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I knowalot of these wonder additivesactually use solids (like Slick 50 from what I hear) in their wear packages... But some of these products claim to not have any solids like PTFE or whatever it is they use.
Are any of these products any good for use in the motor or other areas?
If you stop and think about it for a minute, every oil is sombodys chemical formula. Carefully formulated to produce a certain result. If you agree with that then how can you take an "off the shelf" additive and put it in that carefully engineered formula and know what you will do to it. I guess one of three things could happen. You could not effect it at all. You could make it better or you could destroy it along with your pride and joy. The reason additives even exist is because of P.T. Barnum. He is the guy that said: "There is a sucker born every minute."
The one company I am familiar with, AMSOIL , guarantees their oil for the the specified mileage or period of time, which ever comes first. The warranty says that if you have an engine fail caused by the oil, they will replace the engine. You will have to supply a sample to their lab. If they find anything in the oil that is not supposed to be there, i.e. additives, the warranty is void.
The best product is motor oil. There's no real evidence that any addative provides any benifit at all. Just use your favorite oil, and change it accordingly.
I have always been a "high mileage" driver, averaging ~40K/year for the last 35 years.
25 years ago I would have recommended Slick50 without hesitation.
It always ran 25 degrees cooler on the oil temperature and made my engines last over 200K miles without either the top or bottom end being opened up.
It was a great asset to the dino oils of the day.
That was then..... this is now.
Two things changed.
(1) Slick50 did a reformulation due to Customers not liking the rather exacting installation procedure.
They just wanted to pour it in replacing of a quart of regular oil. It hasn't been the same product since.
(2) Synthetic oils were developed and subsequently became widely available.
I started using Mobil-1 when it first came out but have since switched to the German made Castrol Syntec in my cages. The bikes get Amsoil.
None of them have ever had an engine fail or even show any measurable wear at all. I put over 260K on a 1993 Ford Taurus, and included a
pic of the odometer taken when it hit the quarter million mark. No engine or transmission work of any kind.
The synthetic oils today don't require any assistance from products like Slick50 or DuraLube.
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