Leisure periodic oil maintenance

This is the continued saga of Oil Upgrade. Remember our common knowledge:

“A reliable & trouble free motoring on your workhorse require periodic care”. A loving care to maintain your car for it to function properly as it would be expected. There are some fundamental automotive technical knowledge that every car owner should be aware of.

Recall earlier that by adding oil additive on my 280GE saved around 10% of its fuel consumption? The additive works chemically to fully coating all metal surfaces down to micron scale porosity. In early 90s Teflon was extensively used as the coating material in order to reduce the friction characteristic between two mating engine's parts, for example; between piston and cylinder inner linings walls. Whereby the piston is moving up and down rubbing against the linings. Modern machineries have generally tiny gap tolerances in between those reciprocating mass, it ought to be to generate the required compression stroke! Thus this coating layer acts as permanent lubricant.

Any metal surfaces in fact consists of sharp jagged edge that is invisible to the human eyes, but under microscope it is clearly visible. The layer stick to this micron sized pores creating a sort of protecting film in between reciprocating piston and linings. Thus there is noticeable less friction between the two parts. As an engineer it would be natural to look into any mechanical engineering journal backing up this phenomena. Yet none whatsoever deny against nor recommend as such oil additives.

The reason for this 1990s journal was obvious; a perfect laboratories test would only prevail on ideal condition, the real test on field should reveal after thousands of miles real driving conditions. It generally imply it would work on some but not most. Eager to try myself I had made a few guinea pigs; 280GE Benz, Peugeot 505 GTi and BMW e28 520is. By the way adding additive is only recommended for 30,000 upward mileage, for a new car you need to allow the "Break In" period.

On Teflon based additives I had found out that only my 280GE showed a significant results, where as the other two had shown less smoke emission. But on all the cases they had a slight crisp responses on power levels. The result tend to highlight bigger engine advantages over using additives.

Fast forwarding to 21st century, there are more innovation to improve these additives. The nano technology allows for more detailed mechanism of frictionless study. More and more mass produced oil label have incorporated such technology into their premium products. The above Motor Silk brand for example is one of producer specializing in additive only niche. Another well known brand that I had attempted to use is Slick 50.

Both MotorSilk and Slick50 offers additives for engine as well as automatic transmission, this Slick50 at 15 fl. oz. is good for 1600 cc engine. The larger engine you have the more you need to add. For manual transmission as well as rear axle lubricant you could opt for the Syn-Go product.

reference and/ relevant other articles;

1. My own driving experience on 1986 280GE Benz, 1988 BMW e28 and Pug 505 GTi, and;
2. My past article on ; G-Wagen #3

Upon saving that you might successfully obtain by utilizing oil additives, who knows you could now afford to buy your kid that Sony PS3(Blu-ray)or Wireless Home Cinema System for your self indulgence, else perhaps a surprise gift to your spouse;

According to Masslow theorem; you could indeed have the cake and eat it too! Certainly that all your basic need has been fulfilled, after all the motoring need not to be mere cost oriented.

On the contrary it may provide leisure enjoyment of driving with tiny profit bonus. Reward your self on succeeded car experiments, read on my future articles!