Project Farm tests Engine Restore
 

Project Farm is a sponsor-free, auto-tech/engineering review channel on Youtube.

They're known for testing products you may have come across like amazon oil vs valvoline, seafoam vs techron vs mmo, etc, but also fun, goofy stuff like 3D printing cylinder heads, JB welding rod repairs, bacon grease for fuel and so on.

Now I recognize this forum's general antipathy toward additives, but found the Engine Restore test, and follow up one year later, quite interesting. And low and behold, there's even a compression test.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr8jIwVyIFE&t=348s
Part 2 (One year later) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXIu3oo8z4c

Thoughts?

Can you tell us some more about their results/claims? you can save us a collective ton of man hours, thanks

For what it's worth, I put Restore liquid into the oil of an M180 engine installed in a 1965 W111 220S which had low compression, and after a year of intermittent driving, the compression numbers went from:

#1-108 #2-103 #3-102 #4-109 #5-111 #6-120

to:

#1-111 #2-117 #3-122 #4-116 #5-116 #6-115

and I also noticed a lot less oil being thrown out of the dipstick tube and into the carburetors. Obviously it won't repair enlarged cylinder walls and shrunken piston rings, but it fills in cylinder wall scratches which might help the engine last a little longer.

That's good!

Thanks for sharing!

We used to have a 20 year old riding mower at our shop with a very tired B&S engine in it. Tired enough that it was difficult to start when cold, lots of oil in the air box from the breather tube. For giggles, I dumped some Restore in with an oil change and it made a marked improvement. Went for another 2-3 years before the rest of the mower rotted away or fell apart, the engine was still running decently well. It's not a "miracle in a bottle" but it can help get you along for a while.

It's probably worth mentioning that it's only capable of helping compression issues caused by scoring and marring of the cylinder walls. It will do nothing for ring tension, valve sealing, or head gasket issues.

For a data point, I got a hold of a 12 year old rider that likely never had the oil changed. Did an oil change and sometimes it would smoke on start up for about 30 seconds. Power was good and I don't recall any oil out the breather other then maybe a slight dampness.

After about a 1 1/2 years and another oil change the smoke stopped. I feel the oil control ring was sludged / stuck but became cleaned after running with fresh oil. ( Maybe 2nd ring being stuck too )

The sometimes smoke was likely caused when the piston stopped near top of bore where taper is the greatest and oil seeped past the rings. ( It is a vertical shaft engine so oil can lay in the bore. )

Ive used engine restorer for years. Smoothed out the idle on a 300000 mile chevy 305 and others

Ours was just tired. Oil changed twice a season. Just very high hours, tons of use and abuse, extremely dusty conditions. Was an old one-lung flathead 12.5 I/C with the "synchro balance" system in it. I feel like if it were anything else it wouldn't have lasted anywhere near as long. Tough old engine that lasted way longer than it should have.

There must be someone on the forum who's tried a bottle in their mercedes diesel.

I plan on it during the next oil change, though my engine is far from tired. I also put some in a 1960 Ford F-100 and it seemed to almost stop the huge amounts of oil that would get thrown out of the oil filler tube.

Not in a Mercedes diesel. But I had a 91 BMW 318i that started to consume oil at a pretty good clip. Ran really well, didn’t leak, didn’t smoke. Very strange.

I used this stuff and consumption reduced reasonably well; to the point that I was over 1000 miles per quart, from around a tank and a half (-500 miles).

Not scientific. Just figured I’d try it because the car was such a great driver and commuter, but just lost too much oil.

I’m not convinced that this stuff fixed it by increasing viscosity. There was something else to it.

According to their website, Restore does not affect viscosity.

https://www.restoreusa.com/faq/engine-restorer-faq

^ great, thanks! Point made; many additives aiming to improve consumption or compression are just really heavy oils.

Roger that. I’m pretty curious. Think I’ll throw a can in on my next oil change.

I just tossed a can into my 190D. I don't have compression numbers, but it's a bit down on power. Certainly can't make it worse.

SNAKE OIL !
 

I'm one who always distrusted additives until a few actually did what they claim .

I wonder about this stuff .

What did you think of the videos?

I was pretty sold after the compression tests.
Even more so after he cut the filter open and didn't find a bunch of shrapnel.

I understand additives in single viscosity oil but why don't additives interfere with the function of multiviscousity Oils.

Definitely not my area, but interesting all the same.
I’m curious what keeps the colloidal suspension sticking to the cylinders.

My 190DT is approaching end of life, at 455K miles. It's been a bit grumpy in the morning, smokes a bit, and struggles when it's cold. My first impression after 100 miles with this stuff, is that it's running significantly better. Maybe just placebo effect, but I really think it's improved. It makes zero sense...how can adding a solution of wear metals to the oil fix anything? I wish I had taken the time to check compression before I installed it.

Fortunately, I have. I plan to report back when I eventually use the stuff and run another compression check.

its not about just being wear metal in the oil its a specific alloy similar to babbitt metal. that combined with a specific particle size and geometry causes it to fuse to nucleation sites in the cylinder walls as the rings drag it past. it acts to fill in crevices while also acting as a bearing surface due to the oleophilic nature of the alloy. it basically fills in any surface features in any mechanically active areas with babbitt metal. you should be able to see some traces of it on the cam, followers, cylinder walls, and valve stems/guides. you would likely need a microscope to see it but anywhere theres mechanical friction it should deposit in crevices. that is why it kills powerstroke diesels they use a HEUI system which would cause it to foul the bores of the HPOP and the oil side of the unit injectors.

Phenomenal... I really appreciate this explanation.

'Engine Restore' Snake Oil
 

O.K., what the hell .

I was buying fuel filters and ether for vintage Motocycle carby cleaning yesterday and spotted this on the shelf, it comes in three different size cans : 4, 6 and 8 cylinder so I bought a 6 cylinder can and will add it to the oil (or whatever the instructions say to do) when I do my routine oil change soon, we'l see what happens .

When you got the counter, did you say it was for your " friend "?

LOL

Buying Incognito.....
 

They know me too well in there ~ I'm always making the counter guy look up things they don't know exist.....

If it does nothing I won't mention it to them, only here .


FWIW, many many decades ago I was involved with a VW Class III unlimited racing car, it was running a PTFE snake oil and lost the drain plug 5 miles out during the Parker 500 ~ the driver radioed in 'what do I do now ?' .

Boss Man said 'drive it in as gently as you can, we're done and will have to rebuild the engine, I hope you make it to the pits' .

Not only did he make it in, there was ZERO DAMAGE to the air cooled VW engine when we took it apart .

I still can't understand that one .

It's why I'll try this Hail Mary Pass on my Coupe ~ I have nothing to loose .

Real life Slick 50 / PTFE additive experience. I have rebuilt / repaired countless engines over 40 years and have a good sense of engine wear / what is still OK to run.

Circa 1992 customer ( electrical engineer at a nuke engineering company ) had a early 60's Ford truck with a 292 Y block. He had owned the truck since the early 90's and did proper maintenance all along. As a test he had used Slick 50 at some point in the past.

One day he lost oil pressure and chose to drive it 4 or so miles to my shop. The oil pump had picked up a hard piece of something causing it to lock up and twist off the oil pump shaft.

With the engine in the truck, I pulled the rod bearing caps off and found bearing wear to be consistent with the trucks mileage with the forward bearings more worn then the rear.

Pulling the main caps and found the rear bearings to be slightly more worn than mileage would suggest. As I worked forward, the mains where progressively more worn and 2 had transferred babbett bearing material from the lower shell to the upper shell. Not much material was stuck to the crank.

Cleaned the crank, rolled in a set of rod and main bearings, replaced the oil pump and drive and the truck was just fine,

The Slick 50 did help the engine run without oil however, I don't think it would do much in a properly operating street engine other than reducing start up wear when oil pressure it low. The treatment might help a race engine that sees aerated oil / intermittent loss of oil pressure but the real fix there would be a dry sump oiling system.

If I was faced with loss of oil pressure with a cam in block engine, I'd overfill the engine by 3 qt or so to get some splash oiling. An overhead cam engine would need some sort of upper oiling so blocking the breather might draw some oil to the cam / rockers or pull the valve cover and manually dump oil on the cam.

While there certainly are "snake oils" out there, I think far too often additives like this are immediately dismissed as snake oil without seeing data. I've wondered about Slick 50. It seems from their advertising that it truly is a miracle product, but whenever I've seen internet posts about it, it's almost always, "Don't trust it, it's a scam." by people who haven't used it but are predetermined to think it's a hoax. So, I've really wondered what the truth is. I'll have to look to see if I can find data from actual users and independent testing.

Y Block Ford
 

Thank you for that story, IMO it more or less mirrors mine .

I too tend to think '!snake oil !:mad:' but, I've also learned that sometimes you can learn a new thing *if* your mind is open .

We'll see if I notice any thing from this 'restore' product, we've been getting high winds and my Tangerine tree hasn't been trimmed in over 10 years so I attacked it this morning before doing the hot oil & filter change, managed to drop a 20# pair of super heavy duty branch loppers on my one broken and never treated toe so now I can barely walk ~ I did cut most of the tree down and chopped it all up and into a few hundred gallon wheelie bins but then I flaked, no more works to - day or until my foot allows me to walk normally (as normally as I ever walk) again....

Stand by, I will try this product and report back .

A year later and I just dumped a bottle of this into my crank-case.
Think a few of you did as well.

Reports?


.

Engine Restore
 

Hm, I see I bought some of this stuff, I don't recall using it but I don't see it in my box o' filters either....

I wonder what happened .

Sorry I dropped the ball on this one fellas .

I'm also very interested to hear if anyone has reports after adding to their Mercedes Diesel.
My 6cyl Lexus is also consuming oil too fast, so I may want to try some in there.

Can this product do any harm besides wasting $11?

From what I've read, no.

My 616 was drinking oil at highway speed. Changing the stem seals stopped that cold. I have pretty high and even compression numbers but a bit of blow-by.
Thing is, even a 5% increase in efficiency on a 72hp engine would be noticeable.

It was 7.50 on Amazon so I grabbed a bottle, I guess for a 5 cylinder you just round up to the 6 formula. My lowest cylinder was 320 psi cold last I checked. I'll put it in at my next oil change. It probably won't do much.

I can't wait...
 

to see how the adults react to this thread when they find it.

This thread is old. I think the reactions you see are what you get.

I had a vw dasher with a diesel that had been run low on oil. It burned a quart between fillups so on a long trip I had to stop at half a tank and add oil. I drove it all over the country that way. I used restore many times. It would initially drop oil consumption by half (quart every 400 miles) but consumption went up again after about 3000 miles. This has been more than 20 years ago, but my memory is that a second dose in the same oil wouldn't change consumption. You had to change the oil to see the effect or dump it in oil that you hadn't yet used restore in.

It's only a matter of time....

Anyway, I put the stuff in my Lexus that is consuming a quart of oil per 1k miles (a known issue for these engines). I doubt it will do anything, but it's an interesting experiment.

Do you doubt it will work because of the narrow bandwidth it seems to service (ie, cylinder walls)?

What does the filter look like after this? Maybe change just the filter and see what happens.

Back in the day like gen 2 5.7L quart/k was considered normal GM consumption. That was also when they started with the 'energy efficient 5-30' BS. mob1 15W50 reduces consumption and increases hot pressure in almost anything.

I had put a can into my 190D last April. The car died two weeks later. Probably unrelated.

"Back In The Day".........
 

I remember when using a quart of oil in 500 miles was considered acceptable as long as it always started (even in January) and ran well....

Times change, I'm glad they did .

Reviving this thread with an update:
I put a bottle of the stuff in my 2007 Lexus GS350 with 141k miles. Performance felt the same, but, I did enjoy a consistent 1-2 MPG improvement for about the 1,000 miles that I've been testing.
With current gas prices, that saves me $10-$20 in gas per 1,000 miles.

So, it would be interesting thing to test in my old diesel. Should I hesitate to do so?