I must say, in my 7 decades of life I've learned to detect snake oil with fairly good accuracy. This LUBEGARD Bio/Tech Engine Oil Protectant sure smells like snake oil to me. Any additive that says, "You shouldn’t start your car without it! FOR USE IN ALL DIESEL AND GASOLINE ENGINES," sure sounds like snake oil to me. It's like a garage that advertises, "We specialize in all makes, foreign and domestic."
For starters, there is no way LG can test this in every oil made. So, there's no way to gauge the effect it will have with YOUR motor oil.
Additionally, this stuff is not recommended by a single automobile manufacturer. Audi specifically says, "Do not mix any lubricants or other additives into the engine oil. Doing so can cause engine damage."
I also question the tests used to "prove" the superiority of this product. Why use the ASTM D-4742 test? According to ASTM (
https://www.astm.org/Standards/D4742.htm): "The test does not constitute a substitute for engine testing, which measures wear, oxidation stability, volatility, and deposit control characteristics of lubricants." And, "This test method is useful for screening formulated oils prior to engine tests. Within similar additive chemistry and base oil types, the ranking of oils in this test appears to be predictive of ranking in engine tests. When oils having completely different additive chemistry or base oil type are compared, oxidation stability results may not reflect the actual engine test result." The bottom line is all that test proves is that LG tests better than the other additives
with Pennzoil Plus oil. If a different oil was used in the test, Lucas might come out on top and LG on the bottom.
The ASTM D2670 - 95 (Falex Pin and Vee Block Method) may have the same concerns as the D-4742 test. That being that different oils may respond differently due to different additive chemistry or base oil types. This would go a long way towards explaining the vast differences they report for the five oils in the test. Whatever Quaker State oil they tested seemed to benefit the least from LG while whatever Castrol oil they used benefited the most.
If you click on the picture they show of PYB and Mobil 1, you'll bring up a graph showing the results of various additives when used with some kind of Pennzoil (PYB?) Of course, LG gave the best results, but the data point I found interesting was the result with STP, which was worse than Pennzoil alone. This demonstrates that a poor choice of additive and base oil can actually result in poorer results than that of the base oil alone.
The only thing I think their marketing material shows is that with the proper choice of test oils, it can be shown in two test regimens that oil with LUBEGARD Bio/Tech Engine Oil Protectant gives better results than the other test oils they chose. If they were really concerned about an honest proof of their superiority, they would contract with a place like Southwest Research Institute to select a group of popular conventional and synthetic motor oils and test them with LUBEGARD Bio/Tech Engine Oil Protectant against the ILSAC GF-5 engine tests.