About 4 months ago I was talking to my uncle who has been a diesel mechanic in the National Gaurd for 25+ years. He told me he uses 2 stroke oil as an additive to libricate his injectors. He also told me he gets about 1 mpg better mileage running it. So I tried it. I run 4 oz of Yamalube 2R for every 15 gallons of fuel. Sure enough, the truck runs smoother, starts easier and gets between .7 and 1.4 mpg better mileage. I have been running it for about 2500 miles now and my truck went back to the dealer for a bad FICM. I had them change the fuel filters while they were at it. I asked the tech if the filters looked bad. They had 18K miles on them. He said they looked really clean. So it doesn't appear to clog the filters either.

One other thing to note, I am not a "I get 25mpg" guy either. My mileage is mostly in town and I averaged 12.5 before and 13.5 adding oil to the fuel.

 

Used to hear a lot about using castor oil for this purpose, I use Maxima 927 castor in my 2 stks and if I don't use my bike before an opened bottle sits and oxidizes I dump it in my fuel. I know some suggest otherwise and some may say it's an old wives tale but I've been using ATF in my 04 with 198K miles and coincidence or not, it works. It's cheap and I started adding shortly after new, I felt like there was definately a difference in how it ran after adding ATF, I bought the cheap WalMart stuff and dumped in however much I felt like.

My truck runs much better on syn 5/40 and each time I added ATF it always feels like the difference I got between the thicker/thin oils. I was back on this site reading because a few weeks after doing some work on the truck I finally got around to an oil change. I just changed my oil and went from Rotella T back to conventional oil, of all things I got an immediate stutter, miss, or something that's intermitant and varies from off idle to between 1400-1800 rpm. I use SCT street tune so I went back to stock tune and it ran much worse, maybe because of less fuel being injected? Just to try I went and got Motorcraft oil, changed oil and fuel filters again and it's still there.

I had something similar but much more sporadic and got a couple of injectors early during the warranty. It took a couple trips and a week at the dealer, I felt like Ford tech just said injectors to at least do something because they didn't see symptoms. When I got it back it still had the same dirty fuel filters so I'm thinking I just had debris issues.
This time around I had let my fuel filters go a bit, I had a t-stat stuck open and once when it was real cold developed a tapping. I've pretty much settled on injectors but two days ago I put a gallon of ATF in half a tank and so far after another tank and a half of fuel with more ATF the miss is unnoticeable. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it'll quit on me tonight but two days ago I thought I'd be stranded in traffic somewhere and spending what I really couldn't afford but now I feel the ATF has cleaned whatever was fouling my injectors. 198K and I can't see any harm from the ATF so I'll keep on.

 

The 6.0L injectors need good lubrication and good fuel pressure or they are prone to failure. A number of folks here advocating the use of conventional additives (diesel kleen, Stanadyne, etc) and they have 130k+ miles and no failures. ATF fluid is a very poor lubricant. It is not adviseable to use it in the 6.0L IMO.

 

+1 on no ATF

And to answer the original question yes you can use 2-stroke oil and a lot of people on here are using it with no problems. Not sure on the mixture, but I'm sure one of them will chime in.

You need to be changing your fuel filters more often also. They should be changed every 10-15k miles.

 

Not to suggest this isn't true, I don't know and maybe I've been lucky. If ATF is used as a hydraulic medium, torque converter, valve operation, gear lube in a tranny as well as having rust preventatives, anti-foam additives, ect. What is so bad for the 6.0? Obviously it's thin but ATF can take some abuse, synthetic ATF is the gear lube of choice in wet clutch 2 stk race engines and 4 stks with seperate engine and transmission cavities. Now, I have heard ATF not being designed to be burned is an issue but neither is 2 stk oil and Marvel Mystery used to be castor oil.

 

You have good points. The injectors operate at high pressures and tight tolerances - different application than gears. Also, it does not retain the same properties in diesel fuel. The issue isn't w/ ATF in a 6.0, it is ATF in a 6.0L injector system. Studies have been done on many additives and even some of these additives designed to help prevent scuffing of the injectors do not do well enough to satisfy minimum standards set forth by fuel injector manufacturers.

You say you have been lucky, but you imply two problem periods with injectors (or maybe I did not read it correctly).

I saw a study done on tranny fluid as a fuel additive sometime back - not sure where it is now. I will look for it.

 

Yes I've had and think I'm having injector issues now. I've always used the atf but admittantly not really as a dedicated treatment routine. I used to let Ford do my service but then I had a no power, 30mph @ wide open episode on the interstate and discoverd that they were never changing my primary filter or my tranny cannister filter. Since that time, mostly when I think I feel it running a little sluggish I've added the atf and it really does run better afterwards.

As far as my current problem it beats me, all I done was go back to Rotella 15-40 and I had a miss right away. To save a little money I didn't use the T but thinking maybe it's the oil I went and got the Motorcraft to change it but after two oil, fuel filter changes I still got the miss. I've probably ran two gallons of atf through it past few days, couple tanks of fuel and the miss steadily decreased to where I hate to even say it but I think it's gone. I've probaly used atf for 150K miles since getting 2 injectors. I never put much faith in the atf so I never really thought of making it a routine, didn't really have any treatment routine and the atf "felt" like it worked so that's what I did when I got aound to it.

No doubt I've been lucky either way, I'm using a tuner and I've run that thing hard both towing or running around the streets for a while not even considering boost or anything else and I haven't had some of the stuff I've read about.

About 50K miles ago I did have the tea kettle/ beer bottle noise and feared the worst, wasn't losing any coolant or overheating but I did see the white stains . I could hear a slight hiss from degas bottle so I went to borrow the cap off my mustang and it had more white stuff all over it than my truck so I bought a cap and that was the end of the noise. Same cap on both vehicles, the Mustang cap starts to leak pressure about as often as the truck cap. Whatever it is with atf and over flow caps I hope it continues because I can't afford any bad luck right now.

 

Ford issued a VERY recent broadcast message - they have a redesigned cap. I saw some level fluctuations and changed caps - no more issues (knock on wood).

REVISED GAS/DIESEL ENGINE DEGAS BOTTLE CAP, PART NUMBER (9C3Z-8101-A)

THE PRIOR LEVEL CAP(F6DZ-8100-A) SHOULD NOT BE USED FOR REPLACEMENT

 

Wow, thanks for that! I'm learning today, five years and I never knew I had a block heater until today, came with a cord too, in Florida. I've been flushing trying to get all that sediment out thinking that was contributing to my cap issues. I think that stuff can obstruct a heater core, I was getting the no heat at idle but I had a sticking t-stat and thought that was the cause. It continued after a new stat so I used spic&span and flushed a few times trying to get that garbage out and the heat is back. Thanks again for the cap info.

 

Here is one source for lubricity impact of tranny fluid:

Diesel Fuel Systems - Performance For Your Diesel!

According to the U.S. Army's quarterly fuel and lubricant bulletin (March 1994), laboratory testing using the Ball-on-cylinder lubricity evaluation (BOCLE)

Also:
Of course, it is not recommended that ATF be burned as fuel. Francis Healy of the Chevron Fuel Technology Team, says that "the root cause comes from blending ATF with ULSD" for lubricity reasons. According to Healy, the lack of lubricity found in early mixes of ULSD is no longer a problem, as fuel manufacturers now add necessary lubricants during refinement. As far as the long-term effects of running used ATF as fuel, Healy spoke on behalf of Chevron. "We (Chevron) can only speculate, but under higher fuel pressures (namely common-rail engines), the engine won't last, and can cause extreme wear on injection systems."

Royal Purple Inc., and Jim Miller of Opti-Lube believe that burning used ATF as fuel will leave hydrocarbon deposits behind that will not burn cleanly. Being that paraffinic oils (which are essentially long chains of hydrocarbons)exist in ATF, we would have to agree with them that an ash (basically soot) would be left behind. Our research confirmed this point even further, as we discovered that diesel vaporizes 40 times better than ATF. In addition, Miller stated that it definitely will not help with water/fuel separation, and that cold start-ups would be difficult.

http://dieselpower.automotive.com/98...l-engines.html