Engine oil additives, an expensive lesson

[cobrajeff96]

Occasionally in pastime, I watch videos like these for no other reason than basic interest in cars and engine building. Well, I'm glad I never fell victim to bad engine oil additives and I hope none of you will either. More than that, used oil analysis I believe is a must for anyone that builds a new engine and is still quite useful for everyday DIYers like most of us are.

Anyways, the content creator here is Lake Speed Jr. This guy has been everywhere in his career, formulating oils for Driven Racing Oils, consulted with NASCAR teams/engine programs, and currently does work with Total Seal piston rings. If anyone knows WTF he's talking about, it's this guy. A few months ago after the new yote was installed and ran for the first few hundred miles, I procured two used oil samples--one from Blackstone and one from SpeedDiagnostix which is from Lake Speed Jr.

I recommend you all check out this video.

 

[lwarrior1016]

Occasionally in pastime, I watch videos like these for no other reason than basic interest in cars and engine building. Well, I'm glad I never fell victim to bad engine oil additives and I hope none of you will either. More than that, used oil analysis I believe is a must for anyone that builds a new engine and is still quite useful for everyday DIYers like most of us are.

Anyways, the content creator here is Lake Speed Jr. This guy has been everywhere in his career, formulating oils for Driven Racing Oils, consulted with NASCAR teams/engine programs, and currently does work with Total Seal piston rings. If anyone knows WTF he's talking about, it's this guy. A few months ago after the new yote was installed and ran for the first few hundred miles, I procured two used oil samples--one from Blackstone and one from SpeedDiagnostix which is from Lake Speed Jr.

I recommend you all check out this video.

Man, I just saw that video com across my feed about 2 hours ago. I haven’t been able to watch it yet.

I love his videos. Very informative and very well put together.

 

[shovel]

I've always treated additives the same way I treat over the counter medicine. Tylenol's not gonna make a healthy person healthier, nor is it going to cure athlete's foot but if you happen to have the specific problem it's made to address and you have correctly diagnosed the cause then it might address that problem.

Same's true for engine sauce.

 

[GTamas]

Occasionally in pastime, I watch videos like these for no other reason than basic interest in cars and engine building. Well, I'm glad I never fell victim to bad engine oil additives and I hope none of you will either. More than that, used oil analysis I believe is a must for anyone that builds a new engine and is still quite useful for everyday DIYers like most of us are.

Anyways, the content creator here is Lake Speed Jr. This guy has been everywhere in his career, formulating oils for Driven Racing Oils, consulted with NASCAR teams/engine programs, and currently does work with Total Seal piston rings. If anyone knows WTF he's talking about, it's this guy. A few months ago after the new yote was installed and ran for the first few hundred miles, I procured two used oil samples--one from Blackstone and one from SpeedDiagnostix which is from Lake Speed Jr.

I recommend you all check out this video.

Very good video. I totally agree with his advice: don't put additives in your oil. Use good quality oil from a reliable brand.

I work at a lubricants blender and while I am not an R&D or technician guy, I work in purchasing so I am actually buying the additive packages that are used in the motor oil. There are a lot of different additives and additive packages. And base oil has varying properties depending on the source. So all has to be put together, formulated properly to achieve the desired motor oil specifications. It requires a knowledgeable and experienced R&D-team.

What I recommend is to look for the listed approvals on the product label. Ideally it should be saying it has this and that API or ACEA or whatever OEM approval. Then you can be sure that they used the proper base oils and additive packages that were meticulously tested by those OEMs and organizations.*
(*At least this is true for stock, unmodified engines. For modified engines I would contact the technical support of my chosen oil brand and ask them for recommendation)

Whereas there are cheaper products that say for example "meets requirements of this and that OEM specs". It doesn't say it's approved. It's a marketing way to say that not the officially approved additive packages were used in the formulation and they were replaced with cheaper alternatives. It doesn't necessarily mean the oil is bad because at the end if an additive package contains two elements, you can add those two from other sources... but final result will much more heavily depend on the knowledge and experience of the lubricants specialists... and how much cost they want/need to save.