first 100 miles into arx scaring me...

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mdocod

mdocod

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Jul 6, 2005
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Colorado, US
ok- well.. i'm not totally freakin out.. but... as many of you may already know.. I'm trying rid myself of a tick, and of oil burning on my old isuzu rodeo.. (95, 3.2L, V6)...

The ticking- is theoretically caused by the lack of flow to certain followers on the valvetrane.. thus- the reason the manufacture recomends synthetic oil in a 0w30 weight.. to help increase flow and clean it out.

My previous oil change... was on GC... and throughout the 3500 miles that I ran it, it was the quietest it has been in 20,000 miles... not to mention, the morning startups were really smooth in comparison, with much less "very" loud ticking comon on other oils during inicial startup. Also noted much smoother idle... like seriously smoother idle... (I have a IAC problem, so my idle sometimes lobs up and down- and on dino oil, when it lobbed down... the vehicle "vibrates" a bit.. where on the GC, it stayed smooth even when the engine was ran below idle speed and lobbed idle.., so basically... synthetic GC has proven itself to me.. i'm convinced that synthetic is better than dino just from these observations)....

anyhow... back on topic... I started the ARX treatment.. and in order to maximize the potencial of the ARX, I started with a fresh batch of plain jane 5w30 dino oil from supertech, and a pure-one filter..... and plan to drain and refill again with supertech for the rinse phase after 1500 miles...

i'm only 100 miles into the arx cleaning phase- and the tick, is so loud... louder than ever... On the GC- the tick was only faintly noticable at idle with the fans off and the radio off... Now I can hear it even while cruising at 55mph with the heater on...

On the bright side-- I think the ring packs may already be cleaning up- (many people notice this early on in the treatment, and I think I am also).. I pulled out into traffic today and layed into it.. and actually started spinning a tire on dry pavement... something this thing has never come close to doing with the new oversized tires- when i grabbed traction again it launched to life like I never thought this thing capable.

While the new, excessive ticking... is bothersom... I have a theory as to why it might be happening.. and I have a lot of hope remaining.. that the ARX will be the best in the long run...

Try to follow me on this idea...

using a hypothetical situation... an oil pump, and a large galley, feeding off into a multitude of smaller galleys... some of the smaller galleys are plugged a little bit, some are plugged a lot... The oil flow is parcially restricted on the parcially plugged galleys, which helps keep oil pressure up high enough in the whole galley system to push oil through the heavily plugged galleys... Then.. you introduce a cleaning agent.. the cleaning agent, (like ARX).. quickly begins to act on cleaning the galleys that flow better (the ones that are less plugged)... It cleans the less plugged galleys faster because they had more flow to clean with in the first place... the inicial cleaning.. reduces the overall pressure throughout the galley system, resulting in even less pressure available to push oil through the heavily plugged up galleyways.. thus- the ones that were worst off to begin with, become oven more worse off, because flow is even lower.... but.. if the cleaning agent continues to clean well, eventually, it should start to clean out those heavily plugged up galleyways...

That's eccencially what I *think* is happening... i'm not 100% sure.... but it's a good theory. So- i'm going to keep the arx in there... and keep an eye on things, and continue to follow the instructions to a "T.".... maybe I won't see major results on the majorly plugged up sections untill the rinse phase, or untill my second treatment.
 
(visions of "Demolition Man")

Enhance your calm. Be well.
smile.gif


If you are hearing stuff now...wait until the rinse phase. btw-I wouldn't bother with a PureOne ..just for the economy of it. I guess you're going to grab more (finer) stuff with it ..but the service is so short that it costs a good bit. If your situation is severe ..just get two cheaper filters and swap one out halfway through the cleaning part of it. You can always dump the oil inside the filter back in the engine to retain the Auto-Rx in it.
dunno.gif
 
the cost doesn't bother me... the cost of a pure-one is similar to a fast food meal... and it comes with peace of mind that it will be more apt to trap small crud that the arx removes. Considering- the potencial, of an arx treatment to really help out an engine- i'm not worried about spending some extra cash on a filter.... beats the heck out of replacing an engine.
 
I think a free flowing less tight filter works best. Besides as the filter loads it becomes tighter and tighter. ARX works best with maximum flow. ARX works very slowly and chances of chunking of crud is slim to none.
 
Stick with the auto-rx...then try LC for complete varnish removal. This is what's probably causing the ticking from the hydraulic lifters which are susceptible to viscosity and chemistry changes as you've already introduced.
 
Don't forget that a lifter may have excssive leakdown, marginal preload, or other valvetrain problems [a loose valve stem/guide will tick, too].
All the sauce in the world won't fix that.
 
quote:
Originally posted by Gary Allan:
If you are hearing stuff now...wait until the rinse phase.
Click to expand...
No kidding!

I'm in the final rinse phase with my F250, and I've been driving around for last two weeks with my oil pressure guage wildly fluctuating... usually settling for awhile on "ZERO" psi!

This began toward the end of the just-finished clean phase while I was on a trip to Mojave and back... I was on the freeway at 65 mph, watching my oil pressure slowly diminish until there was none indicated, yet the truck was running beautifully, and not even getting warm.

Fortunately, I've read enough about ARX to know that weird stuff happens as it is cleaning, so I just chalked it up to that and kept going.

It seem like just today (two full weeks and 500 miles later) that it is beginning to return to normal... we'll see.

I haven't heard anything out of the ordinary from my engine, but it is running and idling more smoothly than ever before (since I've owned it, anyway) and the mileage is the best it's been, too.

I've toyed with selling ARX packages to my customers, including all the necessary LOFs, but as I've seen a lot of weird behavior during the treatments, I think it'd be very hard to explain to a non-enthusiast, non-oil freak, that it's all okay. I may sell it to the right customers, however.

As usual, my $.02.
 
drove another 150 miles today.... the ticking continued to get worse throughout the day..

Not only is it a single ticking with occassional faint sounds of the other followers... it now sounds like the whole band is playing... i move my head around the engine compartment and can hear a different tick coming from all sorts of different spots along the cams. It used to usually only have 1 difinitive tick- that while runing GC was completally inaudable while cruising, and slightly audible while idling... After today- it sounds like my engine is ready to pop. I'm worried it's going to gernade a cam or something.

maybe i should swap out the filter, just in case it is limiting flow already- maybe a K&N style oil filter- i hear they flow, almost too well. (not very good at small partical capture)
 
to find out whether or not it was the filter at fault... i just went out and swapped out to the filter that was on there before and topped off... (the filter was ran with gc for about 3500 miles... with no notable problems.. so i put it back on.. i'll run it through tomaro and see if anything changes, will be a cheap way to determin if the filter is at fault, since the motorcraft that was on there before was not having any problems when i took it off).

i'll update with my situation as it unfolds... i'm hoping for a happy ending...

oh.. and PS:... When i put int he ARX... i used a full bottle (5.7qt sump)... plus added oil till it was to the "full" marker(about 5.2 quarts more)... after about 200 miles.. earlier today.. i checked my oil, for the heck of it.. and it showed "overfill"... (about 3/8th" above the "full" mark... i've never had this happen before... i was thinking maybe the arx cleaned out some gunk that found it's way to the filter, maybe the space the gunk took up in the filter was pushing the oil level higher... ordinarily.. i would have burned a 1/4qt by that point in time anyways... so for it to register high like that... suggests,,, that there may have been some cleaning, and possibly, less oil consumption passed the rings already... we'll see...
 
Auto-Rx is cleaning all the metal that is oil lubricated (including internal sensors) your oil is getting to engine oil lubricated parts never lubricated before do to "crud"on the metal.Thats the noise your hearing finish the application and post again after rinse phase.

ps. Change the filter to a "new" one and check oil level again. Happy Endings arrive to those who follow application instructions.

pps. Dave the right customer is one of the millions who own cars with engine sludge problems.They will follow application instructions and will listen to any temporary noise or guage flucuation to save a lot of $$$$$ and drive on with peace of mind.
 
When I first changed to a HDEO in my car after a few hundred miles it got louder much like you are describing a filter change cured it, the extra detergents were filling the filter with crud. I believe this is at least part of your problem.
On the oil pressure thing, wonder if a gob of something is just blocking the port to the pressure sender, the AutoRX should keep working away at it till it disolves it further.
 
Just for the record, ARX is doing GREAT things in my F250 and in my wife's Explorer, and it solved a false neutral problem in my C20's automatic transmission.

My problem with ARX is not in its ability to perform as promised, but with the irregular behavior that an engine and/or its monitoring gauges/indicator lights can exhibit during the process.

As the owner of a retail automotive repair establishment, I get a lot of customers coming through my door who know absolutely nothing about anything automotive, and they are not interested in learning about this stuff. All they want is for their vehicles to give them no problems and get them where they need to go.

I also have lots of customers who are "dangerous," in that they know a little about automotive stuff, but they think they know a lot, and they've formed opinions, often not based on logic or even extensive experience... for example, "Pennzoil creates sludge" or "20W-50 racing oil is the best" and so on.

Neither of the above groups are good candidates for ARX treatments, from a retailers point-of-view, because they don't really understand, don't want to know, and will freak out when gauges fluctuate wildly, check engine lights flash and/or their engines make intermittent new noises, and they will come back to my shop, in an emotional state.

Of course, if they are patient, the lights will go out, the noises will stop and the gauges will stabilize.

The other aspect is that many of these vehicles haven't been maintained properly and are already on the verge of breaking. So, if I put ARX in the engine and it breaks, they will come after me. The same is true of automatic transmission flushes, which I already sell... we have to very carefully screen vehicles and customers to make sure we don't "buy" a new transmission. I'm sure I'd have to do the same with ARX.

As I mentioned in my above post, I have been toying with the possibility of selling ARX treatment procedures at my shop, and I still am. I have put ARX in most of my employees' vehicles, in my wife's Explorer, and in my F250 and C20. I want to really know what to expect before I embark on adding it to my shop's services.

When I brought up the point of all of the irregularities in my first post, I wasn't slamming ARX, I was confirming that these irregularities happen, and do so, pretty often.

Like lubeowner, I want to give my customers the best products I can, and still remain competitive price-wise, and also without taking on any new liabilities for which I am not prepared. After finding BITOG, I have added upgraded oil options and I've made sure all of my filters are good quality, according to the knowledge I've gained.

I want to offer ARX, but I need to be prepared for its idiosyncracies, and I need to learn how to prepare my customers for these idiosyncracies, too.

Sorry for the long post, but these are all things I've had on my mind...
freak2.gif
 
Big O Dave,

I think that ARx is good product, but if I were in a business like yours I don't think I'd sell it to customers.

Even without unrelated failures getting attributed to it, you would spend a lot of time explaining it and holding customers hands through the noises etc.

It might work for the occasional good customer who you know to not be impatient, or overly nervous and has some technical savy.
 
frank- I plan to finish out the the arx instructions... but with a minor tweak to the plan..

I'm going to change the filter a few times through the clean and rinse phases... after switching back to the motorcraft that was on there through my previous change- the noise seemed to be "reduced" somewhat today.. so i think keeping oil flow at a maximum is important for this old engine.

I bought a few supertech filters and will probably swap em out every 500 miles or so, (at $2 a pop, the expense doesn't bother me at all)

i'll tear em open and post picts when everything is said and done... i saved the pure-one that was on there for the first 250 miles.... for all i know, it might have just been too restrictive after some contamination started loading it.

rest assured... the balance of the arx in the engine- won't be altered much from doing this... the loss of oil when swaping a filter on this thing is about 1/3qt(3593A size in fram, M-104, etc etc, pretty small filter plus what drains from above)... I originally started off with 12oz into my 5.7qt sump.... I plan to swap out the motorcraft that's on there after another 250 miles (since it was on there for my previous OCI).. at which point I will add ~1oz ARX to bring the balance back up... then another filter swap after 500 more miles (1000 miles into treatment), that filter, will be left on for the rest of the clean phase.... then a filter and oil change to pure dino for the rinse phase, where i plan to swap filters every 500 miles or so till complete(2000 miles)... then i'll examin the results and decide whether to start the proceedure over again (as recomended for engines with over 100,000 miles)... Though.... by that time... we will be into our colder season... i might switch back to the GC through the winter.. then do another arx in the spring on the dino... at 7500ft elevation, out of the city, we do occasionally see -15F and sometimes colder... and i've heard we are in for a cooler than average winter. GC would be good assurance on those cold starts.
 
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