so a couple of months back I missed my oil change and in short, I suspected that the rings had started to clog! as you could smell burning oil after going to 7k rpm.
(note to everyone NEVER miss your oil change)
so i did my oil change.
we let the engine run for an hour with the flush in the oil.
it did seem to work but not fully and I still wasn’t happy.
so after only another 3k, I did another oil change.
this time I flushed it much more thoroughly by putting the flush in and then taking it for a short drive during which I ran it for about a mile at just over and around 6k and also did a couple of hard accelerations all the way up to 7k.
now I had put some thought into this beforehand so when I got back to the garage I had a K&N high-flow oil filter waiting to go on.
however I realized I had forgotten to buy a new sump plug n washer, so I stopped in the local parts place and while there I notice some of that super slick additive that was from a brand whose other products I’d had a previous good experience with.
so when I got back to the garage and the time came to start putting it back together we put on the high-flow filter filled it with oil and the additive and also very carefully overfilled the Duratec engine to its happiest oil level.
since then the engine has been running much better and the symptoms of ring clogging have gone
in fact, it isn’t just improved, it is fair to say that the engine has greatly improved and is much happier!
The thing I can for the life of me decide or work out is which of the 3 things that i did (high filter, declog or slick) was the one that actually made the difference.?
Just maybe over thinking this perhaps.
Rings starting to clog, personally I doubt that unless your oil was really really dirty and black and had been in there for some considerable time.
Also perhaps the car had been sitting around, but you use daily from previous comments.
Are you burning oil?
How long and how many miles was the oil/filter in for?
You shouldn’t need to use flushing oil at all with a good quality fully synthetic oil.
The Mazda filter and indeed all well known good brands will all do the job, (I’ve always used OEM or Mann).
Just an opinion if you think you have engine problems now don’t go anywhere near a blower.
Unless you’ve had the engine inspected internally and or had an emissions check done, you don’t say, how do you know it’s had clogged rings?
I changed the oil on my car last year, I don’t know what was used previously. Happy with the fact it’s been done, I later swapped to using Super Unleaded instead of the E10 standard stuff, now that did make the engine run sweeter.
I didn’t “know” that the rings were clogging, I just suspected they might be.
as for burning oil, I could only smell it when I had taken it over 6k rpm.
but that’s neither here nor there really.
the real question is, which of the 2 main things I did (high-flow filter or slick oil additive) was it that really made all the difference?
Sticking piston rings 9-10 will stay stuck until dismantled and dealt with properly. (Luck can work sometimes). Likewise, with the oil rings you would burn oil and if the compression rings were also “stuck” you would loose compression too.
You say you can smell burning oil at over 6k.
If you are burning oil, you would see it and smell it across the rev band. You would obviously see the level drop on the dip stick too.
If the rings are stuck they are stuck. They wouldn’t suddenly get stuck at over 6k revs and become unstuck below that if you get my drift.
The filter was used with fresh engine oil.
As said before, a good filter will always do the job. The crucial point with a filter is the by pass pressure relief valve. So IF it did get blocked with crud (why would anyone let it get that far) it would by pass the internal elements and still circulate.
A good quality fully synthetic engine oil will do as much if not more than any engine additive.
They are designed to clean, lubricate reduce friction etc at the temperature range of the designed oil.
Something like slick 50 has been around for donkeys years and was designed for the multi grades and the semi synthetics perhaps.
Again, not something that I would use.
Just my opinion based on your information provided.
Of course, others may see it differently than I.
Good luck and all the best.
Echoing everything that was said above, i wouldn’t use any additives especially in modern car oils.
Change oil filter with the appropriate recommended type usually oem or Bosch (usually)
I don’t particularly believe the advertising on additives
On a mk2 engine I had very good results with using Seafoam to soak the rings from the top (then oil & filter change) then used as an additive to the oil for 100 miles before changing oil & filter again. Went from using lots of oil (like 1/2 litre for 200 miles ish - can’t remember the exact figure) to using maybe 1/8th litre or less per 1000 miles.
So yes if used properly flushes definitely work, but never had any faith in Slick50 as said above good quality modern oils have all the cleaning agents included.
If you have a truly worn and leaky engine, then this kind of stuff might rescue it for a few miles when it dumps the oil (again). But then again probably not. It does quieten old, worn diffs and gearboxes, helping to nurse an old banger for a few more thousand miles. Been there done that.
Thanks to Lubysil SC100 (a silicone additive) In the 1960s I did 30 gentle low throttle miles on the Autobahn on my old Triumph 650 without oil pressure before reaching a Services to buy some more. Long story not worth repeating.
However, when I later took it all apart to see how bad it was, the additional wear was non-existent. It just needed a clean up, new gaskets and a new oil pump with a fully functional scavenge. None of us could believe it.
Fwiw my thoughts.
As far as I’m aware the ‘oil flush additive’ is basically paraffin, used as a solvent to help ‘dissolve’ unwanted internal deposits of carbon etc. God knows what it does to the lubricating properties of the existing oil, especially if the engine is put under load - ie driven.There’s also no way that all of this concoction can be fully drained, so your nice shiny new oil will be contaminated with paraffin for the next X0000 miles until the next oil change.
There’s good evidence that a used oil filter actually filters better that a brand new one (up to a point, obviously) so although I change the lube oil in all of my 4 wheel vehicles around 5k, I only do the filters every 10.
Unless a ‘hi flow’ filter has more filter material area (not likely if the carcass is the same size) the only way it can flow more than an OE one is if the holes in the filter medium are larger (meaning it will allow more micro particles through it) or the oil pressure is increased, which the filter can’t do. In addition at high revs there’s usually a surplus of pressure / flow anyway that simply gets dumped back in the sump via the bypass valve.
OE every time for me.
There’s absolutely no need for additives in modern engines using fully synthetic lube oil. Waste of money.
Older, knackered, engines, gearboxes and diffs may benefit as a short term fix though, but a simple oil change would probably do as much good.
I could tell you a story about a car with a noisy slipping auto box that responded well to half a dozen liquified bananas, well, for long enough to sell it anyway………
Interesting thread though.
It’s hard to know what’s snake oil and what isn’t. I remember back in the early 70s when I had my first decent car, a Mk1 Cortina GT, STP used to be the magic potion. Through the decades since, lots of wonder fluids and bolt-on gizmos have come and gone, persisting long enough to part besotted car-owners with their hard earned folding money. Call it free enterprise.
We all love our fives. I call mine ‘My Precious’. Nuff said. Nothing’s too good for the old girl. Just a bit jaded now, after 50 years of driving, with promises of a miracle cure for nasty smoke out of the tailpipe. I’ll take low mileage and a good service history thanks.
I know from personal experience that “Slick 50” is very slippery. Unfortunately, at the time, over 20 years ago, I believed advice given by a company rep that it was also completely suitable for “all in one” oil system motorbike engines with a wet clutch. It took four oil changes in quick succession before the clutch stopped slipping badly under acceleration.
And then there was the other problem. Our old woody mini was a definite oil burner, and when I took the head off because a friend had a spare one with far less wear on the valve guides I noticed there was about a millimetre of slop in any direction on each piston!
Ouch, rebore on a cheap banger I expected to die at the next MOT?
However, a Kraus-bond pellet popped through each spark-plug hole of a hot engine drove up the compression to almost respectable. The oil consumption dropped to less than a tenth (still too much) for almost five thousand miles of gentle shopping trips and school runs. Twelve years later and a couple more pellets per pot I sold it for the same amount of money I had paid for it, £100, with half a years MOT and tax, again same as when I bought it.
I would not even dream of attempting something like this now, but in those days we were totally skint, and it worked, sort of, for a while, on a small low-powered vertical engine with flat top pistons.
I would be checking the oil levels if I were you mate. Not sure what oil you have used but if your oil is too slippery or the adhesion to metal is lower it wont seal and you will have oil consumption.
I did know of Liquid Moly and have had a quick look about the additives you used. Basically they use molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) in mineral oil to create a bond with the metal that allows to reduce the friction between parts.
This is actually a good video description of the product and also has some recommendations (around 11 minutes mark onwards) that is relevant to you. The guy also agrees that if your engine is worn use the thickest oil within the manufacturer specifications - it will seal better. ( so if you have a choice of 0W-30 or 5W-40 chose the 5W-40. Better still if you have an oil 0W40 use that instead so you will also have better lubrication at low temperature.)
I think the liquid moly additive has probably helped with your car however If you want to use such additives I would buy their oil with the additive already in it making sure its suitable and the oil specs is within the nc specs.
I know performance cars and race teams do use liquid moly oil. Some of that maybe due to incentives or sponsorship but on the other side i have had no issues with what i use (mobil 1)
My only issue using additives is primarily because of perception and i don’t really want to modify the consistency and quality of the oil I’m currently using.
My car has a difficult 2nd gear when cold and I really need to wait for the synchro to slow down the gears before i engage 2nd otherwise we have the old grinding noises. It has helped tremendously getting the gearbox oil changed (as well as the diff oil) and tbh for the current state of 2nd gear I’m blaming previous owner for not changing the gearbox oil sooner.
I know liquid moly do gearbox oil so im going to get my gearbox oil changed again and see if that helps a bit more or not. If that is proven to me that it does help with the gearbox i will definitely be using liquid moly oil in my car engines as well.
Mobil 1 is highly respected and many regard it as the best oil you can buy, so imho, great choice.
Duratec’s gearbox oil seems to get a general thumbs up for improving the quality of your gearchange.
However, my gearchange was transformed simply by adjusting the clutch pedal to get the bite point well clear of the carpet.
As @999to5 says, raising the clutch bite point has transformed my gear changes, even though it was the last thing I tried as it wasn’t buried in the carpet. Sit on a bathroom stool or similar, lay a blanket over the door sill and lie on your back and you can get your head up under the pedals.
