To add additives or not to? hmmm

[Huggyd]

What do you people think of all these additives on the market today, any of them worth taking note of?
There are additives for the oil (I would think they just thin it out)
There are additives for fuel (oct. boost, clear injectors, etc)
Additives you can pour down the carbonator
The list goes on, and all kinds of brands that go all the same thing.

[airbalancer]

if any of these additives were great,
I think the manufactures have them in the cars to start with

[Huggyd]

Wow I would think that there would have been more to say on this subject.... hmmm

[ASQ]

I found a good site on addatives. read on. I hope it will clear some confusions. Site expalains simply the experience of people. It may be of some help.

What is my understanding from looking at this site is that addatives can effect your Gaskets and could cause harm.

Also since these manufecturer are not bound by regulations, their product may be incompatible with dis-similiar metals/may disintegrate filter fibres.


http://experts.about.com/q/Oil-Gas-3147/Automotive-adatives.htm

:?:

[big_block]

I won't touch this. Like most of you, I heard more negative stories than positive about additives. A waste of money in my opinion. Some gaz & oil compagnies are already putting some additives in their gaz and oil.

[Pritch]

Did some research on this one.

Octane boost is fine for older engines that start pinging as carbon buildup decreases the usable area of combustion, increasing compression and making engine prone to pinging.

Oil additives, i've heard horror stories about. They can cause more harm than good. Im going to tell you the best thing you can do for your engine's life regarding oil.

CHANGE IT REGULARLY AND RELIGIOUSLY.

Having spoken to half a dozen mechanics they all say thats the single most important thing. If you do that, you wont need oil additives. Synthetic oil may be a waste of money too unless your engine requires it. It's designed for porsches and ferraris, so your kia rio or honda civic wont really benefit from it. As an example, my dad and I have cars with over 260,000 kilometers on them. His, a honda civic si and mine a nissan 240sx. He only uses synthetic oil, from new. I never use it. Took his valve cover off the other day and everything was just CAKED with sludge. Mine, same mileage, clean as a whistle. Both changed regularly too. Again, additives or premium products may not be anything more than a waste of money.

Some people put higher octane gas (or octane booster) in their cars thinking they will run better. Complete waste of money. Higher than required octane fuel makes absolutely no effect on performance for an unmodified engine. "But it has additives to clean, right?" Yes, but so does regular. And i dont think the oil companies care if you spend the extra 12 cents on premium for nothing.

Then there are the additives that say they increase your mileage (or people who say synthetic oil or high test gas do the same)

there are a billion things that affect your mileage. Windows up or down? AC Usage? Passenger load? How often you use the rear defogger? Temperature, humidity and air pressure? Point is there would be no realiable way to measure the effects of such things on fuel economy without a climatically controlled laboratory and a dyno.

So dont waste your money, just maintain.

[isit90u]

Some oil aditives are good. Power Up is the best. This is used on Daytona race car engines. Expensive, approx $60.00 a liter. I use it and have 455000km on this engine. Also engine has never been touched. Additives with teflon-no good. Teflon plugs up the camshaft oil galleries and cam bearings burn out. Hope this helps.

[Crash]

Some additives you can't avoid. I have to use lead substitute in some of my classic vehicles as they need the lead to protect the valves.

I basically follow the idea that some additives work, some don't, and quite often it differs from vehicle to vehicle.

I'm an old Jag/Land Rover tech , I've tried synthetic engine oil in Jags and where they leaked before, they've poured afterwards. Yet, I've tried it on many Land Rovers and most seemed to run smoother and it didn't make the normal leaks any worse, go figure?

Sometimes oil aditives are a good thing. When I was younger, I worked in a Landrover centre where we often sold used Range Rovers. The older ones had oil gauges fitted and you were lucky if the gauge showed 5psi on tickover and pehaps 20-25psi running. Try selling that to someone who doesn't understand LR's. My boss brought a trailer load of some additive where the company had been brought out by a large oil company. I can't remember the name but the brand totally disapeared off the market. It was like treacle and you had to heat the tin to get it out. We put it in Range Rovers and the vehicles ticked over at 20psi and went up to 45-50 running, we could then sell them. Just in case you think that this was a sales trick, we ran our recovery trucks and our own LR's on it and the oil presures stayed up and we never had any problems with them.

Here's one for those with older, higer mileage vehicles. I had an old 88 Jag runabout that I owned years ago. It had 230,000 kms on it and ran absolutely perfect, no smoke, no knocks, nothing. My wife changed our fuel cards to Petro Canada just when they brought out their "Clean" Winter Gas. Within two months, the car was starting to puff smoke. I changed back to our old brand and without doing anything else the smoke slowly disapeared within a few weeks. I put another 80,000 kms on it before I sold it and it never smoked again. I put it down to older cars needing a certain amount of carbon build up. Maybe in a new engine it might be a good thing. Maybe an odd can of fuel cleaner is not a bad idea, but constant cleaning agents in fuel worries me with higher mileage vehicles.

[FastEddie]

I've heard good things about Moly Slip but it's expensive. $10 for every oil change.

[jacques414]

I believe in add.
I have a big truck with 1,350000 mile and using lucas oil add. from the
time is was new and just got oil sample analy. done result came out
with normal wear result :?: