FE, "friction modifiers", and additives.

[jamescartagena]

What are FP60 and LC20 and who makes them?

[chesspirate]

Originally Posted by jamescartagena

What are FP60 and LC20 and who makes them?

http://www.lubecontrol.com/index.htm

discussed heavily on BITOG, small company, you must order online.. LC20 is an oil additive for the crankcase, supposed to add lubricity and help keep things clean. FP60 is a fuel additive that is supposed to keep things lubed and clean as well.

I've been using them on my new Yaris and my wifes Civic and have noted some mileage improvement and smoother running engine. I used to just use Marvel Myster Oil as a fuel additive in the civic and my truck, the smoothness part was cool, but not really any mileage changes (unless i overdosed, then the mileage went down).

Check out the additives section on BITOG, loads of info.

I've also used Auto-RX, and since i haven't done any UOA's with it i won't ever really know for sure, but with so many people reporting great results (or at least nothing negative) i felt confident i wouldn't at least hurt anything.

[ZugyNA]

Just put 4 oz Valv Synpower additive in both cars.

Might be a good idea to TRY to mix or shake this stuff up some before using 4 oz....I noticed some darker stuff (moly) settled in the bottom of the bottle.

If you used the full bottle...wouldn't need to?

[Sludgy]

Moly..... actually molybdenum disulfide... is a solid. What keeps it from getting removed by the oil filter before it reaches any moving parts?

[JanGeo]

Synlube uses colloidal particles in the 3-5 micron size of molybdenum disulfide, PTFE and Graphite suspended in a non-petrolium base liquid for the engine lube and an 8 micron high flow filter that passes the particles. It seems to be working in my xB. Not much point in purchasing any oil additives to be thrown away at th enext oil change when you can buy Lube that has it all and you change at 150,000 mile intervals or more.

[ZugyNA]

Originally Posted by Sludgy

Moly..... actually molybdenum disulfide... is a solid. What keeps it from getting removed by the oil filter before it reaches any moving parts?

I've used moly sold by JCWhitney in the past called MotorMoly...which was very finely ground solid moly...AND used it with Teflon in an engine. AND used some fuel line magnets to boot. All serious crimes. Got around an 8-10% mixed mpg gain though.

This was a loose engine...minor oil burner.

[zpiloto]

Originally Posted by ZugyNA

I've used moly sold by JCWhitney in the past called MotorMoly...which was very finely ground solid moly...AND used it with Teflon in an engine. AND used some fuel line magnets to boot. All serious crimes. Got around an 8-10% mixed mpg gain though.

This was a loose engine...minor oil burner.

Are you still using them?

[ZugyNA]

No...I sold this car a good while back.

I was trying to duplicate Tuffoil...which has both.

But every time someone mentions using ground moly and/or teflon....there are many WARNINGS and so forth. Not to mention using magnets.

When I talked about this on a car forum it was "you aren't getting any mileage gain...if you were the car makers would already be doing it...it will clog up your filter and oil passages...the end of the world is nigh...you're an idiot".

This was before gas prices jumped up...I was just messing around.

Just like the Escort diesel I had that got 49 mpg...sold it for $50 because it needed tires and some work...and it wasn't fancy enough.

[Ted Hart]

Originally Posted by DracoFelis

I agree that the vast majority of oil (and gas, for that matter) additives are junk (a distressingly large group being "worse then useless", in that you are worse off with the additive, then without it). However, after hanging out in the http://www.bobistheoilguy.com forums, reading, and (carefully) trying a few of the (better recommended) additives, I'm coming to the conclusion that there are some good/useful additives out there, and sometimes they even help FE.

After all, some of these chemical cocktails are useful for what they do, if you know how to use them, and use them in a reasonable dose. And really, what is an "additive", other than a bottle full of the (concentrated) stuff you might want to use? So I am now coming to the conclusion that while many additives are "snake oil", there are a few "good ones" out there. You just need a decent source to find them, and some way to "test the claims". And you also need to pay attention to how they are used (as some of them are good "in small doses", but cause harm when you use "too much").

Take "Friction Modifiers" for example ( http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/...;f=56;t=000002 ). While you can easily "over do it" with them (dosage is key), when CAREFULLY used they can lower overall drag in a car and thereby help FE (not to mention, helping keep down wear).

For example, I little before finding this forum, I put about 4oz (about 1/4 of the maker's IMHO "overly high" recommended dosage) of VSOT ( Valvoline Synpower Oil Treatment; ) in my car's oil (already Mobil-1 full synthetic), and that was the 1st 47 mpg tankful I had ever recorded (before that, my highest recorded tankful was 43 mpg. And I've also repeated the 47 in one of the 2 gas tanks since that (so that wasn't a one time occurrence). And what do I attribute the FE boost to? The lower drag I noticed due to VSOT's FMs (mostly "Moly"):
http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/...;f=56;t=000002
http://theoildrop.server101.com/cgi/...1;t=000297;p=1
http://theoildrop.server101.com/cgi/...c;f=5;t=004779
http://theoildrop.server101.com/cgi/...;f=42;t=002488
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/moly.html

NOTE: It would be a little hard to do an A-B-A test on this, as some additives (including Moly) will stick around (at least partially), even after changing the oil. And with the quality oil and extra high filtration (including "bypass filters) we are using in the family cars, we have started using 10k+ oil changes (which means it will be a little while before we remove the additive containing oil the first time). However, I did clearly feel the lower drag, as the additive (used at only 1/4 of the maker's recommended dosage, as you don't want to over do these sorts of things) slowly worked it's way into the engine parts (seemed to take aprox 200 miles to fully work in).

"Work in"? Isn't this what the snake oil folks have been saying? "Soaks in"? Works in"? I did not realize the metals involved in your engine were porous! In fact, they are not! Even the lattice material between the grains of the metal are NOT porous! Be careful of the languages used to "sell stuff"! Lots of BS out there! Did this "soak in"??? :-)) -Ted Hart

[JanGeo]

Originally Posted by Ted Hart

"Work in"? Isn't this what the snake oil folks have been saying? "Soaks in"? Works in"? I did not realize the metals involved in your engine were porous! In fact, they are not! Even the lattice material between the grains of the metal are NOT porous! Be careful of the languages used to "sell stuff"! Lots of BS out there! Did this "soak in"??? :-)) -Ted Hart

Hey where did you learn about metalergy? Alloys are porus and just about everything in an engine is an alloy. Unless they are really polished to a mirror finish they have a roughness to the surface which makes the oil film stick to it. Impreglon - a company that heats the metal to about 700 degrees in a tefllon gas chamber gets the pores to absorb the PTFE into the metal tens of thousands of an inch deep. The end result is some very slippery metal parts like a wrist pin that you can't hold between your fingers without it slipping out of them. Teflon oil treatments rely on burnishing the PTFE into the metal and Synlube does the same with Moly in their lube.