Grit needs to be changed. Dark means it’s cleaning stuff and it means carbon. The rate at which it darkens can give you a general idea of internal cleanliness and blow by, but only in a gasoline engine. Diesels turn oil black very fast because of soot
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Originally Posted By: Triple_Se7en
Don;t worry about color. My buddy used Valvoline conventional in his Chrysler Mini-Van 3.3 engine for a 15 years, 300K run and the dipstick never turned black nor even real dark, during his many-many 4K OCIs.
Pennzoil Platinum is similar, in-that it takes a long time in many engines to turn black. But as everyone knows, it's top-notch in performance.
my dad passed in 04 @ 78 he was a mechanic all he would ever use was Valvoline.
Don;t worry about color. My buddy used Valvoline conventional in his Chrysler Mini-Van 3.3 engine for a 15 years, 300K run and the dipstick never turned black nor even real dark, during his many-many 4K OCIs.
Pennzoil Platinum is similar, in-that it takes a long time in many engines to turn black. But as everyone knows, it's top-notch in performance.
my dad passed in 04 @ 78 he was a mechanic all he would ever use was Valvoline.
Well I made a decision finally
I'm going to use Rotella 10w30 with 2k oci's change the filter @ 1k for starters. just to see how it looks inside.
this old accord pretty tight' no sign of oil burning I ran it pretty hard today no smoke or oil where it shouldn't be. I'm going to have to do an oil pan gasket soon, seappihg pretty bad
Thanks for all the input I'll keep you posted on my progress. and I welcome any further opinions, thanks again!
this old accord pretty tight' no sign of oil burning I ran it pretty hard today no smoke or oil where it shouldn't be. I'm going to have to do an oil pan gasket soon, seappihg pretty bad
Thanks for all the input I'll keep you posted on my progress. and I welcome any further opinions, thanks again!
Richard Widman recommends the use of HDEOs for cleaning sludged engines. In Bottom Line Recommendation #10 of his Corvair Oil article, he writes:
Originally Posted By: "Richard Widman"
Forget the myth that you can’t put high detergent oils in older engines or engines that have been using poor quality oil. I do it every day! 50% of this market is API SF or lower, frequently without thermostats. They are full of sludge. Some drain plugs come out looking like a cork, with an inch or so of thick sludge on the end. No matter what the engine, I put in a 10W-30 high detergent CI-4 oil and instruct the customer to come back when it thickens up, or the following week if he doesn’t want to check it himself. Once it no longer thickens up quickly we move on to 15W-40 and add a 1200 mile engine cleaner. At the end of that cycle we move to whatever oil the engine should have.
I would think that CK-4/SN HDEOs would work at least as well as a CI-4 oils in cleaning sludge.
Originally Posted By: "Richard Widman"
Forget the myth that you can’t put high detergent oils in older engines or engines that have been using poor quality oil. I do it every day! 50% of this market is API SF or lower, frequently without thermostats. They are full of sludge. Some drain plugs come out looking like a cork, with an inch or so of thick sludge on the end. No matter what the engine, I put in a 10W-30 high detergent CI-4 oil and instruct the customer to come back when it thickens up, or the following week if he doesn’t want to check it himself. Once it no longer thickens up quickly we move on to 15W-40 and add a 1200 mile engine cleaner. At the end of that cycle we move to whatever oil the engine should have.
I would think that CK-4/SN HDEOs would work at least as well as a CI-4 oils in cleaning sludge.
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So another thing we can extrapolate from this ordeal is that when you have a new car, you really don't need as much additives as you would anti-wear or FMs or something else. perhaps?
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Originally Posted By: bullwinkle
I'm a personal fan of PYB and a high efficiency synthetic/blend filter such as an Ultra (or ... Wix/NAPA Gold), ...
SOPUS oils (Pennzoil / Quaker State / Formula Shell / Shell Rotella T6 Multi-Vehicle)
I'm a personal fan of PYB and a high efficiency synthetic/blend filter such as an Ultra (or ... Wix/NAPA Gold), ...
Castrol GTX Ultra Clean has more calcium in it than most HDEO's and more than any other PCMO I know of. To top that off one of the primary additives is boron. It likely does not have the carrying capacity of an HDEO though so would need to be changed a little sooner.
OK, you are not a fan of additives, but ... That is often what they are good at (cleaning, de-gumming). SO why not add some to your regimen? A full can of BG109 a 100 miles before each oil change will do a lot to free rings, etc. Prolly not appropriate to run full OCI, but good enough to do some heavy lifting before the change.
The big deal with cleaning is to change oil chemistry to get at what's baked on. Run one change on SupeTech synthetic, the next on Maxlife, the next (summer) on full-on HDEO, and so on. The differing chemistries will soften and wash away sludge and varnish over time.
If this engine uses a spin-on filter (?), use an oversized one to catch what you are cutting loose. Yeah, inexpensive E-Core filters are not the best for long OCI's, but they work well enough in oversize when the pressure across the media is low and they get changed fairly quickly
The big deal with cleaning is to change oil chemistry to get at what's baked on. Run one change on SupeTech synthetic, the next on Maxlife, the next (summer) on full-on HDEO, and so on. The differing chemistries will soften and wash away sludge and varnish over time.
If this engine uses a spin-on filter (?), use an oversized one to catch what you are cutting loose. Yeah, inexpensive E-Core filters are not the best for long OCI's, but they work well enough in oversize when the pressure across the media is low and they get changed fairly quickly
I'm currently running a HDEO in one of my Fords to clean up the valvetrain, bought it almost 2 months ago and i was fooled by the great shape the car was in in terms of bodywork and interior, the engine had old yucky 20W-50 Dino in it and nothing but rusty water in the radiator.
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