noisy valvtrain after oil change???????????????????????

[CryptokiD]

all the lifters i am framiliar with have no seals. have you ever actually opened a lifter up? the one thats sitting on my desk dont have any seals. they rely on a reasonably close clearence fit between their inner and outer parts and the lifter bore on the head. when the parts wear out and get sloppy you need new ones.

and thanks for repeating what i had already said. lets rehash shall we? i said if youre lifters make noise, they need to be replaced (hydraulic non adjustables like later model festivas) or adjusted (like the carbed variants) and those carbed ones could probably be replaced once in a while too.

mechanic in a bottle cant take up valve train slack or unstick stuck hydraulic ones.

[darkdan]

I could have sworn the HLA I replaced had an o-ring on them. But I could be wrong.

But they do have very small oil passages. If these are clogged then they wouldn't work properly. If auto-rx can clean it....then they will work properly.

Auto-rx helped mine enough to work properly until the cold weather hit. Then they got loud 2 of 3 mornings.

Did I at any point ever promise that it would fix it? No. Did I share my personal experience (twice) with my HLA and auto-rx? Yes. Does auto-rx have other benefits besides cleaning the HLA? Yes. Is auto-rx cheaper than new HLA if it does work? Yes.

So he's going to get some benefit from it regardless. He may or may not have to replace them.

[FB71]

I think the o-ring is on the outside of the hla, sealing it to the inside bore of the rocker arm.

[CryptokiD]

autorx, yes thats a touchy subject. i tried that stuff once on a bp i had. it didnt do anything for the sludge on the head, or the ticking hla. i ended up using the 100% money back guarintee to get my 24.95 back from the company which makes that snake oil and put that money into buying a couple of new hla to replace the ones which made noise.

if you have a problem with an engine such as sludge or knocking rod bearings or whatever else that mechanic in a bottle claims to fix you have to realise that you cant fix a mechanical problem in an engine with some miracal liquid.

[darkdan]

Great thing about auto-rx.....you can get your money back.

Did you do one or two treatments?

I've heard of people doing up to 4 to clean out really bad sludge buckets.

It's hard for 12 oz of esters to clean up 100k miles of poor maintenance in 3500 miles.

[CryptokiD]

i personally talked with the company that makes the stuff over the tele about my engine and they assured me that if i follow the directions on the bottle and run it for 750 miles and then change the oil and run the new oil for 750 miles, (also changing filters mind you) that the internals of my engine should be as clean as new and all my hla problems would disappear.

now let me tell you somthing, my cylinder head looked exactly the same, and the lifters were still tickin just as bad after doing what they said to do.

now if someone needs 4 bottles of this stuff, why didnt they tell me that? who says you need 4 bottles? is that just consumers like you telling other consumers what you think is correct? they said 1 bottle was all thats needed for any car or truck engine.. also, at amlost $25 a pop you would be better off buying $100 worth of new lifters than 4 bottles of whatever that stuff is. you can get 5 new lifters for $100 and thats probably enough to fix all but the worst of lifter ticking prone engines.

if you say esters are in that stuff, why not just run some synthetic oil? you can get 5 quarts of mobil1 for 1 bottle of auto rx, or 20 quarts for 4 bottles?

[darkdan]

Ah!

That must have been a while ago.

They've recently (about 1.5 years ago) changed the directions. After more testing they've changed the directions to a 1500 mile cleaning phase and 2000 rinse phase. I believe his original original directions even called for a 500 mile cleaning phase! Through more testing he's learnt it takes longer.

At least two treatments are recommended for engines with more than 100k miles or severe sludge. Most people don't require 4 bottles, but someone with a 1.8L Turbo diesel used that many. Eventually he was happy he had stayed the course with auto-rx.

After two treatments under my valve cover looks the same. A little of the "grit" that was laying around in areas that oil only pools disappeared, but not much else changed. Auto-rx's esters do not remove varnish. If you look at that website where the guy tested it and removed his valve covers several time I think he admits to wiping off the sludge (but it wiped off and before it wouldn't budge). My compression is up about 5 to 10 psi per cylinder and my average gas mileage is still up....so I don't care what under my valve cover looks like.

Auto-rx's esters are mostly lanolin based (I believe three or four total are used). There are several hundred types of esters and these are different than the synthetic or petroleum based. Also, in 12oz of auto-rx there's about 11 oz or more. In a quart of Mobil1 (32 oz) there's most likely less than an oz and it's mainly designed for seal conditioning and maybe a little solvency.

Auto-rx will first clean things that are exposed to pressure and heat. Mainly the ring packs and bearings. After those have been cleaned auto-rx will have time to attack the rest that gets splash lubrication. This is where the rinse phase is critical. Auto-rx softens and dissolves the sludge and carbon, but it's the host oil's detergents/dispersants that will lift the stuff and carry it in suspension.

It sucks you had a bad experience. I'm glad you got your money back. There are also might have been a physical problem with your HLA (after enough oil starvation maybe something siezed). It can't fix everything, but it can help a lot of people.

Frank is a great guy. He made a great product and it does work. If got cancer from standing around in solvents all day long and that's why he developed auto-rx to safely (for the metal and for humans) clean metal. I don't even sell the stuff, but it's a product I firmly believe in.

Here's my valvetrain before AMSOIL's waste of money "engine flush:



Here's after:



A quart of kerosene doesn't do much.

Here's after two auto-rx treatments:



Now, sadly I didn't get it in the before pictures, but if you look at the bottom right hand corner you'll see the rough cast area. Before auto-rx it was basically a giant "grit" party down there. It looked like sand just hanging out. Now it's back to looking like a rough cast piece of metal.

This is my second auto-rx clean phase drain on my crown vic:





Notice the "grit" all over the oil pan. My first cleaning phase drain had more, but I didn't notice because I had a different pan with an open top and didn't see it until I poured it out. That's why the second one I took pics (and I had gotten a new pan that holds more than 6 quarts because my dad's truck holds 7). Yes, I did wipe the pan clean before I drained it. The first filter I cut open had a bunch of this stuff in it. It feels like sand, but you can break it down with your finger nail. It appears white in the pics because of the flash, but it's black in real life.

Man, you'd think as much as I love this stuff and recommend it that I sell it, but I don't.

[CryptokiD]

that grit in the oil pan comes in the auto rx. my bottle had lota of that grit stuff in it. i poured it in a glass to see what it looked like and noticed that same grit right out of a new auto rx bottle.

[darkdan]

The stuff in the auto-rx are crystals of something. They melt at about 80 degrees.

If you rub them in your hand they dissolve almost instantly.

This grit stuff is hard.

[bassman]

I just bought a new focus zx5 and what oil brand would maybe prevent this???

or maybe some rx from time to time??


shayne

[darkdan]

An auto-rx treatment every 50,000 miles would help prevent it.

But, I'm not sure if this is even a common problem on the focus motor.

Don't even get me started on the 5w20 thing.......