So I seem to have a leaky valve or two. I plan to rebuild my motor next fall / winter so Ive been looking into an oil additive to hold me over. There are a whole bunch of them that claim to stop leaks and restore compression, but has anyone tried any of them and noticed any improvements?

 

Leaky valve? You mean a leaking intake/exhaust valve? No oil additive is going to "fix" that.

 

Well Im not even sure its a leaking valve, thats just something thats been suggested. I know about the leak because i recently changed my spark plugs. Im not expecting it to perfectly fix the leak, just reduce it for a few months.

 

Suggestion by who? Sounds like you need to just forget what you heard, use regular oil and forget miracle fixes in a bottle (that dont work).

 

I always thought those were like bandaids?

 

Lucas oil stabilizer is a great product. It helps keep your oil from breaking down from heat. It will raise your hot oil pressure and calm some light knocks and rattles. It wont do any thing for a leaking valve because oil doesnt touch the sealing part of the valve. It would possibly slow oil burning from scratches in the cylinder walls and slow it from leaking past a bad valve seal. If youve got a leaking valve seal it will smoke after its been turned off for a little while and then clear uo after a few minutes of running. If it smokes all the time its the rings, Hope this helps.

 

Lucas oil stabilizer is a good product. I use a bottle in my race engine and have Lucas 75W90 in the diff.

I also know of people who have really bad engines including a bearing knock. Put lots of Lucas oil into the engine, quiets down the noises and they trade the car in. It won't fix the problem but it does a good job hiding it.

Lucas is an actual oil with polymers in it. All the other "additives" are just additives and never do what they claim. Even oil claims from Quaker State etc don't work as good as Lucas oil.