Years ago there were a number of additives on the market containing “Teflon” or PTFE (Polytetrafluoroethylene) the most well known was Slick 50. While PTFE is a wonderful anti friction coating the inclusion of it in a powder form in motor oil has never been proven to reduce engine wear, in fact the FTC sued the mfg and has stopped them from making advertising claims they once made. Fact is since it is so slippery, as small suspended particles it will not bond to anything particularly suspended in oil. If the particles are of large enough size so they could have any significant affect they would not pass through the filter. At one point DuPont the maker of PTFE sold under the trademark Teflon actually stopped selling it to the makers of Slick 50 stating it was not suitable for use in motor oil. The makers of Slick 50 actually ended up suing DuPont to re-gain access to Teflon powder.
Early on a common demonstration method for Slick 50 was add the product to the crankcase, run the engine for awhile, drain all the lubricant, restart and run the engine again. The common engine to use was the good old horizontal shaft old Briggs & Stratton engine which has been proven to run just fine w/o oil for an extended period. Reportedly B&S became aware of someone purchasing large numbers of their engines, modifying them with a “glass” side cover so people could verify that there wasn’t any oil in the engine. So they performed their own test. Two brand new engines were pulled from the assembly line, engine A was run for 20 hours with the factory fill while engine 2 was run for the same length of time with Slick 50. After the 20 hour break-in/treatment period the oil was drained and both were run for another 20 hours and then disassembled. Both engines showed a similar amount of wear on the crank and rod while the engine “treated” with Slick 50 was noted to have cylinder wall scuffing that the control engine did not. This was early on when Slick 50’s base oil was reported to be a straight 50 wt and the size of the PTFE particles was quite large. The B&S engineers of the day speculated the damage could have been caused due to oil starvation caused by the wrong viscosity, or the large chunks of Teflon, causing the rings to stick.
All of that said there is a place for Teflon in an internal combustion engine and that is properly applied to the skirts of pistons. In fact that is part of the reason that the Ford 4.6 is known for its durability.
There are also a number of additives that contain, or did contain, chlorinated paraffins. Chlorinated paraffins are actually a very old technology, dating back to the 1930s as one of the first EP or Extreme Pressure additives. It is a powerful anti-seize compound however it is also very corrosive attacking copper and materials that contain copper aggressively. This can damage many engines in Curbside Classics. For many years the primary construction of main, rod and camshaft bearings was the tri-metal bearing. That type of bearing consists of a steel backing, a layer of copper, and a layer of “babbitt”. Babbitt is actually a term used to describe a number of different alloys of “white metal” used as bearing material, some of which include copper. Many distributors also use bronze bushings to support the shaft and sometimes, but more rarely, distributor drive gears are made of bronze an alloy of copper.
One of common ways of demonstrating the “effectiveness” of Chlorinated paraffins is to use a dowel pin or roller bearing that is held stationary while another shaft is rotated against it at a right angle. Pressure is applied to the contact area with a torque wrench as a lever to show the force being applied. This is often referred to as the “Falex” test. Falex is a provider of testing services and produces a number of different machines to test lubricants and their effectiveness in preventing wear and the Pin machine is just one of them.
One the additives that used such demonstration techniques in the past was zMax and like the makers of Slick 50 they were sued by the FTC over unsubstantiated claims. One of the specific charges was that they purposely left out results of independent tests that noted the increase in corrosion caused by the product and omitting other negative test results.
Stay tuned for the final installment of Crankcase Additives where we will discuss ZDDP an important ingredient in motor oil used in our Curbside Classics and many not so classic engines.
As always send any and all questions to CurbsideClueless@Gmail.com
On an semi-unrelated note, but one of a great passion of mine. Our robotics team has completed this years 45 day build season and our robot is in the bag. That means we are entering the six week regional competition season. We compete in the FIRST FRC (First Robotics Competition) League. Those competitions start this weekend. If you have any interest in technology, engineering, or our future generations you owe it to yourself to check out one in your area, particularly if you have school age children or grand-children. A complete list of events can be found here, the events are always open to the public and free. For those in the greater Portland area our team will attending the Autodesk Oregon Regional March 8-10th at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. Stop by our pit I’d love to meet some of our readers, and contributors from the area in person. Ask for me and if I’m not in the pit at the time someone there will know how to track me down. For the many Seattle area readers don’t worry we’ll be there too. Saturday is when the finals are, starting after lunch, but to get the full effect of touring the pits be there early. If you plan to attend shoot me an E-mail or make a note in the comments below.
Interesting article. I always wondered about that zMax test.
My sister used to be with the Botball organization, which you have probably at least heard of.
Thanks.
Nope never heard of it till now. I like it that it is always all autonomous something I think FIRST could do better. There is a short autonomous period but until last year there was no bonus for scoring in that period. But then this year since Microsoft donated a bunch of Kinnect sensors 1 team on an alliance can control their robot with it. A number of the same companies that sponsor FIRST sponsor Botball which is interesting since the organization has been pushing us to always state that we are a FIRST team and compete in FIRST events.
EP additives to gear oil are the reason makers recommend engine oil in gearboxes that use bronze syncro rings the additives eat the syncromesh. I always figured slick 50 and its relations were just thick oils that wouldnt get blown out the tailpipe so easily on worn engines I once used the 50 coarse drained from some harleys being crated for export in a Knackered Falcon 250 it seemed to burn less and the bigend noise abated for a while. Ive also used Wynns oil burning treatment in a Mitsubishi 2L Astron that appeared to curb its oil consumption quite well.
I never understood why Quacker State ever bought Slick-50.
They buy Slick 50 in 1996
http://www.quakerstate.com/#/history
and in the same year settle with the FTC for $10 Million. There’s no way they couldn’t know that was going to happen. The profits must have greatly exceeded the $10 million.
Yeah I never understood that either, they are an oil company supposedly with lots of chemical engineers in their employ so they should be fully aware that there wasn’t scientific evidence to support the claims made by Slick 50, and I never saw much equity in the Slick 50 brand name.
Doh! EVB, I read the whole thing waiting to hear about ZDDP, a bottle of which I fed to the 440 last summer. Now I’m in suspense! Seriously, good piece, as a member of the Clueless Cohort I look forward to these.
And best of luck in the robot battles!
When I started this series on oil additives I didn’t think it would take 3 parts but when I got into it I realized it was just too long to hold many peoples attention. Since we are out of build season I certainly hope to make sure that you don’t have to wait so long for the article on ZDDP.
Thanks, for the wishes, we think we have a very competitive machine this year with a couple of unique features that we think will stand out.
Thirty years ago, ARCO marketed its “graphite” oil. The graphite made the oil black. I started using it in my 76 Vega which was starting to run hotter than normal. The temperature returned to normal which I attributed to the oil which allegedly reduced friction because of the graphite. When I sold the car with 106,000 miles it was using a quart every 600 miles which was o.k. for cars of that vintage.
I vaguely remember Amway selling a black graphite oil additive in the early 80s, strange for a soap and vitamin company like Amway. I added this to my moms ’76 Olds Vista Cruiser and changed the oil again after a few months. Other than the oil looking really black as it drained out, I don’t remember if we noticed any discernable changes.
I will have to admit that I have used the Slick 50 oil treatment, gear lube, and grease. The grease I didn’t like at all – tried it on front wheel bearings on my 1971 LTD and I didn’t like it at all (can’t remember the details now, but I think I had to replace the bearings).
The oil treatment I tried in two vehicles right before I drove them from Indiana to Washington state, carefully tracking the fuel mileage over the entire trip. Numbers seemed to indicate that I may have picked up 2-3 mpg but it was not a scientific test.
Now, the gear lube. I had a fairly loud whining pinion bearing in my 1969 Cadillac ambulance differential. I changed out the crudded-up old lube, ran a batch of new gear oil for a month and then sucked that out (no drain plug, and no cover). I refilled with half Slick 50 gear lube and half gear oil. I kid you not, the bearing noise disappeared completely for almost the entire 50K miles that I put on that vehicle, gradually coming back right before I sold it.
So I tend to believe that the gear lube worked as advertised, as I have never seen a case where simply replacing a dino lube with new dino lube made a bearing noise disappear (unless I was actually hearing gear noise caused by a lack of lubricant, but by all accounts and descriptions I’ve read about pinion bearing noise, that’s what I had).
$.02
I did the Slick 50 procedure on my 83 Subaru with 260,000 miles on it, flushing the block, running the slick 50 for the recommended period and then going back to dino oil. I saw no demonstrable change afterwards other than that the temperature needle tended to go hotter faster when I followed too closely on the highway and then return to normal when I backed off. NO change in the oil pressure reading at all. It was traded in a year later on a ’91 Cutlass Calais after being wrecked and repaired so I can’t attest to any increase in the reliability of the boxer motor.
Slick 50 hasn’t used PTFE in the formulation for years and most likely have changed their other additives in their formulations, so keep that in mind when reading this article.
Also, slick 50 engine treatment isn’t supposed to increase viscosity or oil pressure. It is supposed to reduce wear and friction.
Or people could, ya know, change their oil on a regular basis.
Funny you say that. About 20 years ago, I was an additive junky and added all kinds of crap to the fuel, oil, and every other fluid. Now I’m a tightwad and only use plain fluids, oil, and fuel. Know what? The car runs just as well and lasts just as long. And my wallet stays heavier longer.
While I was in the USMC in the Summer of ’90 leading up to the Gulf War, I knew a Motor T maintenance chief who swore that Slick 50 was the way to go for everything. He used it in his cars, truck, boat, etc. Well he convinced me to try it, so I changed the oil in my ’89 Corolla minus one quart and added a quart of Slick 50. As Summer led to Fall and we were getting ready to deploy to Saudi, about the only thing different I noticed was that my car cranked much slower on cold mornings (probably due to the 50 weight in the Slick 50). Right before we deployed, I changed the oil again with 10W30 and noticed the car cranked normally again when cold. That’s all. No noticeable benefits with mileage, longevity, etc. I kept that car until August ’94 when I was in Kingman, AZ. The new owner gave it to his teenage daughter and they moved to CA, so I have no idea how well the engine held up.
The two oil treatments I have used over the years. One is a molybdenum disulphide additive called “Moly Slip” in Canada and “Mr. Moly” in the US. Moly Slip was a sponsor of a racing series I participated in in the early ’70’s. They provided the racers with free product as a promotion. Their promotion was to drain the (treated) oil out of a car’s engine, then run it around the 1/4 mile oval track for several laps at speed. The same car was used with the same engine for this trick many times. The engine was fine, with no overheating. The trick with moly is that the particles need to be small enough to pass through the oil filter. The MoS2 does adhere to the engine’s surfaces and provide lower friction under boundary lubrication conditions (i.e. at startup). The difference between this “no oil” demo and the others used for marketing is that the engine was run in the car and under load as in fairly hot laps. It is no trick to drain the oil and run an engine without a load, as it will do this with normal oil.
The effect of this product is noticed immediately on adding it. The engine idle speed will increase by 100-150 rpm, and if you have an oil temperature gauge you would notice this being about 10F lower under the same load conditions. Fuel economy changes are difficult to prove, but I think there was a modest improvement ~5%. Of course with modern feedback throttle body control, the idle speed will quickly return to the target number as the computer adjusts the IAC to compensate.
The product has become scarce, so I no longer use it for engines. But I still have a small supply of the gear additive that goes into my manual gearbox and power steering pump. It turns the oil black so mechanics are always complaining about my PS fluid.
The gear oil additive has saved a transmission with a shot 2nd gear synchronizer (the old VW bugs were bad for this). It went from being basically unable to downshift into 2nd to working as it should.
Another additive that has some usefulness is Auto-RX, which can be used in automatic transmissions or engines. It is basically used to clean out deposits and varnish. It is the only pour in product that can de-sludge an engine. This is not a petrolium oil product, as the oils are animal based. It can free up stuck rings and lifters and has a seal swelling effect so can reduce leaks.
Neither of these products was ever advertised or promoted extensively. Both are relatively expensive and have/had limited distribution. Both work well and as advertised.
This being said, there is no need for any supplements to a quality oil in a modern engine. Do beware of changing oil at any shop that uses bulk oil (dispensed from a hose). You have no idea of the quality of the oil being dispensed. Ask for a bottle brand and watch them being opened. If you have an engine with an uncased filter (i.e. GM Ecotec L-61, etc.) observe that the filter is actually changed, and not the cap just being wiped off.
Hello All,
Please help me for find Falex Demonstration Machine , where can i find Falex Demonstration Machine or engine oil Demonstration Machine ?
Thank you