My wonderful F-plate 360 with its 125,000mile life has a fair bit of piston slap when cold (i take it they dont have offset gudgeon pins then) thaqt makes it sound like a bloody diesel, but once its warm its pretty good.
But... Although the oil looks in pretty good nick, i was contemplating an oil change IF it will help it at all.
What oil though? Id say pretty thick as the engine clearly is pretty loose, going by the miles, and mostly the piston slap.
At the mo it doesnt use a spot of oil, which is nice, id like to keep it like that, as if its pretty loose/worn thin oil will too easily go past the rings etc
there are some oils specifically made for
"higher mileage or older engines " but I always used castrol gtx magnatec
(mainly because I can't afford mobil 1 synthetic )
and at the risk of abuse I added slik 50 to my last oil change on the redline which
DID help on cold starting
DID reduce engine noise
and DID improve performance
slick 50 really helped? suprised, but real world testing beats theory and internet talk by miles, so nice one, i may give it a blast, i think i have a bottle here somewhere...
Don't use additives, they might quiet your engine down, but they can leave particles in the fine oilways and passages and clog up vital parts
I would use the best oil you can, don't be afraid to use a 5w-40 or 0w-40 cos it'll be thinner at cold startup which means you'll get better oil circulation which will help with the piston slap.
Tbh though, as long as its not too bad, I would live with it, cos the alternative is a rebore + new pistons.
slick50 is very good. but costly. its basically PTFE lube stuff. slick50 SHOULD last for about 50,000 miles.
there are cheaper PTFE lubricants out there as well. we sell one in my shop for about £18.00 IIRC.
Slick 50, and all those types are basically tiny teeny particles of PTFE (teflon, very low friction polymer) but whilst they work well in suspension, if there's not enough flow to keep them in circulation they clog up the oilways, and there are reports of Slick 50 destroying engines through oil starvation. Not to mention the fact that its a suspension of particles, and your lovely oil filter is designed to remove them, so it clogs up the oil filter too
Don't use additives. Please....if they were that good all the oil manufacturers would be using them.
I've always thought that as pettaw says slick50 etc contain Teflon, which is a type of PTFE. The thing I've never understood is how this can ever work as a lubricant, as its melting point is 350ish deg C, so can never become a liquid to coat the moving bits, and as pettaw mentions, any solid would go through the filter (however, depending on particle size and filter element pourosity this could be irrelavent). Also all PTFE's break down there efffectiveness very significantly at around 230(again ish)deg C, with it loosing efficiency up to that, its the reason it isn't used for steam engine seals that need to slide (e.g. air/vacuum pumps). As the engine oil gets to within 80% percent of that when you are properly hammering it, I've always thought you could bugger up its effects after the first hard drive.
Thats the reason I've never tried it anyway, I'd like to see some proper test results that have been run on it.
Got intrested in the topic! Just had a read around, and to quote the chief chemist of Redline Synthetic Oil Company:
"... to plate Teflon on a metal needs an absolutely clean, high temperature surface, in a vacuum. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the Teflon in Slick 50 actually plates the metal surface. In addition the Cf (Coefficient of friction) of Teflon is actually greater than the Cf of an Oil Film on Steel. Also, if the Teflon did fill in 'craters' in the steel, than it would fill in the honing of the cylinder, and the oil would not seal the piston rings."
Whilst I'm not surprised about the fact it doesn't actually coat the bores, I am surprised about the fact it has a higher CoF.
Lifted from this page http://www.msgroup.org/TIP043.html
Sounds like the dude doesn't like Slick50 overly, but the quotes included by DuPont (one of, if not the biggest chemical companies around, and I didn't know invented Teflon ) are quite damning.
Hmm, very interesting, although quite a bit went over my head
Those additives always seem such a great idea, and I've tried a demonstration where the guy added some of his stuff to oils. He asked which oil I'd like him to add it to and I said Castrol Magnatex, and it fair improved the slipperiness.
But then you hear these horror stories, and think, why on earth wouldn't the big oil companies put this stuff into their blends in the beginning if it's so great.
I think the dealership puts GTX Magnatec in ours, as we used to get a free top up bottle after services. As she never uses any oil though, we've got a load of these bottles clogging up the garage
bit off topic but has any1 used oil flush/cleaner??
well from what ive been told by someone who once used some[dont know what brand it was]it too can totally knack your motor,ruin seals etc . after they used it[following all instructions to the word]they started it up with fresh oil in and it sounded like a bag of hammers
they had to use some stp to seal things back up and sold car asap........
Y + A plate both 1983 & D plate 1987 3door 360 Glt's
From another forum I know a lot of people in the states use something called seafoam, which they seem to think works. I think it's a treatment you do, rather than something that goes in the oil...
Also know someone here has done some kind of water treatment. pouring it into the carbs or something? Maybe it was James...
MJ wrote:From another forum I know a lot of people in the states use something called seafoam, which they seem to think works. I think it's a treatment you do, rather than something that goes in the oil...
3 parts lube 1 part seafoam idle 15 mins then ditch-seems to get the knod Stateside more than our good friend Mr Slick
MJ wrote:Also know someone here has done some kind of water treatment. pouring it into the carbs or something? Maybe it was James...
