I was doing some reading on Archoil products and found where I had posted when we got our first gallon of AR9100 and quart of AR6200. Recently we started on our second gallon of AR9100 but still have AR6200 left.
The AR9100 does seem to clean the crankcase of a dirty engine from just looking inside with the oil fill cap removed.
I used Lubegard Red and Platinum for the first time last week. I put it in an Aisin Warner AWF21 six speed transmission in the 2006 Ford Five Hundred we purchased a couple weeks ago. The owner said the ATF had never been changed but the oil was changed every 5K miles at the Ford dealer where he worked as a salesman.
My point is like AR9100 the Lubegard marketing materials talks about the esters is what cleans up cleans up the valve body, servos, etc in an automatic transmission. Archoil talks about adding 3 oz of AR9100 per gallon of ATF in the system to make it work better. I expect the esters play a role but I have never put AR9100 in a transmission yet.
What I still do not know about AR9100 is its long term effect. I think the esters in it and Lubegard may be a major value in both products.
The 3.0L Ford V6 engine is clean as a new one and from the Ford dealer OCI sticker they used the 5W-20 Motor Craft blend. Using quality motor oil and filter seems to be all that it takes to keep a new engine clean for its first 110K miles.
The transmission seemed to be shifting fine. Before I do bucket flushes by removing ATF cooling lines at the cooler I like to run Seafoam and now Seafoam Trans Tune for 200-300 miles before doing the flush when it is hot.
I noticed especially hard downshifting and some tach flickering when shifting from 4th to OD1 but not to OD2 or any other shifts. I took the flickering to be some slipping going on. I was not paying attention and had just bought the car so I do not this was from adding 8 oz of Seafoam or not.
I had purchased 2 quarts of Lubegard Red and 1 quart of Lubegard Platinum so I put in 8 oz of Lubegard Red and the other half of can of Seafoam Trans Tune. The hard down shifting stopped within 50 miles.
It has D and 1 options and it was using the 1 position where I learned about the hard downshifting. As it turns out in position 1 only gears 1 and 2 are active. When the tack hits 3700 RPM it will shift to 2nd gear but not more at higher RPM's. The computer will down shift to 1st gear when the RPM's drop to 1700 RPM's. Before I added the 8 oz of Lubegard that computer controlled downshift was HARSH. After driving it 50 miles I used position 1 again an while it was fast and positive it did not hammer like before adding the Lubegard Red.
After I pushed out a gallon of the old ATF I then pushed out 2 gallons of new Mobil 3309 ATF out and then refilled with about a total of 3.5 quarts topping it off with 16 oz of Lubegard Platinum. By mouth I blew the ATF out of the cooler and return line before the first pump down is how I got a gallon out on the first pumping by starting the engine.
The oil change per the window sticker had 3K miles on the last change and the oil looked clean when I added 8 oz of AR9100 to the crankcase and I have driven it about 600 miles and the oil still looks fairly clean but then there was no signs of build up in the engine when we got the car. I have an appointment with the local Ford dealer for service tomorrow.
Saturday we leave for St. Paul MN and should put 2000 miles on it by this time next week. I will dump 8 more oz of AR9100 after the oil change tomorrow. I know the computer reports 30 MPG on relative level roads at 55 MPH and will be interested what it will report at Interstate speeds.
It had high end tires with the thread at the wear markers but I lucked out and got a nearly new set Arctic Claw Winter TXI M&S tires for $125 from a tire store I have been doing business with for years. No one around here runs snow tires because we just do not get much snow but the next day we got a big snow and that car would go and stop better than anything I ever drove. Yes the snow tires make a little noise but I only notice it at lower speeds. This is the wrong time of the year for a redneck from KY to be going almost to Canada but that is where the MN Mutual Insurance Carriers hold their annual meeting.