Yeah, I know there are a lot of people who won't approve of this, but I did it anyway since I like to experiment.
My dad is driving my old car, a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme SL with the 3.4 DOHC V6. It has had several oil leaks, and we've fixed as many of them as we could (oil cooler lines, etc) but there's still a leak somewhere. We think it might be the rear main seal. It has also had a lot of valvetrain rattle for the last 5 years or so.
Well, I saved the Auto RX clean phase oil that I drained out of my 1996 Crown Victoria. It is mostly Pennzoil 5w20 conventional, and it had 2502 miles on it, but about half of the oil had been replaced during that period. I added 1/2 quart of Trop Artic 10w30 that I had laying around the first time I needed top-off, and after that I used 2 quarts of Mobil Clean 5000 5W-20.
After losses from spillage and the oil filter, I had about 4 quarts left. I filtered it several times through some of the blue Scott shop towels. These seem to work very well as filters. The oil just dribbles through at a rate of maybe 4 drops per second. It took probably 4 hours to filter all of the oil. There was a bit of oil loss here since the paper towels soaked up some of it. You should have seen the sludge that the top towel collected, it was pretty nasty. I filtered it once more after that and the paper towel didn't look anything like the first one, it was dark but there was no visible sludge collected.
My dads car calls for 5w30, but we have been using 10w30 in it since we got it. I wanted him to run 5w30 in it this last oil change, but he had a stock of 10w30, so we used the last of his GTX API SL oil. It only had 300 miles on it, so I saved it and filtered it to use for the "rinse phase".
To make up the rest of the oil he needed, and to bring the 5W-20 up closer to a 5w30, I added the quart of Cenex Maxtron 5w30 synthetic to it, as well as a quart of Rotella T 5W-40 synthetic. I figure it is pretty close to what a 5w30 would be.
I put that mix in, and I didn't change the filter (Supertech) since it has so few miles on it. I'll probably change it in 1500 miles or so. He drove it home a couple days ago (about 45 miles). The car sat unused since then because he doesn't actually drive that much. When I called him today he told that when he started it up this morning to go to town there was virtually NO valvetrain noise at all! He was amazed that my crazy mix of oils could make that much difference.
That really pleases me, but now it leaves me wondering just what part of the franken-oil actually caused the improvement
My dad is driving my old car, a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme SL with the 3.4 DOHC V6. It has had several oil leaks, and we've fixed as many of them as we could (oil cooler lines, etc) but there's still a leak somewhere. We think it might be the rear main seal. It has also had a lot of valvetrain rattle for the last 5 years or so.
Well, I saved the Auto RX clean phase oil that I drained out of my 1996 Crown Victoria. It is mostly Pennzoil 5w20 conventional, and it had 2502 miles on it, but about half of the oil had been replaced during that period. I added 1/2 quart of Trop Artic 10w30 that I had laying around the first time I needed top-off, and after that I used 2 quarts of Mobil Clean 5000 5W-20.
After losses from spillage and the oil filter, I had about 4 quarts left. I filtered it several times through some of the blue Scott shop towels. These seem to work very well as filters. The oil just dribbles through at a rate of maybe 4 drops per second. It took probably 4 hours to filter all of the oil. There was a bit of oil loss here since the paper towels soaked up some of it. You should have seen the sludge that the top towel collected, it was pretty nasty. I filtered it once more after that and the paper towel didn't look anything like the first one, it was dark but there was no visible sludge collected.
My dads car calls for 5w30, but we have been using 10w30 in it since we got it. I wanted him to run 5w30 in it this last oil change, but he had a stock of 10w30, so we used the last of his GTX API SL oil. It only had 300 miles on it, so I saved it and filtered it to use for the "rinse phase".
To make up the rest of the oil he needed, and to bring the 5W-20 up closer to a 5w30, I added the quart of Cenex Maxtron 5w30 synthetic to it, as well as a quart of Rotella T 5W-40 synthetic. I figure it is pretty close to what a 5w30 would be.
I put that mix in, and I didn't change the filter (Supertech) since it has so few miles on it. I'll probably change it in 1500 miles or so. He drove it home a couple days ago (about 45 miles). The car sat unused since then because he doesn't actually drive that much. When I called him today he told that when he started it up this morning to go to town there was virtually NO valvetrain noise at all! He was amazed that my crazy mix of oils could make that much difference.
That really pleases me, but now it leaves me wondering just what part of the franken-oil actually caused the improvement
