Engine Flush...Do You Recommend?

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00LincLS

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Hey everybody I was wondering what you all think about doing an engine flush.

Do you agree with doing it with store bought stuff like GUNK MOTOR FLUSH or do you say not to do it.

I know that it might thin my oil out and if I do do it then I would have to change my oil right after, correct? Along with the oil filter etc. Correct me if i'm wrong.

I would like to know what you all think about flushing and additives. It would help me a lot thanks guys.
 
camthman = my mileage is 130,000

gcwimmer = I have done the research on Seafoam and it looks good but haven't run across anybody thats used it in a Lincoln LS. No threads or videos that i have run across. Its been mostly Mark's that people have used it on and was trying to see if anybody here in the forum has used it and what they think of it before I go through with it.

Just don't want to damage anything right now
 
Nobody else has an idea about what to use for a good engine flush besides Seafoam?

And if anybody has ever used GUNK MOTOR FLUSH before please let me know how it worked and wether or not you had problems down the line.
 
In all of my years of experience with cars, "Engine Flushing" has not been required. I've been changing my oil in my cars every 10k miles (full synthetic, and I believe even THAT is overkill) for about 15 years now, and I've been using premium of whatever major brand (or Costco) I could find during the same time period. I've NEVER had any issues which required any form of flushing the engine. And the large clouds you see from SeaFoam videos? No..thats not due to "all the gunk being cleaned out". It's because a liquid has been introduced to the combustion chamber. Red Kool Aid added would make the car smoke like that.
 
additives other than what is already in your fluids and standard fuel treatment have no business being in your vehicle. Leak stopper, tranny flush, engine flush. None of it should be used. Do you really want chunks of stuff dislodging only to clog an oil passage and starve a bearing? Or get picked up by the oil pump and clog your oil filter? (which in itself won't cause harm... but the by-passed, unfilter, now contaminate filled oil will)

Save your money... There is a reason you don't see this crap under the names of vavoline, castrol, mobil 1... yet they make just about any other fluid you can put into your vehicle.
 
Also, if you've got build-up in your engine, it's because the oil is becoming saturated with contaminates. This generally results from a couple issues; either your engine is severely worn and allowing massive amounts of blow by past the rings, you wait WAYYYYY too long to change your oil, OR your engine never warms up to operating temps.

Either way, if you've got this problem... the best solution is to do more frequent oil changes and allow the solvents already in the oil to clean the engine up.

BUT, with an engine in good condition and mostly highway miles... the average oil will still be good until around 7500-10,000 miles (believe it or not). The more city/stop-go/short distance driving you do, the shorter the lifespan of your oil, but even then it will generally still be good to 5000 or more miles.
 
NateRw21 is 100% correct. And actually, I recall a very long/detailed study Consumer Reports did on engines/motor oils some years back. (so keep in mind, oils have IMPROVED since this report) They had a fleet of New York cabs running regular dino oil, and I think a couple running full synthetic. Long story short, after 15k miles of the same oils/same filters, NONE of the engines had any sort of significant wear, and if I recall correctly, when they sent the oils off to a lab for analysis? All still had protective properties left.

While these were mostly city miles, the engines almost always had time to get up to full operating temp, and stay there. They also found out that the MOST wear on an engine occurs at startup, NOT while the engine is running properly, in a proper state of tune.
 
Yeah, like some of the other guys say... "unless you know you have sludge there is no reason for a flush".

Modern engine oils are very good and have excellent detergent packages. If you have been chaning your oil as recommended and you are not one of those "drive it 2 miles to work every other week" type guys, there is no reason your engine should need a chemical flush. Even if you did need a flush, a chemical flush might cause all that gunk to suddenly get loose in yoru engine and go where it shouldn't. Better to just use a good quality detergent oil which will gradullay remove gunk.

Ford specification oil for our engines is semisynthetic, at least for the engines requiring 5W20, and they are very good at keeping the engines clean and not making deposits.

A flush in an engine that is in good condition is probably fine but has no benefit. In a really dirty engine it could backfire on you and clog up some oil ports as debris gets loose.

Most of the time, additives are bandaids for engines or trannies that really need repair but can wait a bit with the help of a bandaid. For engines and trannies in good condition, there is not good reason for additives.

Just my opinion based on reading about such things for over 40 years and tinkering for almost as long.

Jim Henderson
 
Thanks guys for all the input. I wanted to know what the effects would be because I have heard and read that GUNK MOTOR FLUSH will do just what you all are saying by dislodging stuff and it getting stuck. Haven't heard about Seafoam doing this but its a major possibility.

The reason why im asking about an engine flush is because I pulled my car from the shop friday afternoon after they called me friday morning saying that I needed a new engine because I had water and radiator fluid mixing in with my oil.

But when I parked the car and went to look at my Radiator Reserve it was full for one and I checked the oil and oil stick and saw no water at all on the stick or in the oil itself. The only thing that I have is a yellowy substance on the cap of my motor oil. And i'm thinking that yellowy build up is moisture from it.

So I thought that i might need to flush my engine given the fact that its got 130,000+ miles and i've had it for 2 years. It had a complete tune up 8 months ago and can't figure out why it would be acting like it is.

So any more thoughts would be great. Thanks so far.
 
Yeah, what you have is called a blown head gasket... an engine flush won't solve that!
 
So it is a blown Headgasket. How much would that cost to get fix if anybody knowns.
 
What would you all think if it were a blown Cylinder. Would it be worth trying to fix and it so how much?
 
Repair for a blown head gasket involves removal of the head, milling the head and reinstalling with a new gasket.

You have milky oil right?

You're talking $1500 minimum
 
I re-read your post...

If you have a yellowish, milky-ish stuff on the cap of your oil fill, but the oil on the dipstick doesn't look milky... chances are it's just condensation and you only need to change your oil.

What kind of place did you take your car to?
 
I took my car to a small local automotive shop in the area. I don't thing that they handle to many Lincoln's. But they did say that I needed a new engine because I have a dead cylinder.

The yellowish substance is just on the cap but not on the oil stick itself.
 
I'd get a written up estimate from that shop... then take it to a dealership and have them do a compression/leak-down test at least on whatever cylinder they said is shot.

My bet is there's nothing wrong with your car (some yellowish/milky-ish residue on the fill cap only means for sure that you have condensation
0.

Why did you take it in to begin with?
 
I put it in the shop in the first place to see why my car was shaking while it was idiling, why it was over-heating or trying to over heat (which might have been the thermostat), and why I might have been having firing problems on cold cranks (It would be really hard to try and start sometimes or I might even have to jump it off).


I was thinking this was the problem solutions to my car. (IMO)

See what I was thinking was the reason why I was having the shaking while idiling could have been my ignition coils going bad, a bad "O" ring, or my idle control switch.

The Over-heating might have been to a sticking thermostat

The Firing problems could have been to the battery only giving out 10 volts of power when I got it checked.
 
Okay, I'd get a leak-down and compression test done before you authorize any further work. A very weak, or dead cylinder will cause shaking, hard starts and a stumbling idle.
 
Sounds good but this might be a stupid question but what are and how will the leak-down and compression test work?

I was going to try and get a second diag run on the car and see exactly what cylinder is dead.

Would that be somewhat of the same thing or completely different?
 
Compression test verifies the amount of compression a cylinder makes; generally you do it for all cylinders and they shouldn't deviate from each other very much. If one cylinder is significantly lower than the rest, a wet compression test can be done where a little oil is put into the combustion chamber through the plug hole; this ensures a positive seal on the piston rings. If the pressure goes up you've got bad rings.

Leak down test is to test how the cylinder maintains it's pressure and is used to diagnose where the leak is at. Head gasket will have bubbles in the coolant, valve seat will have a hissing sound from either the intake or exhaust.


For more info on these two tests, search the terms out on the net (google or yahoo); there are sites which go much further in depth and do a much better job explaining it than I am willing to type.
 
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