Valvoline Restore & Protect experiment

[Foggy]

it is in no way a scam. it is 100 plus octane race gas at the local gas station for less than 93 piss water petrol.

the 6.2 engines love it, it also cleans the top of pistons. now gm didn't spend the money to install a physical sensor on these trucks and trys to do the math off the reg o2 sensors which is mostly a failure. but that's not e85's fault.


just because you don't own a car that can take full advantage of e85, I hate seeing people shit on it. anyone with boost and a flex fuel sensor it's a god send.now if we would. remove the tariff on it and just sell it at the price Brazil sells it to us we would be set.

Definitely need a real alcohol sensor to run E85 (which is usually e70)..
These virtual fuel sensors that just use the O2's are so bad... I always reset
them whenever I'm doing work as they are usually very wrong
I was thinking about getting a real alch sensor on mine so I could run E every
once in a while to clean things up a bit. But overall I'm not a huge fan of ethanol,
but the turbo guys love it due to it's octane rating

 

[Marky Dissod]

I don’t use it much during the colder months but May to September I try to run 2 or 3 tankfuls.
Some say it might be more beneficial to run them back to back so I may give 2 a try and see.

Of course the benefit is cumulative, as it'd likely be with, say, Valvoline restore & Protect.
Also, the benefit during the winter months would be less, as it's only E51 during the winter, not really E85.

I bet '25% lower MpG with E85' is an oversimplification.
I wonder what if ethanol's city MpG penalty is worse or better than ethanol's highway MpG penalty.

 

[Airman68]

I used to be a field service guy and drove a service truck a lot, so I filled up my tank many times a week. Most had v-8 engines of all makes. I experimented with using E85. Usually... because the mileage with E85 was less, my rule of thumb was the E85 had to be at least 50 cents a gallon less to break even, dollar/mile. Most of the time I just used regular 10% because most stations didn't offer E85 at the time. Cant say I noticed any noticeable performance changes.

 

[rdezs]

Well here's the results of two oil changes with the Valvoline restore and protect. 193,224 miles, diving in to my neighbors 2012 L94, deleting AFM. I'm satisfied the Valvoline did some good. I'm sold on it Note the plugs we tapped into the oil towers.

 

[rdezs]

And here's what the oil pan looked like when we dropped it. Keep in mind this engine only had two oil changes with the Valvoline..... You can clearly see it was even working on cleaning the pan in the area where a lot of oil flowed down from the front. The very bottom of the sump was very clean aluminum, no sludge. Never seen that even on an LS with 90,000 miles.

 

[Tonyrodz]

Do you think the loosened sludge could gum up other internal areas? Like oil passages, push rods oil pump, oil pump pick up screen etc? Also what was the oil change intervals? I change mine every 2500-3000 miles. I do that on all of my vehicles.

 

[rdezs]

Oil change interval was between 4 and 5000 miles for the life of the vehicle. The the pickup screen was clean, as was the screen under the oil pressure sending unit. Haven't pulled off the oil pump yet, but I want to look in the relief valve to see if there's anything there. But so far it seems to have pretty much dissolved any deposits, instead of just breaking them loose. Timing cover and oil pump, etc coming off tomorrow with pictures.

 

[rdezs]

Doing this with my neighbor on his vehicle, he wants to learn so we have to coordinate our schedules. He did say he's been running 5W-30 full synthetic, multiple brands over the years. Running the standard AC Delco filters. He paid to have his transmission fluid and filter changed around 100,000 miles..... Omg, think we'll drop that pan and take a look when we're all done with the engine. He said the 6L80 has never missed a beat.

 

[j91z28d1]

while I've seen that nice orangeish red in just about everything engine I've ever seen inside of with any good amount of miles/hours on it. I used to consider that a happy well maintained engine and was happy to see it vs any build up or black gunk. I considered them totally different things.

but I can't argue that it's nice to see it clean that up even if I don't really see it as something leading to an issue. not seeing much down side to running this oil over anything else right now.

I hhope they don't double the price or something.

 

[homesick]

And here's what the oil pan looked like when we dropped it. Keep in mind this engine only had two oil changes with the Valvoline..... You can clearly see it was even working on cleaning the pan in the area where a lot of oil flowed down from the front. The very bottom of the sump was very clean aluminum, no sludge. Never seen that even on an LS with 90,000 miles.
View attachment 453388

Am I missing something here? Where's your 'before' picture?

joe

 

[j91z28d1]

Am I missing something here? Where's your 'before' picture?

joe

I doubt he pulled the pan for a before. but just seeing the middle clean and outside normal looking vransh says a lot.

 

[Marky Dissod]

'Too far before' would be a brand new engine, of course.
To steelman the argument, the LONG-TERM goal is an engine that looks brand new.

Keep using it. That's what I'm gonna do.

 

[rdezs]

No before picture needed if you've ever cracked open an LS engine. Normally well before 100,000 miles it has that nice gold hue to it. Nothing wrong with that, pretty normal. And if there's been any lapse in oil changes, especially if not using synthetic, it's pretty common to find some sludge the very bottom of the oil pan. Sometimes baked on really hard. For the mileage on this motor, it actually looks really good inside. The evidence for the Valvoline is the areas that are too clean.... You would never see those even on a well-running engine as this was. The heads were also quite clean, while the push rods themselves didn't appear to benefit from the Valvoline. The lower half of the push rods definitely had some carbon build up on them. No extremely clean areas on them. Nothing remarkable about the lifters. They basically looked like they should. The inside of the timing cover tomorrow should have something to say, with a chain slinging the oil around the inside of the cover.

By the way, that clean streak from the front of the oil pan? Really made me wonder about the oil pressure relief valve on the oil pump, and how much oil it dumps out. The o-ring on the pickup tube was pretty well squared out. Pick up to freely dropped out of the pump..... With the o-ring staying put up in the pump. Here's a couple different angles of that o-ring, along with a comparison of the new OEM one will be installing.

 

[Tonyrodz]

No before picture needed if you've ever cracked open an LS engine. Normally well before 100,000 miles it has that nice gold hue to it. Nothing wrong with that, pretty normal. And if there's been any lapse in oil changes, especially if not using synthetic, it's pretty common to find some sludge the very bottom of the oil pan. Sometimes baked on really hard. For the mileage on this motor, it actually looks really good inside. The evidence for the Valvoline is the areas that are too clean.... You would never see those even on a well-running engine as this was. The heads were also quite clean, while the push rods themselves didn't appear to benefit from the Valvoline. The lower half of the push rods definitely had some carbon build up on them. No extremely clean areas on them. Nothing remarkable about the lifters. They basically looked like they should. The inside of the timing cover tomorrow should have something to say, with a chain slinging the oil around the inside of the cover.

By the way, that clean streak from the front of the oil pan? Really made me wonder about the oil pressure relief valve on the oil pump, and how much oil it dumps out. The o-ring on the pickup tube was pretty well squared out. Pick up to freely dropped out of the pump..... With the o-ring staying put up in the pump. Here's a couple different angles of that o-ring, along with a comparison of the new OEM one will be installing.

View attachment 453400

View attachment 453401

View attachment 453402

View attachment 453403

So oil pressure was still good? Or a little low?

 

[rdezs]

He was running between 15 and 20 psi hot oil pressure at idle coming off a freeway run. Said it was running 31 PSI at 70 mph. So I'd call that on the low side. (Although GM might disagree) As part of his AFM delete, will be plugging the oil pressure relief valve in the pan and going with a Melling 10296 with the +10 PSI spring installed. He's keeping VVT, so we have a GM OEM L92 camshaft ready to go in. We already plugged the oil towers with steel plugs, and he bought a flat valley cover. He turned off his AFM with a Diablo tuner about a year ago, so we're just doing the hardware change. The condition of the cam bearings will determine if we end up pulling the motor. (Which is really easy to do with the heads off. Those top bell housing bolts are like right there.) His LS7 lifters with the gold clips arrived last week..... We're holding off on pushrods till we get some measurements after bolting the head down.

 

[rdezs]

You know, I'm always reading about people doing their AFM delete in the driveway..... Weather permitting, it's doable. But we're in a semi rural area and most of us have at least a two-bay shop. And the other Bay has two sawhorses with two 4-ft x 8 ft sheets of plywood with all the new parts laid out, as well as a lot of parts that came off. The space requirement to do this takes up some real estate if you want to stay organized, and have a couple workbenches to use for things like replacing the rocker arm trunnion bearings, and replacing the u-joints in the front drive shaft while you have it out. So a driveway is doable, but you want the space in the garage to lay out all your parts and stay organized. He's a body man by trade, so in exchange for doing this with him we're going to paint my Jeep CJ7

 

[rdezs]

I'm real curious to open up his oil pump relief valve. Many times I found the OEM relief valve has what appears to be casting sand collected in it.... In many cases it has either resulted in the relief valve sticking and losing oil pressure, or doing so intermittently. It reminds me of the problem Ford had with their 6.0 powerstrokes and casting sand collecting in the oil cooler housing. Basically from not cleaning the blocks off well enough before assembly. I'm curious if the Valvoline cleans well, how much crud will be in that relief valve? Will know tomorrow....

 

[rdezs]

On a side note.... I've only found those grains of what appear to be sand in the GM OEM oil pumps on the iron block engines. Haven't ran into that on an aluminum block engine yet.

 

[rdezs]

The real estate I was referring to and trying to keep organized for an AFM delete:

Clearly do not use your wife's kitchen countertops or dining room table.... There's a bunch of other stuff on the floor like the front differential, exhaust manifolds, the old radiator which is getting replaced, alternator, crossmember and oil pan.

Everyone likes pictures, right? Here's what one of the roller lifters looks like on the roller. 192,000 miles, still looks good.

 

[rdezs]

The push rods, the lower half have residue on them. Nothing extreme, but not as clean as the oil pan and the top of the heads