Oil & Petrol Additives - Good or Bad?Archived Message
Posted by Peter Warman on March 14, 2004, 5:37 pm
Hi All
Engine Flush This is a subject that has often bothered me, especially engine flushing. I know many of you use them all the time, but are they really any good or is it just spin to generate more income from the additive suppliers
When using an engine flush, they often recommend running for 5 to 10 minutes, can this honestly remove varnish, gums and crud from inside of the engine effectively. The other concern i have is that about half a litre of old oil is usually trapped in the engine, especially on the top of the head/cam carrier area, you then go and fill up with your fully synthetic, but you still have an amount of engine flush still in the engine, does the remaining engine flush do any harm?, only a small amount, but it should not be there
Also the idea of a flush is that the oil tends to all run out, not clinging to the inside of your engine (as the WURTH demo shows with their little glass jars) so your new oil is now contaminated with engine flush, so what happens when you stop, the oil drains of the inside of the engine components, leaving them unprotected for the next start up!!.
Fuel System Additives Do they really work?. They say they clean the inside of your fuel system, so what's the fuel filter for?. If you have crud on anything, what's the most effective thing to shift and clean it "PETROL". You have the before and after emission test that many manufacturers refer to, put a tin in your tank and run it for a day and you will notice a drop in emissions, but is this not just a case of the additive boosting the efficiently of the fuel creating a more complete burn, so less emissions
So are they really effective, or is it all hype to sell more products
I am tending to use less and less engine flush, especially on newer vehicles, the thought of that remaining engine flush solvent left in for another 12,000 miles goes against an engineers way of thinking