Motor Oil & Fuel Additives: Just a WASTE of MONEY?

additives are they good or are they bad or could they just be playing all ugly hi I'm Lake the motor oil geek and when you walk in an auto part store there's a literal wall full of additives making all kinds of claims well is it just snake oil or do some of these products actually do what they say they do well you know this channel we're all about the science instead of the speculation so let's get some different additives let's put them to the test and show you some real world [Music] results so we purchased

nine different motor oil additives and we got some Pao base oil so we can add the additives to the base oil and see what did they add so here's the thing you need to know about additives either a fuel additive or a motor oil additive unlike a motor oil that actually has to meet an API or OEM specification additives don't so just know that just because it's in a bottle on the shelf that doesn't mean it has to meet any specs okay so after reading the instructions on all nine additives to get the treat rate

they're all working out right around around 1 and 1/2 oz per quart of oil so we'll blend that much into the Pao base oil and send it off to the lab for analysis separation right there yeah look at that all right we'll mix it up now oh you got to see this yeah thank goodness you have an engine to mix this stuff up now you may be saying you're doing it wrong you're adding too much additive and that's going to throw off the results well we're measuring in parts per million so that is concentration we

can adjust the lab results to hit the correct concentration because the base oil isn't adding anything to it it's just would be diluting it down but to prove that let's go ahead and blend up a couple of correct samples just for verification this is the greatest cleaner ever invented sd20 from Spartan chemical if you've never used this stuff and you're a car person you need to have some of this stuff in your life I'm just telling you right now it's amazing look at that stuff this is like Weird Science one of the funny thing about

additives is that there will be some someone that says you know I used you know Brand X additive and I picked up 5 miles to the gallon and other person will say well I use Brand X additive and I lost five main bearings well which one's lying well neither one of them are the reality is that motor oils are already a complex mixture there can be 14 different chemicals in one motor oil and when you add another chemical or three or four or you I don't know how many to that mix sometimes it could go

good sometimes it could go bad it's basically chemical Russian roulette with your engine whenever you put an additive into your oil base oil Lucas Oil stabilizer let's see what happens here and we mix it [Music] definitely the thickest oh it's getting really foamy quite a bit less foamy than the Lucas for certain but much lighter in viscosity than the oil stabilizer the fr3 nano technology Nano it just means it small H yep I won't comment anymore all right we have our clean dried fro to mix it up now this one is completely clear so let's

see how this one does let's mix it [Music] up last three samples plus our bonus surprise samples let's go ahead and get moving on 100 ml more of our Exxon Mobile spectrain Max 3.5 they told me they use this stuff in the Red Bull Formula 1 cars I have no reason to doubt them the stuff is pretty cool and maybe that Max means Max first Sten I don't know thing about additives and yes I chose this one on purpose cuz think back about all of the sponsorships Richard Petty the indd 500 all the different things

that STP did over the years can you think of many motor oils that have sponsored as much stuff as that no it's because when you sell additives you make more money it's just that simple this is a 15 o bottle that sells for as much as a full qut of oil and there are some additives that sell for $15 for only 12 O well that's three times the amount of money compared to even a premium motor oil so the next time you see an additive being marketed just know that there's a heavy Financial incentive to

say additives are better than motor oils by themselves of course my thought is this if you have to put an additive in your oil it means you have the wrong oil see basically very two distinct layers with this one right here let's see what how it mixes I'll keep it right up here so we can see it as it [Music] happens a little bit hazy on that first takeoff [Music] there definitely nowhere near as foamy as the uh the seafoam was oil extreme we actually tested this stuff at Joe Gibbs Racing years ago and uh

it didn't work too good for us oil extreme poo 3.5 Max [Music] so we have two bags full of samples right now we got what five in each bag so that's 10 plus we have two more coming so hang [Music] on so after packing up all the samples and sending them off the lab I realized we had forgotten two of the most iconic brands of additives ever STP in Marvel Mystery roil so let's go ahead and get these samples Blended up and send them off to the lab so we can show you the results go

all right let's mix it [Music] up there we go we're getting into the mix a little bit now here we go just so you know the irony of this video is not lost on me my dad he was sponsored by an additive company W was the primary sponsor when he won in NASCAR but no OEM on the planet actually recommends using an oil additive in your oil so just remember that both the Marvel Mystery Oil and Lucas Oil stabilizer can treat up to 20% of the total oil which means if you keep the same oil

level you're actually diluting the additive package in the oil I wonder what impact that would have on the oxidation performance of the oil so I asked our buddies at hpl if they would run oxidation tests for us in the lab cuz there's a lab test called rotating pressure vessel oxidation test RP V T it's a way of determining oxidation life of the oil so we're going to run regular old mobile one 520 to determine our Baseline then we're going to take our 20% diluted sample of mobile one with the Lucas Oil stabilizer and another one

with Marvel Mystery Oil we'll check all three samples and see what the oxidation life is for all [Music] three so let's start off with the good the only good additives are actually fuel additives the brands here that's not what's important what's really important is they all contain polyetheramine which is a detergent additive that can clean injectors and combustion chamber deposits that's the key because dirty fuel injectors are a problem now this is showing some diesel injectors right here and this is a problem both gasoline and diesels so when you have very poor atomization of the

fuel you tend to have more fuel dilution and when fuel dilution goes up just like you can see here with these results wear goes way up doing used dual analysis that's the number one thing I see is that typically when we have high levels of fuel dilution you have high levels of wear so you want to try to combat those dirty injectors by using a fuel detergent additive in order to keep them clean to keep fuel delusion down so your wear metals are down here's a great example of injector deposits without detergent and with detergent

again this is a diesel so thanks to the guys from cat for sharing this here's a diesel at 700 10 5 hours and you can see those deposits on the injectors that are causing poor atomization of the fuel and then you can see even at almost 100 hours later but using a fuel detergent additive how much cleaner the injectors are so they say cleanliness is Next to Godliness that's especially true when it comes to injectors for fuel dilution so the good additives are fuel detergent additives to keep your injectors clean [Music] and again here's proof

of that without a fuel detergent additive the fuel dilution had got up over 22% on this engine and in one treatment with a polyetheramine based fuel detergent additive it cleaned it up and the next sample fuel dilution was right back down to normal so fuel detergent additives really important to use okay now let's get to the bad and let's see what these additives did to the oil but first we got to remember so what's motor oil actually made of well it's two things base oil and additives so the base oils only come from a handful

of companies and the additives only come from a handful of companies so most companies are just buying base oil and buying an additive package and blending them together now the thing is when you add an additive to that oil you don't know what it's going to do if might work with it and make the oil better or it might work against it and make the oil worse we have some examples of that so stay tuned so you might be wondering how can you make it worse so in our previous video we talked about zdp at

zinc it's a polar additive it tries to go to the metallic surfaces in the engine to create films to protect those surfaces but you can have too much zinc at very low levels of zinc wear is very high because there's adhesive where but as you add more zinc it can become corrosive so there is such a thing as too much of even a good thing so you have to keep that in mind when we're talking about additives and the potential downfalls of using an additive it's also important to remember that the different additive packages sometimes

work against each other and here's some real world proof of when two different additive packages are actually fighting each other which is increasing where so the results in the right hand side of the report are the first drain sample from the first oil change going from the factory oil to the driven di20 now both oils are fine oils but what you see wear Metals here we have 10 parts per million iron 12 parts per million copper but I can tell you that by looking at the additive package in that first sample of the di20 coming

after that first oil change I can tell you there was residual oil still in the engine from that previous oil change that was reacting and competing with the additive package in the di20 how do I know that well I happened to have formulated di20 so I know there's no magnesium in di20 but we clearly see 147 parts per million of magnesium in this drain sample I can also see the phosphorus levels are a little bit lower than what they should be for di20 well that's the first indication that there was some carryover effect from that

previous oil now look at the second sample the ones in the far leftand column and you can see the iron went from 10 parts per million down to four copper went from 12 down to one why did that happen it's because now after that second drain in Phil all the residual oil from the factory oil had been flushed through gone was the original oil now the di20 has been able to establish itself and you can see what's happened magnesium levels are down closer to normal phosphorous levels are back up higher closer to normal so once

the di20 has been established and there's no more competition between the two different additive packages the results get better again this is an example of why using an additive can be problematic because of that additive competition you can see the results right here for yourself before we even start talking about what's in the bottle all right so that established let's get on to the results okay so far left hand column that's our Pao 3.5 that's just base oil no additives so we added in the licali mos2 that has malum and guess what as we can

see adding the liquid Molly mos2 just as added Molly to the oil now in the next column is a liquimo seratec now it's bringing in some calcium some phosphorus some zinc some mum some Boron it's bringing in a little bit of everything and it's actually increased the base slightly so those two products aren't having a dramatic effect on either the acid number the base number or viscosity the next one is the Lucas Oil stabilizer it's just thickener there's no additive in it there's no zinc there's no Molly but it's not really adding any additiv so

it could be diluting the additive package stay tuned we're going to cover that in a minute so our next group of additives was the Lucas TB zinc additive and we can see that it adds a lot of zinc 2700 parts per million phosphorus 237 parts per million zinc fortunately it did bring in 643 parts per million calcium so that the effect isn't acidic but zinc by itself would have actually caused the oil to become acidic that's how it can become corrosive as we mentioned earlier by adding the calcium the detergent it's neutralized it so it

hasn't had a giant impact on the acid number or the base number of the oil by itself next we move to prolong which is a chlorinated paraffin this is a very problematic product because chlorinated paraffins well they don't have the best environmental impact and they can also become quite corrosive in certain environments coronated paraffins are typically used as metalworking additives they will perform amazing in any kind of bearing tester any kind of load testing device they will shine because they work extremely well at low temperature but that chlorine that makes it work so good in

the load testing devices can can become hydrochloric acid if the chemical environment becomes just right which is why it's not widely used as a motor oil additive so again problematic you put this stuff in there you are definitely taking a risk so our next one is the Hot Shot secret fr3 Nano additive and as we saw in our previous video about Nano additives they can reduce friction but in that case it in increased wear so another example of sometimes what you get isn't what you expect when you put an additive in your oil now we

did notice that it did increase the oxidation number which means it has a Esther that add the carrier oil so but that can be a problem because sometimes if you mix Esters they can do bad things again stay tuned you may see more of this in a minute okay so so far we've shown results of adding the additive to just a pure base oil what happens when you add the additive to a fully formulated oil so in this case we took the Lucas Oil stabilizer and the Marvel Mystery Oil and added it to just regular

old mobile one and you can see the results are quite clear we mentioned it earlier the Lucas Oil stabilizer is a thickener and it doesn't contain any additives so what happens viscosity goes up additive levels go down very clear we went from 1230 parts per million calcium it dropped down to 443 our phosphorus and our zdp went from 681 down to 430 now that phosphorus level is below the API minimum of 600 for this type of oil so that's a problem it's now taking the oil out of the spec range on both viscosity to the

high side and additive package to the low side I can't see anything good coming from that then on the Marvel Mystery Oil it actually lowered the viscosity so now it's out of viscosity grade range to the low side and it's had some impact on the zinc and the phosphorus levels although it's still within the API spec range it's definitely brought that detergent level down changed that chemistry so let's see what happens when we run oxidation test because that's the key as we dilute the additive package the main thing we're concerned about is is it going

to shorten the life of the oil right this is an additive it's supposed to be boosting the oil but we clearly see here in both cases it's actually diluting the oil which could reduce the oil's working life when the oil's life is shortened deposits will increase here are the result results from the RPV oxidation test where we're taking the oil we're putting in a vessel we're putting in oxygen and we're heating up and rotating it agitating it and we're watching to see when does the pressure change because when the pressure change occurs that's what indicates

the oil has oxidized when you see that Spike go up that means the oil is dead so we can see here is that the blue Peak to the furthest to the right that's the mobile one that's our Baseline but as we added the Lucas Oil stabilizer and diluted the additive package it moved the peak the left it shortened the life of the oil and the same thing occurred with the Marvel Mystery Oil it diluted the additive package and shortened the life of the oil evidenced by that shift in the peak to the left less time

means shorter oil life which could mean more deposits in your engine again this channel is about science not speculation these results they're pretty much slam dunk conclusive proof putting the additive in your oil compromises the life of your oil and these are just the bad ones now let's go look at the ugly ones the rislone zddp so unlike the Lucas additive that had that really good detergent package to balance the base so it didn't become acidic the rizone it didn't even add as much zdp but it became way more acidic so that's not good this

stuff could cause damage could cause bearing wear corrosion damage in the engine because it's raising the acid number again shortening the life of your oil changing the chemical balance and then this last one the oil extreme if you had a direct injection engine never ever use this product it could cause low speeed pre-ignition in engine and destroy your engine if you use this additive because it has such a high level of calcium in sodium 4,37 parts per million calcium 329 parts per million sodium either one of those by themselves is enough to cause low-speed pre-ignition

in a turbocharged direct injection engine and it has both of them in there I hope these results so far are convincing enough that you know that okay I really shouldn't be putting these kind of additives in my oil the chances of something going wrong are probably greater than something going well for me but if that's not enough to convince you let's look at some real world results when people actually put these products in real engines and we see the used oil results so in this first one we had the lical serch plus liquid engine flush

all right you don't need to use an engine flush we're going to cover that in a future video so I'm not going to get into that right now but I'm not a fan of any additives including flushes and what you see here is a ton of iron in the oil this oil only has 2500 miles on it and it has over 42 parts per million iron and this is from a Porsche engine that doesn't have an iron boore those iron numbers should be in the teens not in the 40s so here's a great example of

what happens when you put in additives to the oil and it does the opposite of what you want it to do it's increasing wear so here's our next one AMS oil Signature Series plus the Hot Shot secret fr3 nano technology we mentioned it earlier about how that hot shot Secrets had an Esther as the carrier oil well when you blend Esters they can sometimes work against each other the amoil signature series is a Pao Esther Blended product we see really good results with it but in this case we have a ton of Copper Wear going

on and the oxidation level is actually increased more so than you would normally see and the viscosity is down well that's because of the F fr3 it's fended down the oxidation part is changed because of those competing Esters which is now compromise the wear and caus the softest the yellow metal the Copper Wear to increase so again not great a Bronco like this those copper levels should be in the teens not the 30s yet another example of I'm going to make my good oil better but it didn't work out that way and this one might

be the worst one yet so we have Regal castal GTX plus the rizone zddp which we saw earlier was increasing the acid number in this guy 1,500 miles well the viscosity is down and the wear is through the roof I mean the iron is higher lead and Tin manganese this is bad I I hate this I this is why I hate oil marketing and the one I hate the most are the additive people it's the worst I see this stuff all the time this isn't just cherry-picking over 10 years this is stuff I've seen in

the last three or four months it's it's bad don't use an additive it's dangerous and here's our final example of don't be the backyard chemist this is a blend of Royal purple Castel and Lucas so they mixed a whole bunch of different things together I think the Lucas was actually the Lucas Oil stabilizer which is why the viscosity is up but then the additive package is down and there's all kinds of weird things happening and back to lead we have unleaded fuel but we have a increased level of lead in the oil showing there's bearing

wear occurring so while I'm sure he thought this blend was going to protect his Corvette engine it's actually causing increased wear in his Corvette engine again the motto of this channel is science not speculation I hope these results clearly show it's not a good idea to put an additive in your oil no [Applause] [Music]