not try either 1 qt of MMO or a pint for the last 1000 miles of your OCI? This way you can use your favorite oil, it mixes with any kind of oil.

Adding a pint you won't have to drain out any oil. If you decide to add a qt I would suggest removing the filter and draining it, or loosen up the drain plug and drain out about 1 qt of oil, and replace it with MMO. A few 1000 mile runs as I suggested will clean that engine up nicely. Or pick your favorite less expensive oil and run a qt of MMO for the full OCI. It helps big time during the cold winter starts.


I didn't use ARX initially to clean up varnish, I used it to clean "whatever" including the ring packs. I realize that varnish is not ARX's forte. I was also hoping to silence my come-and-go ticking lifter, which it almost did.

I just recently found varnish when I expected clean, silver metal. Pics are here. The varnish is thicker or has more color towards the rear of the head, and is fairly light in well oiled areas up front. I know it's cosmetic, but I've said I don't think it should be there. I'd also like the lifter to be silent, and dino+ARX maint made more headway in two months than years of GC+ARX maint.

I didn't mention in my original post that before using ARX I spent a period adding the regular dose of LC20 to the oil as well. Varnish IS LC20's forte. I never combined ARX and LC20 since Frank is on record saying that "ARX will clean the LC20 out of your oil" and, frankly, were I not trying to achieve some specific cleaning goal I'd rather use no additives at all. I already use one of the top-rated syn oils out there.
 
DEMARPAINT and I have chatted about this as well as a few other members via email. I believe MMO is one of the best cleaners out there.

DEMARPAINT told me what he'd learned from his painting business over the years. He said that a simple change in cleaning/paint removal products got him better results. EG: when stripping paint, certain products might get 75% of the job done, a change in paint removers gets mabe another 25%, and if he was shooting for 100% hand removal gets the rest. These numbers are used for making a point. Maybe a few OCI's with MMO will get that clean you were looking for. JMO

A few members also stated that MMO in the A-Rx rinse phase speeds up the process and gave them better results than without it. IMO one of the main reasons of this board is to share tips and tricks that worked, and methods that didn't work.

I could see from a business mans POV that OK'ing the use of LC 20 or another product to aid in cleaning would be bad business. My $.02
 
Originally Posted By: saaber1
Originally Posted By: 92GTA
s far as I know, Redline is the only Group V polyol ester base oil, all others are PAO.


I don't believe that is correct.


Here is more info. on redline's POE/PAO content from JohnBrowning found in this thread
S

Post in thread 'Besides Redline'

Originally Posted By: JohnBrowning
Motul 300V is 100% ester based it use's two different ester's to ballance each other.

Redline has often been said to be around 60% Ester and 40%PAO ...


I have similar Q's as Caterham. How do we know the 300V is 100% ester? No doubting that at all but I just would like to know how we know that.

Re: Redline, I assume price can also give us an indication? If it were say >90% ester, could they even sell it at $10/qt? That is very good info. on where that 60%/40% guesstimate came from. Thanks a lot!!! Also I think it is significant that redline is using...
"Redline has often been said to be around 60% Ester and 40%PAO this was an educated guess back in the days when Bob WInter's was still on the site and still the owner. It was arrived at by looking at the performance number's of various oils they made and what is avialable on the market place. By working back wards men far better at math then I am like Molacule and Terry Dyson speculated that it was around 60% Ester based and 40% PAO......This is before you take into account additives and such. So that number has stood the test of time and Redline has always declined to answere if we where close with that esterment!"
 
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I just wanted to follow-up on this thread I started way back when.

I have since used Redline with ARX on a 2008 GMC Acadia with 89K miles I bought back in May.

All has gone well with all vehicles I've done this with and I couldn't be happier with the cleaning results.
 
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