it's not an urban legend

[Per Lindgren]

I have tried it once, but I'm reluctant to doing it again.

The car I tried it on was a 1992 Audi 100 2.8 with 195.000 kms on the
meter. The oil looked like crude and the lifters were ticking like a
clock maker's shop. So I poured in about 1/4 quart of ATF and driove the
car for 2 minutes. The engine was now very quiet, and after the oil
change the new oil was very clean. It didnt take a long time before I
started to notice something wasnt right. I lost the oil pressure when
doing sharp turns, so I pulled the dipstick. It was dry!

What I guess happened was that while the ATF washed out all of the
sludge, it also washed out some of the sludge that had become seals in
areas with low oil flow. Because of the sludge being washed out, it
started to burn oil, and it could empty the oil pan in about 1500 kms.
The weird thing is that I could not smell any burnt oil from the
exhaust, there was no oil leaks, and there was no oil in the water.
Still, it dissapeared.

After owning it for a few months, I sold it to an unsuspecting soul, and
luckily I have never heard from him since.

PerL
87 Cq (with noisy lifters)


Tessie McMillan wrote:

>I just wanted to pass this along. I had asked if any of you had ever heard
>of using ATF to clean a dirty engine prior to an oil change. Most of you
>said "DON'T DO IT, TESS!", or "ONLY DO IT TO AN ALFA!!"  I couldn't help
>myself and decided to give it a try.
>
>First I drove around for a while to heat up the oil, then drained the oil
>but left the old filter (NOT a FRAM) in. I then added a mixture of ATF and
>Redline and drove around for a while. Wow I wanted to leave that stuff in
>there, the engine sounded so good. After about 20 minutes, drained that
>out of the engine, and because it looked so incredibly sludgy, I poured a
>little Mobil 1 in and started the engine again, then drained all that out
>again. It was nice and clean this time. I removed the filter. I
>replaced with my Mobil 1 synthetic and a new filter (NOT a FRAM) and the
>engine ran like a champ! This is my '88 80Q with about 130k miles on it.
>
>There you have it, not an urban legend. And when I described the
>technique to my Alfa buddies they said it was a well-known method.
>HA! Whoever told me to do it to my Alfa was a sneaky devil.
>
>Tess
>
>
>