As my truck ages (322K), I wonder if I should use an oil additive to hopefully ease resistance/friction some. Is my thought valid? Do you guys use an oil additive to reduce friction??

Sorry for another additive thread

Thanks in advance for your help!
David

 

Don't waste your money, they're all snake oil. Just buy what meets the Ford WSS-M2C171-F1 spec and change it on time.

 

What makes you think you have excess friction? The function of engine oil is to reduce friction as is.

 

The rule of thumb is "vote yes" for fuel additives and "vote no" for oil additives. Although, you have the right to do and/or run whatever you like in your truck.

To piggyback on the wise words from Paul_R7.3, review the most current WSS-M2C171-F1 document/PDF and DO NOT take the bottles word for meeting, exceeding or compliance with the specification. Just because it is printed on the bottle does not mean it is true.

 

The oil additive marketeers would likely say so.

But I'm not sure what the oil additive marketeers mean.

If I took a piston ring in one hand, and a cylinder wall in the other hand, and I managed to have enough energy to rub them back and forth for 2 trips (one down and one up) x 2,000 crank revolutions per minute, I think that would be 4,000 scraping actions at speed. I'd be exhausted in less than a minute. However, you drove 322,000 miles. To be reasonable, let's suppose your average speed over those 322K miles was 30 mph, or 10,733 hours, which when multiplied by 60 minutes is 643,980 minutes. And to be also reasonable, let's consider the engine hours would include a mix of idle time (650 rpm) at stop lights, and some full effort time at peak HP (2,650 rpm). Adding up both of these typical end points in the operational range and dividing by 2 for the number of entries, yields an average of 1,650 rpm. Multiplying 1,650 revolutions per minute, times 643,980 minutes, times 2 scraping actions per revolution = 2,125,134,000 scraping actions, or about what Jeff Bezos scrapes out of all the Prime customers every couple of months.

Two billion scrapes would likely cause some metal between the cylinder wall and the ring to wear down a bit. The more metal that wears away, even if only microscopically, the less material exists in one or the other or both components that were scraped against each other that many times.

If friction can be defined as the resistance presented by surfaces in contact with each other as they attempt to move past each other, then what happens when there is less material remaining between the two surfaces? Would there not be less contact? And therefore, would there not be less friction, instead of more, as the engine ages?

So it is unclear why oil additive marketeers often emphasize that their products result in "less friction" for worn out motors. I would think that they would instead advertise an increase in "clingyness" or viscosity (thickness to fill the gaps), rather than state "reduces friction."

Maybe they are referring to the wearing away of specialized coatings that are fused onto some engine part surfaces?

I just move up on the viscosity chart. I have a 2.5L Duratec 4 cylinder in a Ford Escape with 400,000 miles on it, all original. It calls for 5w-20, but at 300K miles I moved up to 5w-30, to account for what I would expect might be wear, but I have no way of knowing as the engine has never had to be opened up. I use synthetic oil.

This summer, I stepped the 7.3L oil viscosity back up to 15W-40, from the 5w-40 synthetic I have previously used since 2005. This step up was enabled by a full synthetic HDEO recently being made available in the 15w-40 viscosity. I will see if it romps-romps-romps on cold starts this winter, like it used to do with the old Delo 400 dino 15W-40 oil that I used to use 22 years ago, before solving that once popular problem permanently by switching to 5W-40 synthetic.

 

Here's a review on Motorkote that had a good result. Not sure if this stuff will play nicely in our truck's. But IMO just do regular oil changes (5k IMO is great) and your engine will last long time.

 

remember Slick 50?

Snake oil

 

Here's an experiment anyone can do. Go to your local parts house and see if they still have one of those Lucas demonstation toys; the one with the three plastic gears and a crank.

Turn that one with the additive in it like your life depended on it and see what happens to the oil. Now, try to imagine trying to pressurize that foamy, aerated mess to 2500+PSI. I'd be willing to wager that most of these additives have no anti-foaming agents and may actually kill what is in the oil too.

It's like T4 Rotella after 2000 hard miles. JUNK.

 

Which is why I spend the $$$ on Motorcraft 5-40 synthetic.

 

I can definitely attest for the Lucas being junk in these trucks. Some of you may remember I had a mishap with that when I first bought this truck thing is it was my first Diesel and thought Lucas would be good for it and the truck wouldn't crank LOL.

Lucas is good for hydraulic pumps on lawn mowers though. A zero turn that one of my buddies have will only drive for 30 minutes until it quits driving because the oil is too thin for the worn out pump to pump. Put some of that Lucas transmission fix in there, it'll drive all day now. But it is just a band-aid. But that is the only thing I would use Lucas on. Maybe a little in a rear end or something but, I'd rather use what is recommended.