I have a pretty good bulidup of oil sludge in my motor from ill-maintenance. Friend of mine says I can add 1 quart of tranny fluid to 4 quarts of motor oil to rememdy this when I change my oil... run it for a week, change oil and add tranny fluid again. Says I might need to do it 2 or 3 times. The cost of the oil is nill as I'm getting it for free. Will doing this cause any problems??? If not is there any specific type of tranny fluid I should use or stay away from??? THX.

You can do it but don't run it for a week. What you will want to do is put a new filter in and 4 quarts of oil. From there add 1 quart of ATF. Run it for the day and then change it. One thing to do is watch your oil pressure. By the end of the day change the oil and you should be good to go. You can do this as much as you want but it's a lot of money to do it every day until it's gone.

great, thx much.

Yeah it might hurt a motor if you leave it in too long.

I have a 78 El Camino 305 with only 344,000 miles on the engine. The timing gear failed at around 315,000 and had to be replaced, but the heads and even the intake have never been off. I've only been running ATF in the oil at intervals since 1986 or so, so it's probably too early to tell if a motor will last very long with that in it, but as soon as there's any indication of premature failure of anything, I'll be sure to post what happened. I'd recommend against holding your breath though.

Next time your motor is a quart low of oil, just add a quart of ATF instead. Change the oil within 1000 miles or so. You won't believe how nasty and black it will be, from all the gunk that the ATF will loosen up. Include a quart in the new oil (1 quart of ATF and 4 quarts rr whatever of oil), and leave it in for a normal oil change interval, or change it sooner if the oil starts looking really black again, from more grunge being dissolved and flushed out of the motor.

only 344,000 miles eh... well my engine isn't that new heheh, thats amazing. I have 200,000 km's on mine and really only need it to last another 15,000 at most. I was just wondering how fast using ATF could damage a motor. I guess if it really started to do any damage I would maybe hear it in a lifter? or see an oil pressure change? or temp raise?

I don't know... this car has only had the ATF in it for a total of maybe 50 or 60k miles out of its life.... not long at all. But if it starts showing any signs of premature wear or infant mortality or anything, I'll let you know. It's still in the break-in period.

Maybe you could consider the early timing set failure, at only 315,000 miles or thereabouts, to be "damage" from having the engine too clean inside. I know I was sure disgusted when it beoke (as was my wife, who was driving it at the moment). There wasn't any sign of the usual accumulated funk in it though, which was a good thing; most 150,000+ mile motors I've seen the inside of have looked pretty unpleasant to work on. This one wasn't bad at all.

It's not going to hurt your motor. Just do it. It works.

Great, I'm feeling much more confident about doing this now. Thanks for sharing your experience and input RB83L69.

I think what I'm going to do is run the motor for a week with 1 quart ATF in it, change the oil and repeat 2 or 3 times(probably change it,with just oil, again every 1000 kms a couple more times after again and then goto a normal chang over period). Im not needing a day and night different but I have the oil available at no cost and oil filters are cheap so I cant see any reason why it'd be a waste not to.

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C'mon, RB. Let's be fair. A low mileage engine like that is really no basis for comparison. You could probably do anything to it and it would still run. If you wanted to be fair, you'd have to use one of those really long-lasting cars, like Hondas, as a comparison, I hear they last forever. After all, Chevrolet has only been around for about 100 years, so what do they know about building durable engines, anyway?

As for your timing chain, it probably failed early as a result of a combination of factors - you got a defective unit, and a woman was driving it. (Sorry, ladies, but I'm being the stereotypic chauvinist on this one...slap me down - I asked for it). You never know what they're going to do to it. You have to constantly remind them to take it easy during that 400,000 mile break-in period. Maybe she's learned her lesson.

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As for the auto trans oil in the sump, yes, it works without damaging anything that wasn't already damaged. I've quieted bearing noise, lifters, and cleaned a lot of debris out with that method. Don't leave it in for more than 100 miles of easy driving. Make sure the engine gets plenty warm without loading it heavily while the trans oil is in, and drain it while it's hot. It's also a good way to get rid of that old stockpile of Type 'F' trans oil.

i have heard that you should only keep it in the car for like 30 minutes of engine run-time, then drian it.

either way though, i have heard that it works good.

-Brian

Definitely not six months. I'm blaming my Z's problems on 2 quarts of ATF and sitting for six months while I was out of state.

But I've done it forever with my RS (which has a hell of a lot more mileage than the Z) and never had a problem out of it. Put in the ATF the day before I do an oil change and run it to work and back.

To clean out the gunk build-up in engines, I've always drained the oil out, filled with a gallon of diesel and run the engine for about 5 minutes. That'll clear out the oil holes. Then I leave it in for a day (without running) and drain it out. Works a treat!

I've done the tranny fluid trick myself on a couple of the older engines i inherited, basically doing as RB said. I did blow up the LG4 in my 305 within a month of doing a tranny fluid flush (and 3500 of owning the car), but tough to blame on anything in particular. It was so crudded up when i got it that it could easily have been on the way out anyway. Or it could have been some chunks of the funk got lodged in oil passages blocking them off. I'm pretty sure the tranny fluid itself didn't hurt it though.

forget that! I use sea foam on all my engines! I had an old 350 once that I put in my race car. I changed the oil and it was instantly black and it lost oil pressure during the race day. it had so much crap in it I had to dig the oil passages out of the heads with a screwdriver! what I did was run it until it was warm, dump some sea foam in it, and them some more. I put about a half a can in and just let iit run for a half an hour. them I let the oil drain out all night. the next day I put new oil along with heavy duty lucas oil stabilizer and it stayed clean for 2 weekends of heavy racing.... go figure

what the hell is sea foam?????

-B

its a solition that breaks up carbon and gummy stuff. you can get it just about anywhere

Oh. You mean like clean synthetic lubricant? It dissolves carbon and gum as well - so much so that the "anti-synthetic" people claim it causes leaks.

And it lubricates much better than Sea Foam. I've seen Sea Foam used in everything from engines and manual and automatic transmissions to fuel systems to "clean" injectors, and as a penetrating fluid. Any highly distilled petroleum solvent (like gasoline) can do the same thing.

That's what I'm thinking on my Z28. It just sat like that for so long with the ATF then I ran it a few times when I brought the car up.

So true vader on the synthetic. After my 85 got stolen my parents picked me up a basket case 83 GP so i had something to drive to job interviews and such when i graduated college. Anyhow, the engine was pretty tired when i got it, bad valve seals and smoked pretty bad under load, leading me to believe the rings were getting tired too. Did a tranny fluid flush and it got a little better. Then ran a half synthetic mix in it from there and over the course of that oil change the smoking under load went away. My thinking was it must've had sticky rings, and the synthetic cleaned the lands enough to let them do their job again.