Originally Posted By: Paleomonster
A mechanic/friend at a large repair shop said that stuff like engine flush solvents are good for making the shop money. They pour one of these solvents in an engine and often there is a quick result, often a failure and they can get on with an engine sway or what ever work is required. Over the last few years ARX has never caused a failure. They used it in my wife's Audi A4. The dealer wanted from $6k up and said that driving the car around the block could be the end of the engine. It was slugged up and the oil light and check engine was on. We did an ARX treatment and repeated it. It took a bit of driving and a few oil changes but there is nothing left of the original problem. I was afraid to try a solvent and ARX was just the ticket. The dealer watched the progress while telling me my warranty was at risk for not following their plan to replace the engine. When we were finished he refused to believe what we showed him. They put the camera probe back in the engine and found nothing but clean engine. ARX did exactly what it claimed to do and this is not the first Audi form me. I have since, purchased several slugged up A4's and done this treatment, detailed the car and made some good money. I was planning to use oil analysis to monitor the progress but found that borrowing a fiber optic device to be good enough for me. At times you can not see much of anything happening and at other times the progress is obvious.
Any complaints about ARX. Well the shop sez that it takes a lot of time to go through the cycles and the customer must comply.
The solvents do their work very quickly and often lead to an e failure of some degree. The solvents don't work well with the A4 because to remove the pan is like tearing up the while front end of the car, a real pain. Removing the pan is often required to clean up the oil pickup screen following a solvent.
All this assumes an engine with problems. I see people putting solvents in engines that are fine. They get back some gunky oil from the oil change and are happy that they are doing something good for their car. Then they claim to be an expert on such matters although they would not have a clue when it comes to fixing anything with their own hands.
Since ARX does not attack the very oil that carries it, why would one use a flush? I know. Because they have had their own success in making their engine oil darker and their engine survives.
Interesting observations, I've also seen first hand how good a job MMO does cleaning neglected engines, some ready for the scrap heap. It also did a pretty impressive job. I guess there's more than one way to skin a cat.
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