Zmax oil additive

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My brother has a Dodge with the V10 in it and he never saw over 10 mpg on the mileage readout. He told me a while back that he had put z-max in the truck and his mileage went up over 12. For some reason he can't reset the mileage readout, but he did get much better mileage after the zmax. Thought I would back up what was being said about it.

Jeff
 

NapaBavarian

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Ok, how about this?

An old mechanic told me years ago that if your motor had sticky valves, stuck rings or a lot of sledge in it, to do this. Drain the oil, pull the filter. Fill the engine and a new filter with ATF. Run it until it's warm, or about 1/2 an hour. Idle it, don't drive it. Then drain the atf, and pull the filter.

Put another new filter on and fill with your regular motor oil. I did it once to my S10's 2.8 carbed V6 and never had a problem with it.

I'd think with an IDI, you would want to do this with the motor already warm as a cold engine with thin ATF wouldn't make for a good coldstart. Plus you would only need to run it for about 10 minutes versus 1/2 an hour with a cold motor.

My two pennies, after I got my Peugeot I threw in 4 quarts of engine oil and 1 quart of ATF, drove it in the twisties for 45min-an hour, drained, replace oil and filter, that oil stayed clean for a while longer than usual.

I've tried the all ATF trick, not sure I'd try it again, I like slow cleaning.

Here's my plan on the new Mercedes, do 5 oil changes, one every 200 miles to slowly clean the loose junk and save a dollar, then Delo every 500 miles, I'll play it by ear, 2-4 changes, see how all that goes, then an AutoRX treatment or two, see what all that brings out.

I'd ask what you want to do before you use any treatment, many treatments claim to fill small scratches and pores, if AutoRX does what it claims then there will be no junk left in the engine to create these scratches.
 

NapaBavarian

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Back in the mid 90's I lived in Woodland Park CO. The police force mechanic swore by diesel flushing the engine of their 5 patrol cars. Every oil change he would put the old filter back on and fill her up with diesel and run it at idle for about 7 or 8 minutes. He told me that they were getting 200,000 out of their Crouwn Vict's and they sat idling 75% of the time!

This sounds like a great idea if you do it from the first change, this way you will avoid buildup inside the engine, if you start at 150,000 then who knows, I spent some time reading BITOG.com and concensus seems to be ATF used to have more detergants, but newer products are similar in engine oil VS atf
 

gatorman21218

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I have 272000 on the clock (really 72000, but its tripped twice) And I use good ol Rotella T. I am leery of trying a cure-all in a mechanically sound engine. Some may help, but some may hurt (thin out the oil, decrease lubricity, loosen up chunks to clog vital passages) so I just leave well enough alone and change my oil every 3000 miles
 

NapaBavarian

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If you've been changing every 3k you should have no problems, my clean out procedure is aimed more at cleaning up an unknown engine, all the recipits in the world are nothing but comfort that this engine was probably taken care of, the proof is in the pudding, rotella every 3k should keep things clean, I'm thinking the extended service intervals on my duramax might be half the problem, I think the light must come on every 8k, and hearing people change the filter and not the oil to save a dollar :confused: cookoo change the oil and not the filter if you want to save a dollar now and spend a thousand later ;Sweet the more I learn about this stuff the more I realize how important it is to change it, and how much most of the oil change arguements are BS, keeping fresh detergants and keep the oil from becoming saturated with contaminants are all the reason in the world!
 

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