rev up your engines, today I'm going to talk about engine oil additives and
specifically this new Lucas made for low viscosity oils that modern cars use, now
to begin with I'll give you a general idea about oil additives in cars, modern
engine oils are really well designed and produced, you buy a brand new car you use
the correct oil that they suggest and change it frequently, you don't need to
put any answers in your oil period, but if you bought a used car it burns a
reasonable amount of oil, or you were a bad person and you didn't change your engine
oil enough and now your engine has worn internally, oil additives can actually
help, I bought this Toyota Celica used, and the main reason I
got a cheap was cuz it was using the oil and a customer thought, oh you know
it's wearing out and I'll get another car, she went out and bought
a Toyota Avalon, she was burning about a quart of oil every 900 miles in that
Celica she had to keep adding the oil, she had a case in the trunk, I changed the
oil filter, put in three quarts of Castrol GTX and one quart of this
heavy-duty thick stabilizer from Lucas, and lo and behold then it only burned
about half a quart of oil in between oil changes, and not it used half a quart
instead of a quart every 900 miles, quite an improvement I gotta say, but you do
have to understand what type of engine is in here, it's the Toyota four-cylinder
engine, it doesn't have hydraulic valve lifters, it's just got those stainless
steel shims, so there's no hydraulic valve lifters with the tiny little holes
that the oil has to get into to pump up to adjust the valves, if you add a thick
oil like this to an engine that has hydraulic valve lifters, they can start
clattering like mad I've seen that, and even further this is a plain old engine
it's got a solid cam that spins and opens and closes the intake and the exhaust
valves, it does not have variable valve timing, you put a thick oil into a car
that's got variable valve timing and blammo, a lot of times it will cause
problems in the variable valve timing system, so you really can't use this
heavy stuff in any modern car, now how thick is this stuff
watch how thick it is, one it won't even come out of the bottle I got to
squeeze it, and as I do look at it, it's like molasses, and we'll compare it to
the new Lucas stabilizer that's the lighter oil watch this, quite a
difference, now when people tested the stuff, they found that this old thick
formula has a viscosity of 110 when the oil is 212 degrees Fahrenheit
now the viscosity of the low viscosity Lucas stabilizer is 19.7 at 212 degrees
Fahrenheit, that's a lot less than a hundred and ten of the old thick stuff
now since the new oil is thinner and look at the size, this thing is only 12
fluid ounces, the old one is 32 fluid ounces, so not only is it lighter but
you're not diluting the oil in your engine as much because you only have 12
ounces instead of 32 ounces, so it's safe to use an engines that have variable
valve timing, that use really lightweight oil, that have hydraulic lifters, you're
not gonna get problems that you will from the super thick additive of the old
Lucas, now what's exactly in this stuff, well if we do a little history lesson go
back to when I was a kid in the 60s, the big oil additive was STP and it was
really thick too real thick, especially when I was a kid up north, boy it was cold
outside, you ready had to heat this stuff up and boil
it in water before you could pour it in an
engine if it was outside, now STP started in
1955, they have a special additive, they still used to today in their STP
treatment and it's zinc phosphate it's an anti wear
additive that scientists know it works, it does lower friction, but it has one
major drawback today of eventually ruining your catalytic converters, know
when I was a young mechanic in the sixties we didn't care about that, cars
didn't have catalytic converters in the United States until the mid 1970s, so we
didn't care we just put it in we see these old Junkers that were clacking and
making all kinds of noise and it would quiet them down quite a bit and a lot of
times it can make an old worn out engine lasts a little bit longer, I remember
when I went to a Formula One race a couple of years ago, I was talking to the engineers
and they admitted to me that during the
practice runs they use their old worn-out engines, they want to use them
in the race, they use them then and they put a heavier thicker oil in their
practice runs, so their engines that were more worn last longer and not blow up
as fast, but during the race then they put in a good engine and they would use
the lightest oil they could possibly have, so that they'd have more
acceleration, now Lucas Oil came out in 1989 original formula is really thick
just like the STP, but it doesn't have that zinc additive to it, so both of
these don't have any of those fancy additives like zinc they're all
petroleum products so you can mix them with any petroleum products that are out
there, strangely enough it works really good in standard transmissions, standard
transmissions are just splash lubrication, the gears are inside the
transmission housing and the oil inside is just splashed around to lubricate
the gears, as they wear and the space gets a little bit further between the
teeth, they make noise, they can be harder to shift with your hands, and I've seen
these things get a transmission that was really hellacious to drive and made all
kinds of noise, work a lot better and make a lot less noise just by pouring
this stuff in, and Lucas also makes an automatic transmission additive that's
pretty thick too, now you could use it in the older American cars I had miracles
myself when somebody bring me an old Chevy Tahoe or something and it would barely
move down the road, and I'd take a quart of the fluid out of the transmission and
put a quart of the Lucas thick automatic transmission additive and all of a
sudden it started to shift pretty good that kind of phased me when I did that
the first time, I thought how could something like that do that much, but it
did in many cases, don't you dare try that in a modern computer controlled
transmission, or especially a CVT transmission, those things have to use
their fluid and nothing but their fluid don't put any kind of additives in those
things, so going back to the original topic, the new low viscosity
stabilizer, you can use it modern engines that have the
vvt or that have hydraulic lifters in them, now it's no miracle and a can you
know there are no miracles and cans these days anyways, if you take care of
your vehicle, use good oil, change it all the time, you don't need to use any
additives really, but let's say your girlfriend is bad never change the oil
in her car, or you got suckered into buying a late-model car that's got high
mileage and the people didn't maintain it, I'd stick the stuff in see what it
does, cuz really hey you got nothing to lose
the engine is make a lot of noise and it's wearing out, you're living a borrowed
time anyway, and since this is mechanic Monday I'll be giving away some of this
low viscosity Lucas stabilizer, to have a chance to win just place a clean non
offensive comment on the YouTube comments below, and the winner will be chosen
randomly by computer to get some new lucas oil stabilizer,
for their worn-out engine so if you never want to miss another one of
my new car repair videos, remember to ring that bell!