Solvents and oil leaks.

[skyship]

This is also on one of the Amsoil sites:
Petroleum motor oils are notorious for forming what’s know as a “false seal”
Varnish and crud will build up around a failing seal and help keep a
more viscous petroleum oil from leaking. Synthetic oils that are highly
detergent will clean off the build up and expose the all ready failing
seal. There’s your leak!

I think my comments seem to be very much in agreement with what is said by the oil companies themselves.

 

[TuBon_gRips]

Originally Posted By: skyship
You won't get varnish inside cylinders


I already said that it was unlikely. It is still, however, possible.

Originally Posted By: skyship
In other words they are admitting that using their full synthetics is going to increase the leak rate or oil consumption.


Leaking is not the same as consumption and you have not addressed how removing varnish can increase consumption, meanwhile I have detailed how it simply can not. We're in agreement about leaking and you've even agreed that this is not the fault of the oil and the seals should be replaced. You did not argue about the cost of the seals, either, so you've conceded that it is similar in cost to an oil change, which eliminates the cost factor from the equation.

In other words, you yourself have said, in a roundabout way, that bad seals should be replaced, rather than being kept in service with bad oil, and the implication is that if your seals are good there's no reason to keep the varnish around. Can we drop this argument now that it seems that you agree with me, whether you realize it or not?

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: skyship
This is also on one of the Amsoil sites:
Petroleum motor oils are notorious for forming what’s know as a “false seal”
Varnish and crud will build up around a failing seal and help keep a
more viscous petroleum oil from leaking. Synthetic oils that are highly
detergent will clean off the build up and expose the all ready failing
seal. There’s your leak!

I think my comments seem to be very much in agreement with what is said by the oil companies themselves.


If you have sludge and varnish creating a false seal, odds you have other problems too, like sticking rings causing loss of power and oil use, a sticking lifter, or some other issue. So do we pull the engine apart, sell the car, or try some out of the box thinking to try and resolve the issue? An additive to clean things up doesn't always guarantee an oil leak, does it? Plenty of people here have successfully used engine cleaners raised compression, reduced consumption and eliminated ticks with additives. Did everyone of these people who had positive results develope a leak? You make it sound like anyone who uses one of these products gets a leak. I call Baloney! Weigh risk to reward and use some common sense. Blanket statements like yours are wrong in many cases.

 

[Mystic]

Skyship you are good at reading stuff out of manuals and books. Anybody can do that. But exactly how much hands on information and experience do you actually possess with any of these oil supplements and engine cleaners? Apparently not much because you seemed to think that Seafoam was saltwater!

I am not saying that you have to sample poison to find out if it is bad for you. But before you condemn these various oil supplements and engine cleaners you need to have some actual information as to their effectiveness or lack of effectiveness.

Ford and GM and whoever of course put in their owner's manuals that people should not use oil supplements. Why do you think they do that? Because Ford and GM, etc., have no clue what some owner somewhere might put into their engine. There is definitely harmful stuff out there and somebody could do something silly like putting just MMO and no oil into an engine. But strangely enough everytime I bought a new car the dealership was typically trying to sell various supplements, including oil supplements. It has been a while since I bought a new car but the last new car I bought the Saturn dealership was trying to get people to buy BG products, including the BG oil supplement.

All the dealerships and the car manufacturers care about is that the car, truck, van or SUV is paid for and makes it through the warranty period. If a typical warranty period is 60,000 miles or 100,000 miles or whatever, it should be obvious that the manufacturers and car dealerships are not going to have to deal much with sludged up engines. You have to learn to think outside of the box. The owner who drives his car or truck 300,000 miles might well have to deal with a need for an engine cleaning. Does that make sense?

And by the time the car or truck has 300,000 miles on it not many people are going to want to take the engine apart for an engine cleaning, unless the car or truck has some unusual value because it is a classic or whatever. Especially if somebody had to pay a mechanic to take the engine apart and clean the engine that might get just a little expesnive. Does that make sense? So the owner might try to find some way to clean the engine without taking it apart, so that the owner could get some additional use out of the vehicle.

It is important to read manuals and informative books. But you also need to be able to think things through yourself. You can learn a lot from books and manuals but to really know about car maintenance you have to work on cars and trucks. You have to use wrenches and jack cars up and do all of those things. And just because something is said in a book does not make it true. Think about WHY Ford and GM and all the rest put in the owner's manual the warning not to use oil supplements. There is a WHY they do it. They don't want people to put potentially harmful stuff in engines or do something silly like just using MMO by itself in an engine. So are they really so totally against oil supplements and other supplements? Why does a car dealership often sell various supplements? Why did the Saturn dealership in Colorado Springs Colorado had an engine flush machine? Think independently. Does that make sense?

 

[TuBon_gRips]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Weigh risk to reward


like an insurance investigator?

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: KeMBro2012
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Weigh risk to reward


like an insurance investigator?


Yes. The only thing that confuses me though with regard to insurance investigators is this. Any of them that I dealt with in my business always looked for a cheap way out. I always have to wrestle with them to get my customers the money they deserve when they sustain a loss. He leans toward complicated, expensive, and many times unnecessary methods.

 

[TuBon_gRips]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Originally Posted By: KeMBro2012
Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Weigh risk to reward


like an insurance investigator?


Yes. The only thing that confuses me though with regard to insurance investigators is this. Any of them that I dealt with in my business always looked for a cheap way out. I always have to wrestle with them to get my customers the money they deserve when they sustain a loss. He leans toward complicated, expensive, and many times unnecessary methods.


I see what you're getting at... Insurance inspectors are an entirely different breed of bulls**ter than Skyship.

 

[Mystic]

If Skyship really is an insurance and warranty investigator, once he explains to people that the only solution to their sludged up engine is an expensive partial tear down and physical cleaning, they will unload that vehicle and take his advice and buy a brand new car or truck.

Also, how many sludged up car and truck engines would Skyship see during a typical warranty period? Unless there was owner abuse or some sort of physical defect causing sludge or a maintenance issue, Skyship probably rarely sees any sludged up engines.

That is assuming Skyship is an insurance and warranty claims investigator. He has also claimed to be an engineer. We don't who or what Skyship is. He could be a 14 year old boy reading owner's manuals and maintenance books for all we know.

He does seem to have a pretty good imagination. Gold dust as an additive in a motor oil? Hiring some good old 'chap' to test one additive at a time in a 30 weight oil that otherwise has no additives? A runaway turbo car-the situation caused by a drive around engine cleaner? And of course all of the good old 'chaps' that test motor oil and new transmission fluids invite him as a guest to come along while they test those new fluids and oils. He has all of these amazing connections to the testing labs. Skyship lives a fascinating life, doesn't he?

 

[skyship]

Originally Posted By: KeMBro2012
Originally Posted By: skyship
You won't get varnish inside cylinders


I already said that it was unlikely. It is still, however, possible.

Originally Posted By: skyship
In other words they are admitting that using their full synthetics is going to increase the leak rate or oil consumption.


Leaking is not the same as consumption and you have not addressed how removing varnish can increase consumption, meanwhile I have detailed how it simply can not. We're in agreement about leaking and you've even agreed that this is not the fault of the oil and the seals should be replaced. You did not argue about the cost of the seals, either, so you've conceded that it is similar in cost to an oil change, which eliminates the cost factor from the equation.

In other words, you yourself have said, in a roundabout way, that bad seals should be replaced, rather than being kept in service with bad oil, and the implication is that if your seals are good there's no reason to keep the varnish around. Can we drop this argument now that it seems that you agree with me, whether you realize it or not?


When an owner says his car is using a lot of oil you often don't know to what extent it's burning or leaking oil. I would agree with what the oil company folks have said on their web sites that the main risk of using a full synthetic with a high detergent content is oil leaks.
The cost of a new seal might not be much but the seals that leak often require partial removal of the engine or gearbox to change, so they are expensive to replace.

 

[skyship]

Originally Posted By: Mystic
Skyship you are good at reading stuff out of manuals and books. Anybody can do that. But exactly how much hands on information and experience do you actually possess with any of these oil supplements and engine cleaners? Apparently not much because you seemed to think that Seafoam was saltwater!

I am not saying that you have to sample poison to find out if it is bad for you. But before you condemn these various oil supplements and engine cleaners you need to have some actual information as to their effectiveness or lack of effectiveness.

Ford and GM and whoever of course put in their owner's manuals that people should not use oil supplements. Why do you think they do that? Because Ford and GM, etc., have no clue what some owner somewhere might put into their engine. There is definitely harmful stuff out there and somebody could do something silly like putting just MMO and no oil into an engine. But strangely enough everytime I bought a new car the dealership was typically trying to sell various supplements, including oil supplements. It has been a while since I bought a new car but the last new car I bought the Saturn dealership was trying to get people to buy BG products, including the BG oil supplement.

All the dealerships and the car manufacturers care about is that the car, truck, van or SUV is paid for and makes it through the warranty period. If a typical warranty period is 60,000 miles or 100,000 miles or whatever, it should be obvious that the manufacturers and car dealerships are not going to have to deal much with sludged up engines. You have to learn to think outside of the box. The owner who drives his car or truck 300,000 miles might well have to deal with a need for an engine cleaning. Does that make sense?

And by the time the car or truck has 300,000 miles on it not many people are going to want to take the engine apart for an engine cleaning, unless the car or truck has some unusual value because it is a classic or whatever. Especially if somebody had to pay a mechanic to take the engine apart and clean the engine that might get just a little expesnive. Does that make sense? So the owner might try to find some way to clean the engine without taking it apart, so that the owner could get some additional use out of the vehicle.

It is important to read manuals and informative books. But you also need to be able to think things through yourself. You can learn a lot from books and manuals but to really know about car maintenance you have to work on cars and trucks. You have to use wrenches and jack cars up and do all of those things. And just because something is said in a book does not make it true. Think about WHY Ford and GM and all the rest put in the owner's manual the warning not to use oil supplements. There is a WHY they do it. They don't want people to put potentially harmful stuff in engines or do something silly like just using MMO by itself in an engine. So are they really so totally against oil supplements and other supplements? Why does a car dealership often sell various supplements? Why did the Saturn dealership in Colorado Springs Colorado had an engine flush machine? Think independently. Does that make sense?


That Seafoam joke worked far better than expected!!
I've been a marine and auto engineer for 30 years and it's only recently that I have been involved with writing engineering reports for insurance companies. I am familiar with most of the oil additives used in the EU, although in reality far less owners use them than in the US.
I've not seen a main dealer in the EU selling oil supplements, just fuel additives, but selling snake oils makes money which why they do it. Just because a shop sells a product it does not mean they think it is a good product.
Sludge formation does not depend directly on the age of the engine, an engine with a faulty head gasket can get sludged up when new. I've seen a lot of very high mileage engines that were perfectly clean inside, if you use a good oil and change it at the correct intervals an engine stays clean.
One thing that does cause problems with very old engines is the fact that owners often change the oil too often when the engine is new, but then don't reduce the OCI when it is old to allow for increased contamination from blowby, fuel or even traces of coolant. Changing to a major brand HM oil does help a lot with older engines and it should help avoid the temptation to use a snake oil.
Car manufacturers don't like snake oils because they cost them money in warranty claims and trying to find out if the oil seals have been damaged by solvents or if a case of sludge has been caused by oil thickners or too much Moly is expensive.
In my opinion the modern 20 grade oils that have high levels of anti wear additives are going to be much more sensitive to chemical interference than the more traditional oils. No independent tests have been done with these new generation X/20 grades to see what happens when you add flush or extra anti wear additives, so when you add a can of snake oil you are conducting an experiment with your own engine.

 

[TuBon_gRips]

Originally Posted By: skyship
That Seafoam joke worked far better than expected!!
I've been a marine and auto engineer for 30 years and it's only recently that I have been involved with writing engineering reports for insurance companies. I am familiar with most of the oil additives used in the EU, although in reality far less owners use them than in the US.
I've not seen a main dealer in the EU selling oil supplements, just fuel additives, but selling snake oils makes money which why they do it. Just because a shop sells a product it does not mean they think it is a good product.
Sludge formation does not depend directly on the age of the engine, an engine with a faulty head gasket can get sludged up when new. I've seen a lot of very high mileage engines that were perfectly clean inside, if you use a good oil and change it at the correct intervals an engine stays clean.
One thing that does cause problems with very old engines is the fact that owners often change the oil too often when the engine is new, but then don't reduce the OCI when it is old to allow for increased contamination from blowby, fuel or even traces of coolant. Changing to a major brand HM oil does help a lot with older engines and it should help avoid the temptation to use a snake oil.
Car manufacturers don't like snake oils because they cost them money in warranty claims and trying to find out if the oil seals have been damaged by solvents or if a case of sludge has been caused by oil thickners or too much Moly is expensive.
In my opinion the modern 20 grade oils that have high levels of anti wear additives are going to be much more sensitive to chemical interference than the more traditional oils. No independent tests have been done with these new generation X/20 grades to see what happens when you add flush or extra anti wear additives, so when you add a can of snake oil you are conducting an experiment with your own engine.


More like this, please. This is much more like discussion and much less like you're trying to call us all idiots.

I definitely agree that a thinner oil leaves much less room for modification (I'm sure most of us here can get on board with that), though it also really depends what you're putting in it. Zinc, titanium, moly, and other additives that are designed to plate, rather than remaining in suspension, will only affect the oil for a shirt time, until that plating occurs; of course, it is always possible to have too much of a good thing, just as it is possible to have too little. Detergents or dispersants will affect a thinner oil to a greater degree, since a thinner oil won't coat as well as a thicker oil; the question is whether or not that thinner oil will be able to coat any particles it picks up during the course of its use well enough to prevent one contact surface from grinding those particles into another. Obviously, the profession chemists you keep telling us know so much better than we do (and in general most of us have agreed, they know more about oil than we do, but they don't know the specifics of each of our engines, including individual issues and modifications) have determined that these oils can, in fact, offer that protection, and with some margin of safety on top of that or they would not have been willing to put their names on the internal "these are the people responsible if we get sued" reports.

Oil isn't a one-size-fits-all proposition and this can be seen by picking several identical engines and several different oils of an appropriate viscosity, and running one oil in each of those engines over the course of several oil changes at the manufacturer-recommended interval, then analyzing each for wear. What you'll find is that using an oil additive is no more experimental than using an oil. To further prove this point, go out and grab the same number of engines from a different manufacturer and conduct the same test again with the same oils and watch as you see different results. It's all a gamble, it's all experimentation, with or without additives.

Some engines run great on Mobil 1, some run great on Valvoline, some run great on Pennzoil, some might even run better on Royal Purple, Amsoil, Redline, QS, or Shell oils. I had an Accord that ran like absolute [censored] on Mobil 1. I tried everything to fix it; new plugs, new wires, new distributor and rotor, new rings, valves were clean so I just adjusted those, different gas, fuel system treatments, new injectors, O2 sensor, MAF, swapped out the ECU, and it still ran like [censored]. After all of that, a good 5 or 6 OCIs into my ownership of the car, I started trying different additives; some mad it better, some made it worse, none made it "good". The eventual fix was to switch to Valvoline MaxLife. No additives after the switch.

My 99 Corolla didn't mind Valvoline, but it did idle smoother with Pennzoil Plpatinum and with Royal Purple you couldn't even tell it was running (that poor, poor starter). That car never saw any additives in the two years I owned it or the 4 years with the previous owner (a coworker and close friend).

My 2000 Corolla (purchased from the same friend as the 99) wasn't a big fan of Royal Purple when I first got it (and given its oil consumption issue, neither was I) so I put it on Pennzoil Platinum for one OCI. The Next OCI was with Penzoil Ultra once I had determined that it did, in fact, have the clogged return holes issue. That didn't do much in 2k miles but it cleared up quickly when I added 1/6qt of MMO to top it off. It's now running Shell Rotella T6 for a final cleaning before I try Royal Purple again.

I won't even bring up the things I did to my Jeep (things in oil that were never intended to be put in oil), since your mind would literally melt, but it was on its way to the junkyard, barely running when I bought it, and running like brand new 7 years later when I sold it.

That poor, poor Cavalier, though... If only I had experimented with that one, it might not have had that catastrophic oil-related engine failure.

I didn't even have to by a dozen engines and a dozen oils to demonstrate that which oil or additive is correct for a given engine is going to vary not only base on the design of the engine, but also any issues or modifications that are specific to that single engine. It only took me one engine to figure it out; the other four are just being mentioned for further demonstration of my point.

 

[Mystic]

I agree with you KeMBRO2012, this is the best post I have seen yet from Skyship. It is well written. If he would just stay away from the nonsense (gold dust as an additive, the weird runaway turbocar story, good old chaps hired to test one additive at a time in 30 weight oil) I would like his posts much better. I think he may have thought everybody was not too bright here.

In a general sort of way I agree with Skyship. Probably the majority of oil supplements and engine cleaners are just junk. I would really prefer to just use motor oil in my engine.

Where I differ from Skyship is I believe it may well become necessary after high mileage, owner abuse, or long time of operation to have some sort of safe cleaner to clean the interior of an engine. Even Skyship seems to agree (at least part of the time) that idle only engine flushes might be okay. Skyship warns about the possible damage from solvents but I know of two nonsolvent engine flushes-one from Amsoil and one from Lubegard. I also know about an oil supplement that has very high detergent cleaning ability; BG-MOA. And Redline motor oil has esters and might be able to clean somewhat-maybe combined with MMO.

I have had positive results from some oil supplements but in general I do believe in just using motor oil. There is a big difference in my opinion between Lubegard BioTech Engine Supplement and Schaeffer's oil supplement and the typical garbage you will find in an auto parts store.

I don't know if Skyship even knows about nonsolvent engine flushes. It would be interesting to see what he might say about them.

 

[skyship]

The funny thing about the non solvent flushes is the folks making them used to make or in some cases still make solvent based flushes and they start off their advertising by saying how bad the solvent based flushes were, for example this is on the Wynns site:
Most engine flushes are solvent-type products, they tend to reduce the lubrication of the oil. If this type of flush is left in the engine too long mechanical damage can occur and engine seals can affected. Damage may not be visible but is irreversible.

Most of them seem to be idle only pre OCI flushes and the fact they don't contain solvents reduces the chances of them damaging any oil seals, particularly the ones in newer GM cars.
For most folks that don't have serious sludge, changing to a high detergent HM or full synthetic oil (If there are no oil leaks etc) with a few short OCI's will produce just as good a result.
If you have to use a flush, then the new non solvent idle only ones like the one from Valvoline are better than anything you drive around with.

 

[electrolover]

Originally Posted By: Trav
Originally Posted By: electrolover
I can only think of one additive thats not a solvent at all and used for cleaning. Makes me question your motive skyship.

Me too! I have a funny feeling someone is in contact with ol skunkship to push something. Time will tell.


He's not the only one....

 

[Trav]

Originally Posted By: skyship
I've been a marine and auto engineer for 30 years

I thought you were a pilot?

 

[skyship]

Only part time.

 

[Trav]

Good lord how gullible do you think we are here? Never mind your repeated tall tales are answer enough.

 

[Mystic]

One of the recent posts by Skyship was very good. But it is very hard for me to ignore all the other stuff in his past posts. Stuff such as gold dust in motor oil as an additive, men hired to test motor oil additives one at a time in a 30 weight motor oil with no other additives, the runaway turbo car, etc. I don't know if some of these stories by him were attempts at humor or maybe he was testing us to see if we would actually believe such stories. Who knows and I guess who really cares.

And I mentioned in several replies to his posts about nonsolvent engine flushes and he finally responded. But it took a long time. He seemed at least some of the time to support idle only engine flushes but kept writing about the danger of solvents. I kept bringing up that there is such a thing as nonsolvent engine flushes and he finally said something about that.

I really do not know what to think about Skyship. He appears here and seems extremely determined to convince people not to use oil supplements and engine cleaners. If that was his mission it was doomed to failure unless he provided very convincing proof that all oil supplements and engine cleaners are useless or even harmful to an engine. I don't think he provided such proof.

A lot of the time he seemed to be pretty much just quoting what was written in owner's manuals and in statements made by car manufacturers concerning the use of oil supplements.

He told the story of the runaway turbocar. Supposedly the problem was caused by a drive around engine cleaner. But he never provided any documentation that any of this actually took place.

Like I said one of his most recent posts was pretty good but I just can't ignore all of the other stuff in his posts.

 

[Mystic]

I have to agree also that Skyship has been very quiet about Auto-RX. Even I brought up Auto-RX as a nonsolvent engine cleaner and Skyship seemed silent.