Has anyone ever added Seafoam to thier oil prior to a oil change? Does it really work as advertised? Read it'll clean up the engines internals on older high mileage engines.
If the engine is an old sludges up thing . sea foam will do more harm then good . when I was in high school I killed a gummed up shitter with a similar product . It will loosen up the goop only to push it into oil galleys and plug them up and starve critical parts of oil . if the engine is more or less clean sea foam , atf , or whatever can’t hurt. If I was cleaning an engine for the first time I would drop the pan and pop the valve covers off first snd look inside .
Back in the day Gus Wilson had a story about just this,except it was when high detergent oils first cane out. I might be able to find it eventually.
May as well find out now while cruising around locally. Rather than think things are fine and be 200 miles from home and have a leaker you need to baby.
That's been my experience for the past 60 years, (I started taking auto mechanics when I was 15) Most snake oil additives will free up the sludge and let it go where you do not want it to go in sludged up engines. I was involved in rebuilding more than one engine in high school auto shop that someone had bought a car that they didn't know had a lot of sludge in the engine, changed the oil to a high detergent oil and or added oil additives and then had the sludge break loose and plug up the oil passage. One in particular was one of my buddies cars that he had bought because his dad threw a fit over it because it was a low mileage car that "had never been driven out of town" and to his dad a car that didn't have highway miles or fast miles was a perfect car. He had had it about a week, changed the oil and put high detergent oil in it, put some snake oil in with it and he and a couple of the guys went up to cruise the Ave on Friday night and the guys I was riding with spotted them on the side of the road on the way back and we towed them to his place with a chain. We got it in the shop the next week and pulled the pan and there was about 4 inches of sludge in the pan with channels in it where the crank had turned in the sludge and a lot of goo that came from the sludge separating. His dad was still raising hell with him about it blowing up until he showed up at the school shop and the instructor showed him the pan full of sludge and explained that that was there because the car had never been driven far enough to warm up properly and the condensation had created the sludge. Receipts in the glove box showed that it had always had an oil change every 2 or so thousand miles but those oil changes were usually a year or more apart as the car just didn't get miles on it. We pulled the engine, tore it down, sent the crank off to be turned and resized the rods on the Sunnen hone in the shop along with hot tanking it, replacing the cam bearings and grinding the valves. It turned out to be a pretty nice engine and he was still driving the car to college when I got drafted. About 20 years ago I worked on a 90 or so Cad Eldorado that my bud had bought his wife that had so much sludge under the valve covers that you couldn't see rocker arms or valve springs. Hours of tedious cleaning and lots of diesel poured though it to flush it out. We changed oil about every 500 miles on that one for about four oil changes before we figured that we had it flushed out enough. I'm 100% with Vandenplas, pull the valve cover and the pan and maybe even the intake and get the sludge cleaned out. The cost of the gaskets is minor compared to the cost of replacing or rebuilding the engine.
Nothing but engine oil belongs in engine oil. If you have an issue that you would feel tempted to "treat" with an additive, you need a rebuild.
I remember that one. It appeared shortly after the war, in '46-'47. His partner Joe was the one who screwed up his car with it.
Amazing how the dirt can collect in a low service motor. I did not get to see the inside ( the boss I had at the time was a 'get the money and get rid of them' kinda guy) I had 10 year old 283 sedan, in for a tune up. The usual routine did nothing for performance. It did not want to rev up ( no knock no rattle ) the power was pss poor. At that point I pulled the dipstick; small bit of goo on the end, but no oil was evident. He had me add til full. 3 quarts did it. A score for Mr BadWrench. The the darned thing purred and ran fine.
Last ditch effort - we used seafoam in a friend's late model, overhead cam with LOUD valvetrain. After Seafoam in oil the top end noise quieted down. The engine was shot, he was able to drive it 6 more months. Also used seafoam shot into intake per instructions, cleaned up injectors - based on looking at plugs before and after. Seafoam did improve some issues on a very worn poorly serviced car - for a little while. If you think you need seafoam to keep a car going, you need a rebuild, or keep some good shoes in the vehicle, it's on its last legs.
I have no experience with Seafoam but I will tell you about the only experience I have had with an oil additive. Many years ago I was given a box of various products from a friend of my father. This person (who has since passed) actually owned the company (or the Canadian branch) that marketed these products (all were different products from the same company/brand) . This specific company is still in business today. Their claim to fame was the use of molybdenum. At that time I was driving an off-topic vehicle powered by a carbed AMC 258. My car ran perfectly fine. One of the products in the box I given was their "engine oil supplement". At my next oil change I decided to toss in the engine oil supplement (there was no reason for me to feel I needed it but, why not use it right, it was free and I had it handy) ... immediately my lifters started ticking and continued to tick (hydraulic lifters). Within short order, I drained the fresh oil that contained the additive, refilled with more fresh oil and ... instantly the tick was gone and never returned. I have NEVER tried any other additive (from ANY company) since. I really don't feel comfortable naming the company as it is still owned by the same family, regardless of the fact that both the owner at that time and my father have both passed. I am a firm believer in using plain old oil. If any additive is truly needed, I would expect the oil companies themselves would include it in their oil. If the oil companies don't think it is needed ... it ain't needed.
Here's the Gus Wilson story. In fact, all of the stories are on this website. Greta reading from a time when computers weren't needed to go down the road. https://gus-stories.org/december_1947.htm
I still use that stuff. My M. O. is to drop oil from a hot motor. Fill with new oil to leave room for unsaid additive. Start motor to check for leaks. Shut down pull stick, to see the room is there. Throw a towel across windshield, ( we don't want any on the glass ). Start hot engine, dipstick handle out a little. ( to allow breathing ) Pour it in hot running motor. Once I dumped some into a static engine, ( into the valve cover ) and hit the road at speed. The result was clack clack clack. Until I replaced the heads, cam etc. The reasons for using are first my father's aged, and raggedy 51 Ford dump truck lost the drain plug while leaving the quarry. When he ( a user ) realized this he went back to where the oil trail took him. He found the plug. replenished the oil. The flathead was like nothing happened. Along with that I figure if it's good for racers.......
Seems to me that what you have here is a case of long time neglect, poor long term maintaining, and the doctor saying it don't look good. Will the Sea Foam help? Probably not. But like one of those artery cleaning drugs, it just might do something to improve things if only slightly, buying you time to get other things in order. As far as cleaning out the internals of a dirty sludge plugged up engine, the kind that instantly dirties a fresh oil change...not likely to do much for it either. Smart money pulls the valve covers and washes the valve train first. After that you might as well drain the oil that's in there, replace the filter, fill with diesel and WITH OUT SPARK, crank to circulate, let it sit, repeat. Do that 1/2 dozen times, eventually drain, repeat. Fill with cheap fresh oil a new filter, crank with no spark to build pressure and circulate, connect the spark back up, run for 20 minutes and drain, install a fresh filter and fresh oil and good to go. At this time I'm going to say, when it come to some of "those" products, like some of "those" pills, they don't work miracles...but they can improve things if only slightly. Sometimes like the engine below, things are just to worn out, gone to far to fix and the best you can do is replace it, again. I can say with experience, that adding STP reduced the oil consumption from 2 liters a fill to just one. While that was a slight improvement, It was still cheaper and easier to just buy oil and keep adding it. Tiring of that, replacement is the best option. The engine above was not the engine I gave the treatment to. It was however the engine I got screwed on to replace it and mentioned in the worst mechanic post.
It is my understanding that oils of the day were high contents of paraffin wax which is what helped create the sludge in the first place , some of today's oil still contain paraffin wax I read the labels and and avoid using those oils. I believe Castrol and Valvoline still are using it .
I've found that something that gradually works is much better than anything that's supposed to clean up an engine instantly. I have used Marvel Mystery Oil in many older engines by adding a quart to the oil change, and continue to add a quart each oil change. It wont break down the deposits and plug oil passages, but it will over time loosen them up gradually. If it's a very old engine with unknown maintenance, I don't let the first oil change go more than maybe 500 miles, and then after I change oil and filter I go to regular intervals, but keep adding MMO.
I don't use SF in the oil, but have very good results with stuff I drag home by doing the SF treatment down the carb, followed by the dribbling water trick, really cleans out the carbon and helps free up sticking rings. I will usually pull the valve covers and clean up if necessary, and just change the oil, and keep changing it when it shows color, letting it clean out slowly. I will not use harsh cleaners like Rislone, as all that loose crap is running thru the engine
Another urban myth that deserves to die. No, oil companies did not and do not add wax to their motor oils. Wax crystals are a natural part of crude oil, and when the crude oil is distilled and refined into base oil for lubricants the wax is removed, or at least most of it is. But wax in the oil does not cause sludge in the engine, it causes the oil to thicken in cold temperatures, increasing the pour point of the oil. Additives called pour point depressants are used to prevent the wax crystals from aggregating, allowing a lower pour point. Those oil brands that earned a bad reputation for leaving a bunch of sludge in an engine, that's because they were crappy motor oils, not because they had/have wax in them. OK? Let's let that old myth die. That's the short story, the long story for anyone who cares is: There are basically 3 types of oil that make up crude oil, Aromatic, Napthenic, and Paraffinic. These are named for the type of hydrocarbon molecules, or the shape of the molecules, that make up the oil. All crudes contain certain percentages of each type, but most crudes tend to be predominantly 1 or another. The best crude oil for lubricants are paraffinic oils (good old Pennsylvania crude for example), aromatics are not useful at all for lubricants, and napthenics are useful only for lubricants not used in engines or any severe duty. They are useful for refrigeration lubes, because they do not contain any wax. And they are used for cheap, inexpensive hydraulic lubricants, probably things like hydraulic jack oil, and they're probably used in those aftermarket lubricant additives that people love to add to their engines, particularly the ones that claim to clean an engine. They do have a lot of solvency, so they can solubilize some soft deposits and sludge. But for any decent quality engine oil, any engine oil that carries an API license, any quality transmission fluid, or good quality hydraulic oil for working hydraulic cylinders and motors, Paraffinic crude is the only oil to use to make base oil. Aromatics and napthenics will oxidize rapidly and fail very early, they would never pass the tests for API licensing. So all good quality motor oils, no matter what brand they are, are made from paraffinic crude oil. All of them. Throw that old urban legend out, it's not true, stop repeating it and let it die. If anything, the oils were made with a base oil containing higher levels of napthenic molecules (which has no wax), which oxidized and turned black and coated the inside of the engine with varnish and sludge. And/or because the hydrocarbons were unsaturated and highly reactive; or because they used a cheap additive package with low quality anti-oxidants and dispersants. Not because of wax in the oil. If you're still interested, read on: An older method of removing wax from the oil, used exclusively in the days when HAMB era cars were new, but still used in limited applications today, the process for removing wax was called "solvent refining", where the oil was mixed with a solvent and then chilled, which caused the wax molecules to crystalize, and then the oil was filtered through a membrane to remove the wax. This removed most of the wax molecules, though some remained behind, it's pretty impossible to remove all of them. Any remaining wax is really only a problem during very cold temperatures, when the remaining was crystals will aggregate and cause the oil to thicken. This is measured using the Pour Point test. Additives are used to disperse the crystals and prevent them for aggregating. By the way, this old solvent refining method is how we get paraffin wax, it is a byproduct of the refining process, just like hundreds of other products that we use all the time, they are all just byproducts, something the industry has come up with as a way to use every part of the crude oil, which they do, nothing goes unused, even the final dry powder that is left after everything is removed, the "coke", is used for powering furnaces for steel mills and cement plants. Modern refining methods use hydroprocessing to force hydrogen into the oil under pressure, and a process known as "hydroisomerization" breaks open wax molecules and converts them into high quality paraffinic hydrocarbons, adding to the high quality of group II and group III (synthetic) base oils. This is great for very high quality motor oils, but it is bad for the paraffin wax market. As hydroprocessing grows in use, paraffin was production declines. Anyway, I hope I put this myth to rest, please just let it die. It's not accurate and it just makes you sound ignorant when you repeat it.
Yes, Shell is the only company currently doing this, though the technology has been around for awhile, it is known as Gas to Liquid, or GTL, and uses the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert natural gas into a very high quality synthetic hydrocarbon. Officially it is listed as a Group III base oil, but it can have improved performance above even the polyalphaolefin (PAO) type synthetics (Group IV) which are really the standard of the industry for synthetic automotive engine oils, but they are less expensive to produce (once you have the refinery built). Shell spent a large fortune to build the Pearl refinery in Qatar where these base oils are made, and they ship them to the states for use in lubes here. I think to this point they've only used them internally in Shell branded products, or the brands owned by Shell, like Pennzoil & Quaker State. Like all lubricants, it is the finished formulated and blended products that really matter, the base oil itself is only half the story; but the potential with these base oils is really high.
Good, Yeah,,,,that’s what I use in my OT car,,,,it’s old ,,,,but still works great . I use 0-20 Syn Pennzoil in mine,,,,and 5-20 in another we own,,,,,it’s shown great service so far . I’m wondering how it would serve in an old engine,,,,,a completely fresh rebuild of course ? Would 5-20 compare to say a normal 10-30 range engine,,,,,durability wise ? Would the bearing tolerance need to be closer to be on the same level of safety ? That’s also taking into account normal solid or hydraulic cam and lifter durability,,,,not roller stuff ? Would a man need to consider an additional wear additive to compensate for that ? Tommy
My understanding is the lighter oils for the newer engines are because of tolerances and emissions/mpg. That said my kids cars take 0-20 as well. All three OT.
I've always been leary of oil additives, except for the ZDDP the flat tappets desire. Seems I always read horror stories about additives. My great grandfather used STP additive with every oil change. Until it sludged the engine to death. I'll definitely stay away from them. Thanks for the stories and inputs fellas.
SAE 20 seems light IMO, but I do believe it was an acceptable viscosity grade for older HAMB era engines, depending on ambient temps. Modern synthetic motor oils with high viscosity index will maintain viscosity at elevated temps vs the older straight grade oils from back in the day, so SAE 20 is probably safer at higher temps than the old straight grades. One thing good is it will flow out to all the critical points in the engine faster, getting protection out there fast. That's a good thing. Does it maintain 10 psi per 1000 engine RPM's? Does it maintain 8 - 10 psi at idle? If so you're probably OK.
I still like trans fluid, add half a quart the day before an oil change, get some miles on it, drive home and drain it warm.
Most modern engines, or older engines swapped to roller lifters require the use of lighter oils. I had issues with lifter noise when I built my first roller engine a couple years ago. I used a Howards Cam and lifters, so I called their tech line to ask why I was getting occasional lifter noise come and go? The first thing the tech asked me was what weight oil I was using. I used my typical VR-1 in 10-40w, and he told me it was too heavy for good flow with hydraulic roller lifters. He said they have tighter clearances, and need either 0w-30w or 10w-30w to work properly. I can't wrap my head around 0w oil, so I went 10w-30w VR-1 and no more problems.
The Jalopy Journal
