ATF before oil change!!! Results!!

[Mihnea Cotet]

Hi all!

Well, I just changed the oil today on Coupe Quattro and I added half a quart 
of ATF about 100 kms befor the oil change.

I was a little worried as Per Lindgren said it had screwed his engine up at 
200.000+ kms and his engine begun actually drinking oil, so I hoped it 
wouldn't do the same on mine as it now has 273.000kms.

Well, the oil that got out of the engine was pretty dirty, I filled it up 
with Mobil Super 10W40 Semi-Synthetic, and went for a drive waiting for the 
car to warm up.

As it was warm I thought it would be good to check engine compression to see 
if the ATF has screwed my piston rings up or not.

Finally, compression was better all-around, about 1-2 bar more than last 
time I checked it in the same conditions (pretty new oil, engine at 
operating temp...) and very good anyway (all cylinders have between 13 and 
15 bars of compression, and had about 10.5 to 13 bars the last time) and I 
was pretty impressed to see such high compression figures for an engine with 
such a high mileage.

So I think ATF cleaned the dirt build-ups around the piston rings and as it 
seems that the car has been driven pretty calmly by the previous owners and 
hence the piston rings aren't worn up, this has gotten the engine in a 
better condition.

 >Are the lifters quiet right now? Maybe...they weren't very noisy before, 
but it seems that they are a little more right now.
 >Would I do it again? Definitely!

I'll do it before every oil change as it has proved that ATF has more 
detergents in it than regular oil, and it sems that ATF doesn't affect the 
oil's chemical properties, as other so-called engine-cleaners do, making 
them unsafe to run for a longer period of time than just before changing the 
oil, when the oil change schedule is affected by uncontrolled parameters 
such as weather of anything else...

The ATF I used was Dextron Type 2, pretty cheap, about 3 bucks for a liter ( 
a quart :) ) and a lot cheaper than the LubroMoly engine flush product 
(about 4 times more expensive!!!)

You can try it if you are sure that your piston rings are still ok, a 
leakdown test should be ok to be sure of that.

Regards,


Mihnea the Quattromaniac from Belgium.
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