Growing up as a young driver in the 80's - 90's I kinda now miss the late night snake oil TV commercials, The early Slick 50 adds in the back of Popular Science magazine...
Standing in the Snake Oil section of my local auto parts store reading the back of the oil additive bottle that all but promised if I parted with my $50 bill in my pocket my car may run forever!
Personally, I hated to see the PTFE / Teflon fade from the market even with the bad snake oil rep.
I had one very positive experience using PTFE / Teflon!
Back in 1992 my wife then owned a 1990 Mazda Protege ( the base model single OHC ) low milage car 15k miles at the time if I remember, I also had a family member that owned a 1991 Protege ( loaded top model with the Dual OHC engine ).
He asked me one day if my Mazda had a tick in the engine and I responded YES it does have a tick when idling. He informed me he had taken his car in to Mazda because of that noise and his Mazda mechanic suggested a product called T-Plus with PTFE / Teflon and said thats the only fix for the Mazda tick and my family member tried it and it worked!
I start doing my research as everything was all about Teflon engine treatments back then, Fram even put the stuff in a oil filter!
The only place I could then find a bottle of T-Plus was my local K-Mart, The product suggested it was better than Slick 50 as it had much more ( I think it was 3x or 5x the PTFE ) and was also a multi grade base oil when I think Slick 50 was a straight 30W base oil.
If I remember the T-Plus was around $12 and the Slick 50 was $30+ in 1992 money, So yes I had to try it!
When I poured that bottle of T-Plus in the engine I noticed it looked to have lots of PTFE as it was almost white in color! The engine was running as I slowly poured the bottle in and that tick that was always present vanished / faded away AS I was adding that bottle of Snake oil! Like Magic "POOF" Noise ticking 100% gone as soon as I finished pouring that bottle and the noise NEVER CAME BACK!
Thats the only bottle I ever purchased, the only bottle I ever used in that car or any car, I did many normal ( no additive ) oil changes after oil change that tick never returned!
I remember the Slick 50 commercials suggesting you only had to use it once!
Say what you will but a $12 bottle of Snake oil did remove a engine tick and the tick never returned the next 5 years until I no longer owned the car!
So was PTFE / Teflon Snake Oil or did it work for anyone else?
The $8 Bottle of Greased Lightning oil additive was the last product I remember seeing on a auto parts shelf that had PTFE in it, Napa still shows its in stock on the website but I can't find if its still produced?
I know all the negative about Teflon / Dupont and not to be used in oil but am I the only one that can say it did something positive and I kinda miss those late night TV Snake Oil commercials...
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