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Lucas ?

daman

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Joined
Mar 22, 2010
Messages
237
Location
Bad Axe,MI
Occupation
Agriculture,Truck Driver,Mechanic
I'll inject a little wisdom my Dad imparted to me once.

His thought was that people use additives are always listening to see if its running better or smoother etc. Hence if something does start to go wrong they catch it earlier. There is also a thought out there that if I really want to take care of my vehicle I should use all this special stuff so if I am an additive addict I probably don't run it hard etc. In otherwords if the additive is only affecting us psychologically its not a bad thing.

There's nothing wrong with additives, LOTS out there on the market that DO work but this stuff is not one of them.
 

Tinkerer

Senior Member
Joined
May 21, 2009
Messages
9,342
Location
The shore of the illinois river USA
daman,
Are there any additives for diesel engine oil that you would recommend ? I know good quality oil doesn't need it , but I am running an engine with a lot of hours on it and I was thinking maybe a little something added would be a good thing for it.
 

busdrivernine

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 17, 2007
Messages
163
Location
TEXAS
I do not use the engine oil additive but do use the Lucas Fuel Treatment in my 88 pete as my old school pete was built back before they took all the lubicating qualities out of the Diesel fuel and not this ultra low sulphur diesel can play havoic on the fuel system .
 

daman

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 22, 2010
Messages
237
Location
Bad Axe,MI
Occupation
Agriculture,Truck Driver,Mechanic
daman,
Are there any additives for diesel engine oil that you would recommend ? I know good quality oil doesn't need it , but I am running an engine with a lot of hours on it and I was thinking maybe a little something added would be a good thing for it.
Hi Tinkerer sorry i missed your post somehow...

can you tell me a little about what you have?, your application and requirements it has?
I do not use the engine oil additive but do use the Lucas Fuel Treatment in my 88 pete as my old school pete was built back before they took all the lubicating qualities out of the Diesel fuel and not this ultra low sulphur diesel can play havoic on the fuel system .
Correct as you should too,,todays fuel is very "dry" it does has some lubricating property's in it from factory but these old school mechanical pumps and injectors need good lubricity to live a long happy life.
 
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Old Junk Man

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Joined
Jun 7, 2015
Messages
119
Location
11143Hwy 90 West Pocahontas Arkansas 72455
Occupation
retired
I was always of the opinion that if you use good oil you don't need to add anything to it. I always thought that all the popular motor honey products where good for was to sludge up engines. Back when the gas was near $5 a gallon . I had a govt slurplus 4 cyl ford ranger. It had been run with a broken valve spring . and number three cyl was dead low compression. It really smoked. I had a gallon of lucas I found in a old vehicle. so I added the lucas 50-50 with engine oil. and it worked?! the blow by was reduced. the smoking & oil consumption stopped. I never changed the oil in it again. Just changed the filter about every 90 days. and I drove it for three years.
 

dixon700

Well-Known Member
Joined
May 11, 2014
Messages
210
Location
pa
Occupation
heavy truck mechanic
All lucas products are just good marketing including their fuel additive that does not have good friction reduction properties. I use super tech tw-c3 2 stroke oil and a mixture of xdp's fuel additive and power service gray jug in summer and white jug in winter. In both my tlb and truck. I haven't seen an hdeo additive that works motorkote is an 20 wt mineral oil with less additives than lucas thay is virtually bar and chain oil.
 

Knepptune

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 22, 2012
Messages
757
Location
Indiana
We used it once on our 3126 that was pretty tired. It had 20 psi oil pressure at high idle. After it got the Lucas treatment it wouldn't build 15 psi. It may work to get the last life out of some engines but I'm convinced it finished that one off. It got an in frame and has been running good since.

I've never been sold on additives or super expensive oil. Use decent oil, change it when you should and there shouldn't be any reason to add anything.

Of course if spending your money on expensive oil and additives makes you feel better then go for it. I'll spend mine on beer.
 

old-iron-habit

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Joined
Nov 22, 2012
Messages
4,233
Location
Moose Lake, MN
Occupation
Retired Cons't. Supt./Hospitals
This is according to a California friends father whom is a retired CHP officer. The CHP ran a test on a few hundred squad cars in each test throughout the 80s. On half the cars they used the same oil all the time. They did use different name brand oils but always used the same oil in the same vehicle. The other half of the cop cars they used whatever oil was on sale or readily available at the time of the oil change. They used whatever oil was in it if they had to add between oil changes. During the life of the fleet the cars that had random brands of oil installed had less issues than the ones that always used the same oil. The officers personal theory was that this was because different oil use different oil additives and by switching around, he felt that the random oil engines got the benefit of all the different additives. He said they repeated the test 4 times with the same results. I have no opinion on this, just thought it was interesting.
 

Tinkerer

Senior Member
Joined
May 21, 2009
Messages
9,342
Location
The shore of the illinois river USA
Hi Tinkerer sorry i missed your post somehow...

can you tell me a little about what you have?, your application and requirements it has?

Correct as you should too,,todays fuel is very "dry" it does has some lubricating property's in it from factory but these old school mechanical pumps and injectors need good lubricity to live a long happy life.
I'm sorry I missed your post also Daman. I guess it doesn't matter now since you haven't been back to HEF since 2012. I hope you do come back though .
 

blitz138

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
335
Location
Utah
So weird when these old post get brought back...... Any quality engine Oil is balanced to perform. When you put snake oil, I mean oil additive it throws off the balance of the original oil. All additives are fighting each other for their place in oil, if you increase one thing you are decreasing one or possibly several things.
 

fixou812

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
677
Location
Buffalo NY
Occupation
Millwright Equipment Mechanic Welder
Do you think it would make your rear main sealy thing last longer.
 

blitz138

Senior Member
Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Messages
335
Location
Utah
Delmer's partially right. Poor combustion with high zinc oil can shorten the life of catalytic converters. Personally im a huge fan of ZDDP if you have it in a good oil.
 

Jim D

Senior Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2012
Messages
408
Location
California
Occupation
equipment operator
Emissions, zinc messes up the catalytic converter. as far as I know anyway.

I think Delmer is right about the exhaust catalyst converter. Zinc in oil is very good to prevent 'plucking', the steel pressed against steel wear when steel of one surface bonds to steel of the other surface, and pulls away with the other surface. This is gear lubrication. Sliding bearing lubrication is not the same. Zinc is especially important in motorcycle oils, where the engine and gearbox share lube oil, and there are no exhaust cat-converters that could be poisoned by the zinc.

I think automotive oils got rid of zinc additives long ago.
 
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