Did a 20 mile flush

If you would have put in a quart of Lucas, that would of really exploded heads here.

No complaints from me. Thanks for sharing what you did.

I gave my son a coupon for a free oil change, as he was terrible about maintenance, and I knew his VW needed a short change. The car had about 1500 miles on a Supertech change. It must of helped, as the engine was better than expected when my daughter ran it out of oil a year later and I opened it up for the rebuild.

The free oil change ended up not being free after the dealer stripped out the oil pan…..their fix was a self tapping plug, which was not a fix.
 
The drained 20-mile frankenbrew may have looked dirty for such very short use, but it probably didn't clean out much of anything. It made you feel better, and that counts for something... it's your oil after all. Personally I would have run it for at least a few hundred miles before changing to my full-interval oil fill. (An oil level halfway between add and full marks is perfectly safe, despite the obsession around here with topping up 6 ounces at a time LOL.) Since you don't run frankenbrews for full service intervals, I suppose this is a good use for your leftovers that were just sitting around doing nothing. Thanks for the post.
 
Don't understand what running a brew for 20 miles then dumping does for you? Besides using up your orphan oil. What's your thinking on this?

Nevermind, just read:


Did you put in a fresh filter with the new good oil?
I did this "leftover oil flush" on a semi neglected Tecumseh snowking engine. Seemed to work wonders beyond what was anticipated.
even some rather large engine bits came out - which was scary - but it still ran fine for a few year till I traded it for a junk Toro.
No Joke - Ken
 
Really? If it looked dirty after just 20 miles, it certainly cleaned out a lot of the old dirty oil.
Yes really. There's always some old dirty oil left in the engine during an oil change, and of course a 20-mile interval certainly will flush out that old dirty oil. You're right about that. But it doesn't mean the engine is suddenly cleaner after only 20 miles. That's why I would have run the short interval for at least a few hundred miles.
 
After a long weekend of cleaning out the garage, I ended up with enough old half-full quarts of oil to do an entire oil change on one of my old beaters. Some of the containers had several years of dust on them! Several different brands and viscosities of course. Even better, I found a new-in-the-box oil filter on one of the shelves, so I used that too. It was a completely free oil change! Of course, I ran it for my full OC interval.

Car still runs good today, all these years later. Go figure.
 
So what happened to the used oil?

Did you spray it on your stockade fence? That new uncarboned up oil will make the wood look like honey was poured on it.
 
For all the knuckleheads that keep bumping their chest and "SCREAM" that this was a waste - watch the video below (thanks @Owen Lucas for making it). OP's 20 mile "rinse" with oil DID in fact clean stuff up. Or more like collected what usually stays behind during an oil change. And no, shortening the OCI by 1000 miles would not achieve same results. I would even go as far as saying that this type of short rinse is safer (and just as effective) when compared to using actual motor flushes for 5-10 mins during normal OCIs.

 
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Suppose you just do a short OCI on a good deal oil like kirkland Signature at about 11 bucks a jug. Then run it for a month. That would give the engine enough time to work into the engine. Then do the real drain with filter with your preferred oil.

By the way… I am 100% in agreement with your thinking. Your dime, your time.
 
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For all the knuckleheads that keep bumping their chest and "SCREAM" that this was a waste - watch the video below (thanks @Owen Lucas for making it). OP's 20 mile "rinse" with oil DID in fact clean stuff up. Or more like collected what usually stays behind during an oil change. And no, shortening the OCI by 1000 miles would not achieve same results. I would even go as far as saying that this type of short rinse is safer (and just as effective) when compared to using actual motor flushes for 5-10 mins during normal OCIs.


Thanks for posting this. BTW, it was really bugging me that he kept letting the drain plug fall into the oil and just left it there. LOL.
 
Only 20 miles? You should have left it in at least 10 times longer than that. It requires time and heat to clean engine internals.
It requires an engine cleaner to clean engine internals if there's actual deposit build-up (rather than just rinsing out residual oil, which the OP did). Oils are not cleaners, they are formulated to keep things clean; keep contaminants in suspension (that's what the detergents and dispersants are for) so that they get flushed out when you change the oil.

There used to be a very popular ester-based cleaner on here called AutoRX that would gently clean an engine. High Performance Lubricants engine cleaner uses the same principle, with a high dose of esters to clean out deposits from previous abuse.
 
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