An Old Timer's Oil Flush...

I also have added one quart of ATF instead of the last quart of oil on a really sludged up motor. Repeat at each oil change for about 6 months. Cleaned it out perfectly.

Maybe Im just lucky.

 

Ive mentioned this on another thread before but back in the early 80s,I worked at a shop that had a contract with 3M.

We serviced a small fleet of F150 vans with straight 6 cyls.We had bulk oil and ****** fluid.I did the general service on one,& accidently put 6 qts of atf in the engine & 6 qts of 10/40 in the ******(they both held 6 qts but the trans held more because of the converter etc).
I didnt realize it til about an hour later & the van was gone.

I went in & told the manager & he basically said dont worry about it,,we'll see what happens.
3000 miles later,the same van came in for service & it sounded & shifted fine.
I DO remember draining the fluids & how weird the colors were.
Maybe because it was a Ford & we used Type F fluid that made the difference!

 

Speaking of Pennsylvania, parafinic or what the old man called "wax based" oil. Recently I was looking at a Mopar web site with some reminiscences of a retired Chrysler dynamometer operator. One of his jobs was cold weather testing (in a big deep freeze). He said at 40 below Pennsylvania or parafinic oil is practically solid. In tests he conducted, it took six minutes (!) for oil to reach the cam and lifters on an OHC 4 cylinder 2.2 engine.

After that he never used the stuff himself especially not in cold weather. I forget what kind of oil he prefers but the story was on Allpar if you want to look for it.

 

I've been laughed at repeatedly for this stuff, but I've had great luck with that method too. Simple Green & a hot water pressure blast. I popped the pan on a Ford 400M and blasted crud out on a snowy March morning at the end of a driveway, wheeled into the garage, dried it all out, and had it running the same day. It seems hillbilly I know, but to me its more thorough than dumping stuff into the crankcase and crossing your fingers. Just my two pennies.

 

Penzoil is garbage...bougth an ****-10 Blazer once that owner was so proud of telling me oil was always changed at 3K or less and used Penzoil.. everytime.

Took the valve covers off and there were no lifters to be found! Absolutely stunned at what I seen, and will never use that ****.

Just two chocolate cakes with no icing in the shape of a valve covers!

 

Marvel Mystery Oil

It depends on much you run an engine as to how long it will
take to loosen up & remove sludge deposits

Fast flushing can knock loose the carbon & sludge deposits
and clog the oil galleys - restricting lubrication

In any gasoline engine - you can safely run diesel 15 - 40 oil
which has a higher cleaning capability and soot suspension
ability

The key is a good single and multi p*** oil filter rated 98% or higher

I run Marvel Mystery Oil at a ratio of 25% to diesel engine oil
like Rotella - $14 or less for a gallon of Marvel at Walmart
and $13 or less for a gallon of Rotella

Marvel has been around for years .....



Jim

 

I pulled the plug on a SBC fleet car once, and nothing ran out. I got a screwdriver and poked up in the hole and pulled out a long string of stuff that resembled honey. I got tired of try to get it out that way and didn't really want to pull the pan, so I topped it up with diesel and ran it about 15 minutes and then drained it. I got quite a bit of it that time so I filled it with diesel again and run it another 15 minutes, came pretty clean that time. Finished servicing it and took a little jar of the first stuff in to the bosses office and asked him if he had been adding anything extra to his engine. His eyes lit up and he said yes I have found some really good stuff called Wynns friction proofing, anytime it checks a little low I just add a can of it. It was about the same stuff as STP and if it had not been hot summer time we would have had a ruined an engine. It went ahead and ran another 40,000 miles with out incident.

 

when i was a dealership mechanic back in the early 90's we had a rash of failed head gaskets on 2.8L and intake gaskets on 5.7L Chevys. the tell tale milkshake crankcase was always of great concern. we routinely filled the crankcase with Dexron III, ran it for 10 minutes and drained it, replaced the filter and filled it with appropriate engine oil. recently i had to do the same with a mazda V6 in my shop. nowadays, i'm a pretty big fan of seafoam for folks that only engage in a bunch of short distance, stop and go driving. beyond that, we make sure that our customers' cars get good oil and filters at every service.

 

My father ran a gas station in the 50's. He told me about flushing an engine. So when I got my first F1 with an 8Rt V8 it had very low oil pressure. I did the half oil and half kerosene thing. I let it idle for about 5 minutes, and then I had zero oil pressure. The pump pick up was clogged. So I cleaned that, and did a regular oil change. I was right back to where I started with low oil pressure, but at least it had some. The engine ran fine until I got rid of the truck a few years later. But,I did pull the intake somewhere along the line, and the valley area was filled with about a half inch of sludge covering everything in sight. I also found a hardened screw nail stuck in the sludge as well as several acorns and a small coil spring, that I never figured out what it came from.