New warning from Hyundai about flush oil additive.

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted By: The Critic
I still do not understand how engine flush machines can cause harm. Yes, they are usually not necessary and can leave residue behind in the new engine oil, but I cannot see how they can cause the catastrophic failures being described.


Here is one possible scenario:
Let's say that the engine really does need cleaning.
We've all seen pictures of sludged engines here.
Let's say that a solvent flush is applied, but not all of the loosened sludge is recovered during the flushing process.
A new oil filter and fill of oil are installed and the customer goes on his merry way.
The remaining sludge is now circulating into the oil pan.
It gets sucked onto the pickup screen, clogging it.
Oil pressure is lost.
If the engine is instantly shut down when this occurs, no harm is done, and the vehicle can be towed home or to a shop for pan removal and manual cleaning.
If the engine is run for very long with no or very low oil pressure, serious damage will obviously occur.
OTOH, some members have reported good results with Kreen, which is certainly a strong solvent.
Also, there are cases where a solvent flush should be used as a last resort, since the engine will be terminal unless it can be cleaned up internally.
It probably isn't a flush that causes problems, but rather improper or uninformed use of either a flush or a solvent additive.
If the user and owner both understand the potential pitfalls going in, the chances of serious damage occurring are probably minimal.

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: Donald
In the CarTalk show yesterday, they mentioned using 2 QTs of kerosene and 3 QTs of oil in the crankcase. They said some people said it did work. Also mentioned they had tried it in their own vehicles and it ruined the engines. They gave it a 1 in 4 shot of not destroying the engine. In their case they were trying to unstick the oil rings as the vehicles were burning oil.


This is where actual experience is meaningful. Have you ever cleaned an old piston that you were re-using in an engine? The ring grooves have stuff in the called coke which is HARD and does not come off easily, usually requiring a mechanical scraper tool to be used.

Kerosene won't even begin to touch that! So it becomes easier to understand how these so-called "mechanics" can make all these blanket condemnations.

 

[electrolover]

Its not always flushes and cleaners that break stuff loose and clog pick up screens.
A friend of mine recently bought a used engine and installed it in his escort. The engine looked a little dirty so he changed the oil with rotella t.
A week later he lost oil pressure. The pick up waw clogged. But when the oil light came on he shut it down and pulled the pan and cleaned the pick up. Its running fine today.

My point is that pick up screens clog in abused engines all he time even with out additives. But with a little common sense the engine wont be lost.

 

[skyship]

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
Originally Posted By: The Critic
I still do not understand how engine flush machines can cause harm. Yes, they are usually not necessary and can leave residue behind in the new engine oil, but I cannot see how they can cause the catastrophic failures being described.


Here is one possible scenario:
Let's say that the engine really does need cleaning.
We've all seen pictures of sludged engines here.
Let's say that a solvent flush is applied, but not all of the loosened sludge is recovered during the flushing process.
A new oil filter and fill of oil are installed and the customer goes on his merry way.
The remaining sludge is now circulating into the oil pan.
It gets sucked onto the pickup screen, clogging it.
Oil pressure is lost.
If the engine is instantly shut down when this occurs, no harm is done, and the vehicle can be towed home or to a shop for pan removal and manual cleaning.
If the engine is run for very long with no or very low oil pressure, serious damage will obviously occur.
OTOH, some members have reported good results with Kreen, which is certainly a strong solvent.
Also, there are cases where a solvent flush should be used as a last resort, since the engine will be terminal unless it can be cleaned up internally.
It probably isn't a flush that causes problems, but rather improper or uninformed use of either a flush or a solvent additive.
If the user and owner both understand the potential pitfalls going in, the chances of serious damage occurring are probably minimal.


There is not much of a risk if you use a flush machine correctly of that happening, it's much more likely to happen with the use of a drive around snake oil as the machine uses a very powerful solvent and pumps it around the block.
Relying on an oil pressure warning light is not such a good idea as drivers don't seem to notice them too much and if the blockage occurs at high power you only have a very short time (seconds in the case of a turbo) before some severe damage is done. I sat next to a chap testing out a recon engine in a classic Porsche that blew up because of a big oil leak and I saw the oil pressure warning light come on about 3 seconds before the steam, so I don't have much faith in how well they work.
If you have a very old car with serious sludge and no time to clean it yourself or money to pay a garage, then the best idea is to switch to a high detergent HM oil and just do a few short OCI's. That is pretty well the advice the dealer will give you if you don't want to pay for having the engine cleaned properly, the other alternative that is safer than a drive around flush but still has risks is to use an idle only pre OCI flush from a major oil company like Castrol. I don't regard such products that are used during maintenance as snake oils because there are a number of good independent garages that use idle only flushes after checking the sump to see how bad it is. If it is bad you may need to do the job twice.
Some of the HM oils are now approved for use in a new engine (They reduced the amount of seal conditions in some), so if you have sludge concerns the use of such high detergent oils will not invalidate the warranty, although most major brand full synthetics like the infamous M1 clean just as well with a short OCI.

 

[fdcg27]

You do realize that your reply to me directly contradicts your original post?

 

[skyship]

Yes it's Sunday and I am talking about disposable engine problems and risk factors, a flush machine is safer in the hands of a dealer.

 

[Trav]

Originally Posted By: skyship
Yes it's Sunday and I am talking about disposable engine problems and risk factors, a flush machine is safer in the hands of a dealer.

How so? You think the mechanics at the dealer are any better than a qualified Meisterwerkstatt? Dream on!

 

[wrcsixeight]

I admit to a certain amount of eye rolling about Skyship's anti additive mantra, even though I prefer not to add anything to my oil.

But I've never had a known issue with dirty engines as I was either ignorant of it, or because they were not dirty. Even before I started reading here, and before I decided the extra $$ for synthetic gave me the warm and fuzzies, my OCI's were regular and probably too short.

2 decades ago I fell for the Snake oil infomercials. I remember cleaning my bicycle chain and spraying it with prolong's super duper metal penetrating nuclear lube, and a week later the chain was frozen solid. I was thinking hard about that highly questionable product in my engine after that.

While I personally do not want to add anything to my oil these days, I have no agenda against them, and in this regard I do wonder why skyship has such an vociferous agenda against them.

Seriously, whenever I see his posts it is just a repeat of his narrow beliefs, and it is clownish at this point.
He seems to enjoy baiting the pro additive crowd and even additive neutral crowd, and is quite good at it judging by all the attention he gets from his tact.

It is both amusing and tiring to watch the broken records go round and round, on both sides of the arguement.

 

[RiceCake]

Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Additives have a place in engine maintenance, and because of their place they will inevitably get used in some hopeless causes.


That isn't maintenance. Additives have their place in repair of engine abuse and neglect.

Any engine properly maintained won't develop "sludge" and need a "flush". The fact that people believe they need this now is just marketing working wonders.

Originally Posted By: fdcg27
You do realize that your reply to me directly contradicts your original post?


Don't worry about that, contradiction isn't important to skyship, all that matters to him is that something he throws out eventually contains some shred of validity.

 

[skyship]

Originally Posted By: RiceCake

Additives have a place in engine maintenance, and because of their place they will inevitably get used in some hopeless causes.

That isn't maintenance. Additives have their place in repair of engine abuse and neglect.
Any engine properly maintained won't develop "sludge" and need a "flush". The fact that people believe they need this now is just marketing working wonders.

True, but some folks do get unlucky and not notice a coolant leak, which will cause sludge real fast, although such cases are fairly rare these days due to improved head gaskets.
The funny thing about flush use is that I would guess the only sludge 90% of the folks that use one have in their crankcase is purely in their own vivid imagination. I even used I can of pre OCI idle flush last year because I didn't like the fact the previous owner had been doing 25K km OCI's and using a dino Mobil 10/40 (The book figure is 20K max), I dumped the oil for a high detergent cheapish HC synthetic as soon as I got my Volvo TDI, but after thinking about the previous service record my imagination got the better of me and I decided to use an idle flush as a precaution. We all make mistakes because the engine was in fact very clean, but I was not fully aware of the potential risks at the time because I had read the advertising.
Some chap posted some pics of what he claimed was serious varnish a while back and every Moo oil, cream your engine or flush fan added recommendations for their favourite snake oil, the funny thing was that there was nothing wrong with that engine in any of the pics, all it showed was a little light varnish that is perfectly normal for an older engine.

 

[TuBon_gRips]

Guys, I hate to say it but he's right on this one.

Of course, he's ignoring the fact that a bad seal that's only not leaking because the defects are clogged with [censored] is still a bad seal and should be replaced, instead blaming the flush for the leak.

Other than that, he's right WRT fast flushes. They break s**t loose and the s**t clogs up oil passages and blocks the pickup screen.

Of course, there's also a proper way to use those flushes, which the iffy-lubes don't (and aren't qualified to) do. It's pretty simple, really; if you know you've broken a bunch of s**t up, you know you need to get that s**t out of there. Go ahead, run the flush, drain it, then drop the pan and clean it out. Slightly overfill with an oil a grade or two lighter than you'd normally use (you'll be running at idle, you'll be fine) and run for as long as you ran the flush, to flush out any remaining bits of s**t and generally just rinse out any remaining flush. Drain again, drop the pan again, clean up again. Replace any bad seals while you're at it, then fill with the correct amount of the correct oil.

Of course, you should drop the pan and pull the valve cover before a flush, to remove as much s**t as you can beforehand.

Nobody does this (and the flush manufacturers don't mention it) and that's where the problems come from. It's not the fault of the flush, it's the fault of the user not thinking before they act and the manufacturer not advising them properly. And even if the manufacturer did their part, users would still ignore it, and you'd still have iffy-lube places doing it wrong, as well.

The problem boils down to people trying to use "miracle" additives as the only tool in their box, rather than just another tool in the box. "When all you have is a hammer" right?

 

[TuBon_gRips]

Originally Posted By: skyship

Some chap posted some pics of what he claimed was serious varnish a while back and every Moo oil, cream your engine or flush fan added recommendations for their favourite snake oil, the funny thing was that there was nothing wrong with that engine in any of the pics, all it showed was a little light varnish that is perfectly normal for an older engine.


If you're talking about the thread I think you're talking about, there was so much sarcasm flying around that thread (including the OP calling that engine dirty) you'd have to be some special kind of ignorant to miss it.

 

[electrolover]

Special kind of ignorant.

 

[antiqueshell]

I'm with skyship on this one.

While supposedly properly done professional flush might be effective on a abused sludged up engine how many times is that job done correctly? Not often.

My attitude is it is better to have a functional if slightly gummed up engine than a clean one that has seized because of the oil pump or other critical items being plugged by carbon residue.

 

[TuBon_gRips]

Originally Posted By: KeMBro2012
clogged with [censored]


Since when is the "C" word (the one that ends with "P", not the one ending in "T") censored?

Also... it's not censored when quoting

 

[Mystic]

Here is what I get out of this. When you first started to post here Skyship you talked about not using 'snake oils' and all of that, but you did mention certain engine flushes you said were used in German garages. And Trav challenged you on that because he said that those were not the engine flushes used in German garages.

And you continued with the don't use oil supplements and snake oil stuff and all of that but now you said the only way to clean a dirty engine was to do it physically by removing the oil pan, valve covers, etc.. Although you said that you had concocted your own engine cleaners for marine engines.

So now you are saying that certain flushing machines are okay if the dealership uses them. The story has kind of changed, correct?

I think you would have had more credibility with me if you had stayed with the same story throughout and just said not to use engine cleaners and oil supplements. And if you had actually known what was being used in German garages that would have helped also.

This is how I look at things. Nobody has to use any engine cleaners or oil supplements at all. All they really need to use in their engine is good quality motor oil of the correct viscosity. Anybody should be able to drive a new car or truck a very long ways with just good maintenance and reasonable OCI oil changes. But after a car or truck has a lot of mileage and time of operation there may be a need to clean a dirty engine to try to get some additional use out of the vehicle. There is also the case with nelgected used cars and trucks-not everybody can afford to buy new. And the first owner of the vehicle may have neglected oil changes. So I can see a need for engine cleaners. And I also need to add that I have tried a few oil supplements that actually seemed to work. We do have people here like demarpaint with decades of experience with MMO. Experience does count for something.

But Skyship-your story has changed over time. And you did not know what was being used in German garages. Somebody can have a change of mind, but it makes me wonder when a person's story keeps changing. And it did not help when you tried to appear as such an authority but you did not actually know what was used in German garages. I have a lot of respect for Trav-he seems to know what he is talking about.

So when a person's story changes and that person is trying to present himself as some sort of authority I have a lot of doubt. Especially if other people are able to point out mistakes in the storyline.

And the entire story of engine cleaners and oil supplements is much more complex than you may think. Probably most of these engine cleaners and oil supplements are of questionable quality but I don't think you can color ALL OF THEM with that same brush. Especially since some are made by oil companies.

So I think you have this dislike for engine cleaners and oil supplements in general and you have tried to find information to support that these products are no good. I respect a person's opinion if they do not believe in engine cleaners and oil supplements. You could have stated that opinion in a single post. But you have tried to convince all of us, including people like demarpaint with decades of experience with MMO, not to use engine cleaners and oil supplements with a story that keeps changing.

 

[skyship]

The flush game is a complicated one and I was not aware of all of the risks when I first posted about the dangers involved. In particular I did not know that some of the cheaper petrol cars are now using seals that don't like Moo oil type solvents or additives (The diesels are OK because they still use the same seals) and the manufacturers were starting to see oil leaks during initial warranty periods. It takes a full chemical analysis that costs at least 200 dollars to detect some solvents, so it is not easy for a dealer to prove why a car is leaking, although kerosene shows as fuel contamination in a basic UOA.
I still have not seen an oil flush machine in a German dealer, but apparently they are available in the US, but history indicates some care needs to be taken with their use because the more common transmission flushers have been used with the wrong or no cleaning fluid by a number of Iffy lube shops, hence it might be worth paying the dealer who will have the right fluids.

 

[skyship]

Originally Posted By: antiqueshell
I'm with skyship on this one.

While supposedly properly done professional flush might be effective on a abused sludged up engine how many times is that job done correctly? Not often.

My attitude is it is better to have a functional if slightly gummed up engine than a clean one that has seized because of the oil pump or other critical items being plugged by carbon residue.


Most garages can clean an engine correctly, but it takes nearly all day if it is in a real mess and owners of old cars are often not too keen on such bills. You are very correct to point out that some sludge or varnish is normal and trying to flush it out rather than just do things slowly with an HM oil or full synthetic with short OCI's can do more harm than good.

 

[LeakySeals]

Originally Posted By: wrcsixeight
I admit to a certain amount of eye rolling about Skyship's anti additive mantra, even though I prefer not to add anything to my oil.

But I've never had a known issue with dirty engines as I was either ignorant of it, or because they were not dirty. Even before I started reading here, and before I decided the extra $$ for synthetic gave me the warm and fuzzies, my OCI's were regular and probably too short.

2 decades ago I fell for the Snake oil infomercials. I remember cleaning my bicycle chain and spraying it with prolong's super duper metal penetrating nuclear lube, and a week later the chain was frozen solid. I was thinking hard about that highly questionable product in my engine after that.

While I personally do not want to add anything to my oil these days, I have no agenda against them, and in this regard I do wonder why skyship has such an vociferous agenda against them.

Seriously, whenever I see his posts it is just a repeat of his narrow beliefs, and it is clownish at this point.
He seems to enjoy baiting the pro additive crowd and even additive neutral crowd, and is quite good at it judging by all the attention he gets from his tact.

It is both amusing and tiring to watch the broken records go round and round, on both sides of the arguement.

Not replying to the poster. No issue with what was said. Using it to make a point..

Its understandable that after a bad experience we would not use the product again. But does this bad experience with a bad product justify calling all additives snake oil? If we get sludge do we "never use motor oil again"? If we have a bad experience with a Ford Focus are "all Fords, all automobiles bad"?

The point is we can't take an experience with one product and broad brush an entire market sector. Years ago people thought it was "witchcraft" when today we know it was a lack of knowledge. BITOG should take care ot that..

 

[SteveSRT8]

Originally Posted By: RiceCake
Originally Posted By: SteveSRT8
Additives have a place in engine maintenance, and because of their place they will inevitably get used in some hopeless causes.


That isn't maintenance. Additives have their place in repair of engine abuse and neglect.

Any engine properly maintained won't develop "sludge" and need a "flush". The fact that people believe they need this now is just marketing working wonders.


Baloney.

Perhaps within your limited experience this is true. In mine it is simply not.

How many times have you personally disassembled an old tired engine with a couple hundred thousand miles on it? I don't care how it was maintained it will have coke in the rings and some sludge or scummy deposits somewhere in it.

Additives do have their place in certain instances. Just too many variables to make blanket statements like "all properly maintained engines need is motor oil".