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Do those high priced oil additives help or hurt your engine?
Oil additives, you know the ones that almost everyone has tried and most have not seen much difference, Yea those. Let’s talk about what is really in them and what they can do to your engine.
There are hundreds of oil additives on the market. Some say that they will reduce your mileage, or reduce your wear, or reduce your oil consumption, and some even say that you can run your engine without any oil after treating your engine with their miracle cure additive.
The truth is that there are 4 types of oil additives.
1. Solvent is one and it only cleans out deposits left by using a poor oil. If you use a good oil you should not need to use a solvent in your engine. Think about it, there is many places in your engine that don’t drain all the oil out of. You know the small little valleys that hold the oil and doesn’t drain oil. That still has the solvent it them and will contaminate your new fresh oil. Solvent will clean out your engine but at what cost? Solvent is made to break down oils and I for one would never use a solvent in my engine because it would start to break down my new fresh oil and reduce the oils ability to properly lubricate my engine.
2. PTFE is another one. This additive has plugged up filters has an ability to build up on itself and affect tolerances in your engine. It only has a 500 deg F. temperature range and only holds up to 5,000 psi. Moly has a 650 deg F. temperature range and holds up to 400,000 psi. Some oils have moly in them and if you were to put the PTFE in your engine with the moly, you would be diluting the quality of an average oil.
3. Chlorinated paraffin’s is the most popular additive. They show how their oil will perform in a pressure test that has a torque wrench that puts pressure on a bearing and a round but rough surface that is turning in the test oil. They show how by adding their oil the wear is greatly reduced. This can be done with household bleach but you would not want to put any of that in your engine because it’s corrosive. The Chlorinated paraffin’s are also corrosive to the light metals in your engine. The lead in your engine bearings is subject to corrosion or acids that can build up. When the chlorinated paraffin’s come in contact with moisture or water of any kind they turn into hydrochloric acid and can become acidic to the lead in your bearings. So the reduction in wear shown by the torque wrench test is only one realm of wear that goes on inside your engine. Acidic or corrosion wear is another type and that is why I would never use an additive containing any type of chlorinated product.
4. The last type of additive is just a SAE 20 or 30 wt that has the same additives your engine oil comes with in the first place. In some cases there seems to be no thought to what might happen if there are to many additives and the oils additive balance is thrown off by throwing a bunch of everything in your oil. This is the additive type that is least harmful but I would recommend against using it also.
Stick with the better oils on the market like Mobil-1 or Lubrication Engineers. Lubrication Engineers is not as popular as the Mobil-1 oil and but has a lower wear rate and like the Mobil-1 does not need any additive to make it good. LE oils can be purchased at Mag-Hytec at 1-818-786-8325 and Mobil-1 is everywhere.
If you use the best you won’t need those additives. I use the LE oil myself and recommend against using any other additives in any oil.
Confused? Check out the Glossary of Terms
ToyotaOffRoad.com Note: Kevin Dinwiddie is a Certified Lubrication Specialist by the STLE (Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers) Shown on the STLE directory under Lubrication Engineers. Kevin has worked for Lubrication Engineers for over 22 years. He holds a degree is in mechanical engineering and has been involved in the testing of oils for over 12 years and working with industrial customers for 22 years.
