Technical Snake oils or not snake oils??

Here, educate yourself:

http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/1028/oxidation-lubricant

 

Here's my post from the other thread 2 years ago.

When I was in high school a buddy of mine had a big luxury Chrysler of some kind from the mid 60's. He wanted to sell it, but the rear end was very noisy. He was talking about it in front of my dad who then told us the used car dealers used to put sawdust in a noisy rear end to quiet it. We all thought it was worth a try, so Dad made us some good coarse oak sawdust with a rip blade and his table saw. We put some in and drove it, couldn't tell any difference. So he made us some more and we must have had more than a quart in it before we got tired of stuffing it through the little fill hole. Didn't make any difference at all.

I built a yard tug in the 90's out of a 4 x 4 International Travel-all that I had been given with no engine or trans. All I had for an engine to get it working was a very worn out 352 Ford. Figured I'd put it in there temporarily and change it out that coming winter.... 10 years later, well you know how it goes. Anyway, I had to buy a set of the little spark plug spacers called anti-foulers that screw into the plug hole and the plug screws into them to hold them an inch or so away from the combustion oil bath. That fixed the fouling problem, but it still used a huge amount of oil and made such a big cloud of stinky blow by gas that it was hard to see through and tried to choke me every time I ran it. After a few years I decided to try the J. C. Whitney 3.95 engine overhaul pellets as a joke and decided why not go whole hog and get the crankcase treatment too for 7.95 or whatever it was. Nothing to lose. I know I had less than 15 bucks in it including postage. I followed the instructions and warmed up the engine, then put the can of snot in the oil and the pellets in the plug holes, then started it and revved it up for several minutes. You could actually see the crankcase vapor cloud diminishing and hear the difference in the way it was running. I kept using that old engine for several years afterward and it pretty much had quit smoking. I wouldn't use it in an engine I gave a shit about, but it really did work in this one.

I've used several brands of stop leak over the years. Living in Alaska and making a lot of road trips across the state where it might be 70 miles or more to the next town, I usually have a can of it with me. Hit a moose one time 60 miles from anywhere that shoved the radiator back into the fan (Christmas Eve, of course). Luckily, it was warm out... just above freezing, so I got out my Handyman jack and pushed the core support forward to about the right place, pulled the fan blades into their approximate locations and got out my needle nose pliers. I started busting tubes and folding them over a couple times then squeezing them flat above and below the damage. 32 of them as I recall. My flashlight was about dead by the time I got ready to try it. I put in a can of rabbit turds and snot, don't recall the brand, maybe Bars-Leaks and filled it up with antifreeze. I started it and watched for 10 seconds or so, then shut it down and pinched a few of my folded tubes a bit tighter. Started it again and watched it for several minutes. I had just a couple drippers, so I headed on down the highway. When I got to the next town, most everything was shut down, but the Safeway grocery store was still open for a few more minutes and they sold me a 5 gallon gas can and let me fill it with water. Also another couple gallons of antifreeze. I still had 300 miles to go, but made it over 200 before I had to add coolant. Got to my dad's house at 4 AM instead of 8 the evening before, but I made it and felt pretty good about the whole thing. Never had any issues with plugged heater core or any other passages.

Last summer my dad got his 31 Model A pickup out of the shed to go to a cruise the next afternoon. He thought he had it all ready to go, but the drain valve for the cooling system wasn't quite closed and the water leaked out overnight. He took a neighbor for a ride in the morning and came back in a big cloud of steam. We filled it up with water, but it was barely running. He had worked as a mechanic in the 30's and decided it needed a head gasket, so we pulled the head and sure enough, it was burned between 3 and 4 and over to the water jacket. The block looked okay. Saturday morning and we needed a head gasket for a Model A. He was pretty dejected cuz he wanted to take his girlfriend on that cruise. It dawned on me that he had about a foot high stack of old gasket sets on the shelf in his old shop up the hill, so I told him to go look. "By Damn, yeah", he said and he and the neighbor headed up the hill to look. They came back in 10 minutes with a brand new unopened full gasket set for a Model A. The brand was Montgomery Wards and he'd had it on the shelf since the late 50's. We cleaned things up and bolted it back together with the new head gasket. Everything worked fine except the head was cracked on the top about halfway back and it was seeping water. I had read a story in Rod and Custom when I was a teenager about the things old timers had used for quickie repairs. I remember they talked about cayenne pepper as stop leak or a raw egg. I had both in stock, so I put in an egg and a couple spoonfuls of pepper. We ran it at fast idle and in a few minutes the leaking crack was healed.

 

get it done , got to impress the ladies .

 

So this is THE book on engine oils? Gee, how did the entire lubrication industry survive prior to this? I didn't call any names, I told you to not be lazy, there is a world of information out there on the subject, I gave you 1 link, there are volumes on it. I can tell you with 100% accuracy, if the guy told you that oil "doesn't wear out", than he doesn't know what he's talking about, whether he owns an oil company or not. Read the link I gave you and find out for yourself. Stop believing bullshit.

Tell you what, go get Mr Lancaster and have him come on here and let's debate it, right here in front of everybody.

 

BTW, you can download a list of the "Body of knowledge" recommended for those preparing for the CLS certification. Surprisingly, Mr Lancasters book is not included. Check it out here: http://www.stle.org/files/Certifications/CLS_Information.aspx

 

Here's more, the ICML certification (I posses the MLT II and MLA 1 certifications) information, check out the Body of Knowledge and Domain of Knowledge. I don't see Mr Lancaster's book there either. Gee, too bad I didn't read his book....
https://www.icmlonline.com/exams/Default.aspx?p=MLT2

 

That Dad with the sawdust sure knew how to set a good example for the kids.

 

I'd heard of pepper as radiator stop leak. Now yer tellin' me it's gotta be cayenne?

 

Aww Leon, don't be so darned holy. The car was a beat up old luxury boat that nobody would have paid more than a couple hundred for in the 70's. It was a fun experiment for some curious teenage boys and made no difference in the noise. I don't know what happened to the car, but I suspect it got parked out in the brush behind his dad's sheds with all the other old derelicts.

 

Don't know if it has to be cayenne or not, that's what I remembered reading and I had some, so we used it. Maybe it just has to be ground very fine to push out into the crack.

 

Hmmmm, My 650 Triumph LSR bike set a speed record this summer....The oil was Valvoline VR full synthetic...So obviously this oil is faster oil....

 

had a '62 cad with a very worn engine... had the horrible death rattle of worn out main bearings and used a lot of oil. after slowly pouring in a quart or two of lucas oil stabilizer (instead of oil) when topping up the engine was much quieter and consumed much less oil. drove it that way for a couple of years... and a few 160 mile trips between phoenix and kingman az. the only reason i stopped driving it was when the center u joint wore out.

 

My Grandpa said they used to use horse shit as a radiator stop leak.

 

There's a reason that so much shelf space at the auto parts store is such a vast "Field Of Dreams". It's because, if you make it...they will buy it. Even many of the major oil companies offer some products for the "snake oil" peeps. That's because they want a taste of the "market share" being spent. I would like to think that the name brand companies try to stay on the harmless side of the bell curve. But I don't really know, do I?

My on topic story: Back in those old days when we wanted to tell someone they weren't quite a "mechanic" yet, we called them "Bardahl Breath".

My off topic story: Back in the mid 60's, there was this new thing called Mobil-1 synthetic oil and I opted to give it a try in my occasional drag strip/daily. I have a vivid memory of removing the valve covers for some deeper tuning, after running the M-1 for a while, expecting to see the usual build-up of varnish and sludge that I was used to seeing. But lo and behold, it was all Godlyness because of the cleanlyness. Long story short, I've used M-1 or its equivalent ever since for the 50 years to date.

 

There are better additives and better oils that sometimes give favorable results. but most times they are a waste of money. I once poured some synthetic oil in a engine that was burning oil. and it quit burning oil. The only logical reason I could think of is the oil rings where clogged and the synthetic oil cleared them. I do use the FRANTZ toilet paper oil cleaner and I do think it does what the manufacturer claims. A buddy bought a really nice 64 chevy pickup. 327 engine ran good but the lifters made noise.. The next weekend he changed the oil. the stuff that glopped out looked like axle grease. He put in Valvoline 10w40. and the lifters quited down. But it smoked horrendious clouds of blue smoke. And the oil light flickered at idle. He traded it off the next week.

 

Diesel engines produce carbon as a byproduct of combustion, it's also called soot. EGR forces a certain amount of exhaust back into the cylinders, and that carbon or soot if you want to call it that won't burn, so it gets into the engine oil on the cylinders. A small amount is present in used diesel oil anyway, but when you introduce more by way of EGR, it overpowers the oil in a shorter period of time, and it eats away at the bearings and rings. My truck had already had one EGR valve replaced before it locked up, but the damage was already done. It had let too much EGR in, and eat the thing up. If I hadn't of been running the Lucas, it probably would have died sooner.

As to what's in Lucas, I can't say, but can just tell you to pick up a bottle and read the label.

 

Ahhh, OK, you are correct, EGR in diesel engines does result in a lot of soot, and that soot does end up down in the crankcase and in the engine oil. Soot as it is generated is submicron in size, but soot has an affinity for itself and tends to clump together forming larger particles that if not controlled with dispersants will lead to increased viscosity, and in extreme cases can cause filter plugging; and in really bad cases it'll cause aggressive wear, usually of the valve train. Take a look at these pics I shot of I believe was a Cummins M11, it had well >10% soot!

This is the overhead, you can see how severe the soot was.


This was a rocker arm shaft journal, and the corresponding rocker arm.

Soot can be nasty stuff. But it will take out the overhead before the bearings. Here is a main bearing lower from that same engine:

And a rod bearing:

 

So, doing a little internet snooping I found the MSDS for Lucas Oil Stabilizer here: https://lucasoil.com/pdf/SDS_Heavy_Duty_Oil_Stabilizer.pdf

There's really not much info there, except in section 8 it states that it is comprised of "hydrotreated bright stock". Bright stock is the heavy ends of the base oil cut from crude oil. It is what is typically used to make gear oil. It also claims a viscosity of 110cSt at 100C. For reference, SAE 30 motor oil is between 9.3 - <12.5cSt at 100c, so this is a very heavy viscosity oil.

More searching uncovered what somebody claims is oil analysis results of a sample of Lucas Oil Stabilizer:
Lucas Virgin
TBN - 0.1
Visc - 615.3
FP - 435
Calcium - 3
Magnesium - 1
Phosphorus - 4
Zinc - 2

For comparison, the same person posted this analysis of Shell Rotella T engine oil:
TBN - 8.5
Visc - 115.4
FP - 420
Boron - 17
Silicon - 2
Calcium - 1442
Magnesium - 7
Phosphorus - 604
Zinc - 817

Note: FP = Flash Point

They don't list the temp the viscosity was tested at, but looking at the Rotella analysis, it looks like it was run at 40c. So this agrees that it is a very heavy viscosity oil, but it also shows there's not much else there. So what about those claims that Lucas makes, they seem pretty exaggerated for basically just some non-additized mineral gear oil. For that they get what, about $12 per bottle? Not a bad profit margin for these guys. Again, it looks like this is designed to separate you from your money, and not much more.

 

Lucas is a clear looking version of the bar and chain oil that is used to lubricate chainsaw chains. That is my opinion. Bar and chain oil cost about 12 dollars a gallon. Its sticky and not slung off by the high speed of the chain.

 

What? ...you're not putting used engine oil in your saw bar tank? I'm too darned cheap to buy new oil and just spray it all over my logs, haha.

 

No one has mentioned bananas and peels in stick transmissions and 3rd members to quite them down before selling the said auto. Or adding sulfur to trans to make shifting quicker.. As per a friend who is a out door type snakes do not have any fat so it would be hard to render oil from all lean meat. But seriously blues 4 u has given thought full input.. Thanks for your info.... Bobby..

 

Several years ago over on Bobistheoilguy.com I saw a test of regular gear oil and the same gear oil with a Lucas additive added in the proportion prescribed on the Lucas container. The oil samples were whipped with a rotary sort of "egg beater" or milk shake mixer and then poured in clear glass cotainers. The sample with Lucas added had a considerable amount of bubbles suspeded in it after a ggod amount of time, and the straight, unadulterated sample was free of air bubbles.
Air doesn't lubricate bearings very well.

 

I'd like to apologize to all for getting sucked into a back and forth argument with a loudmouth, who I will ignore. I posted a big long rant yesterday evening, then deleted lat night, it was stupid. Sorry about that, I got pissed off.

The bottom line is, there is an old urban legend about "oil doesn't wear out", and it's false. It keeps getting repeated by people who hear it from somebody else, but don't really understand the mechanics of it themselves. You can read all about it here: https://www.google.com/search?q=oxi...i59j69i60l2.5224j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

Blues4u, I wasn't trying to be argumentative if it was me you are talking about, I was just telling you my experience with Lucas and my one diesel that died of soot poisoning. Everybody has their own opinion on additives, so I'm not trying to change anybodies mind.

 

Anyone have experience with at home oil analyses? Here is one available from Lubricheck

http://www.lubricheck.com/index.html

Would be nice to quickly check the condition of your oil. With so many vehicles: cars, trucks, tractors, atvs, motorcycles...hard to keep track of miles or time.

 

No sir, not you, not at all.

 

That's interesting. I actually do a lot of used oil analysis, I work with a lab and I have customers that test their oil, several thousand times every month. So this is a subject I'm very familiar with, but this liuttle device is new to me, and I'm intrigued. Keeping in mind that the test is pretty limited, I still think it can be helpful for the average person. It's inexpensive and it gives you an objective analysis of lubricant condition, not bad.

But there is an even cheaper and easier home oil analysis test, a simple business card. I've done this many times. Just drop 1 drop of oil off the dipstick onto the back side of a thick business card and observe the results.

Here's a website that talks about this, though they recommend getting some special paper from an art store, but the idea is the same.

http://www.iatn.net/forums/13/49570/the-field-blotter-oil-testing-for-objective-analysis-and-cya

Here's more information about it: http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/348/check-car-oil

Give it a shot and check it out, it doesn't cost anything but a business card.

I may get one of those lubricheck devices just to test it, and compare it to actual used oil analysis results.

 

Nope I purchase new bar and chain oil. My chain saw has a automatic oiler and I don't intend on ruining it with dirty oil.

 

I don't like to dump drain oil in the woods...

 

Thanks, I hope you do get one. The IATN page is very well done, what is the Lubricheck supposed to do beyond the business card method?