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Every time I go Jiffy Lube or Quick Lube I often get asked if I want to get an engine flush. I never have, but what do you think of this? Is it worth the money or is it a scam to get ignorant car people like me to spend more?
Never take your vehicle to jiffy lube in the first place they are a butcher shop for vehicles, they hire teenagers for min wage and don’t know what they are doing it’s li taking your vehicle to Walmart and letting them work on your vehicle. Go to a reputable garage or the dealer.
Engine flush has nothing to do with the oil...it your cooling system!! Yes you should, I do mine every fall then put fresh antifreeze in!!
Actually they have a chemical to do engine flushes. And my take on that...
The old school way was to throw a quart of trans fluid in the oil and let it idle for 10 minutes drain and fill with new oil. They have a motor flush which is basically the same thing.
As long as you change your oil I wouldn’t waste the money on anything like that. You’re better off stepping up to a synthetic oil
Whether you're talking about a coolant flush or a crankcase flush... either way this is a relic of a bygone era. Totally unnecessary in any modern vehicle and far more likely to cause problems than prevent them.
Just for the sake of discussion, let's run with the wild assumption that Jiffylube could even flush an engine or cooling system in a correct and non-destructive manner. If the engine or cooling system is sludged to the point where a flush would accomplish *anything* of value, then the vehicle already has problems WAY beyond the scope of what jiffylube could possibly repair.
Any why would anyone who wants reliable transportation take their vehicle to juffylube or the like in the first place??
Unless you're just into screwing up your engine, NEVER put a flush in the oil, EVER. These flushes work by stripping lubrication- that's how they work. Might as well run the engine with no oil or like one moron that I'm aware of. He had a relatively new Ram hemi and decided it needed a flush. He got advice from the internet and followed their instructions to the letter. He destroyed his engine. The flush......he used a small bottle of Dawn and 4 quarts of water. While you might laugh, there's not a lot of difference between the Dawn and bottles of flush. Both strip lubrication. If you think the engine needs a cleaning out, synthetic oil won't do it. Back when you could buy a GP IV based oil, it had more solvency than a conventional oil. But there aren't anymore GP IV oils unless you want to get into boutique oils that cost 12-15 bucks a qt. You can get a great cleaning using any HDEO motor oil. An HDEO would be like Rotella, Delo, or DelVac. You would want to use a 10w-30 or the 15w-40 and skip the other viscosities like a 5w-40. Primarily though, no engine really needs a flush. If the engine has been neglected, use a quality oil like Pennzoil Yellow Bottle, and change every 3000 miles for the next 3 changes. It will slowly clean the internals and you won't have chunks floating around in the engine doing damage like a flush would do. And NEVER put the likes of Seafoam in the oil. It's 15% IPA. IPA stands for IsoPropyl Alcohol. Alcohol will damage and destroy seals and do it in a hurry. Yet another snake oil additive that needs to go away.
Unless you're just into screwing up your engine, NEVER put a flush in the oil, EVER. These flushes work by stripping lubrication- that's how they work. Might as well run the engine with no oil or like one moron that I'm aware of. He had a relatively new Ram hemi and decided it needed a flush. He got advice from the internet and followed their instructions to the letter. He destroyed his engine. The flush......he used a small bottle of Dawn and 4 quarts of water. While you might laugh, there's not a lot of difference between the Dawn and bottles of flush. Both strip lubrication. If you think the engine needs a cleaning out, synthetic oil won't do it. Back when you could buy a GP IV based oil, it had more solvency than a conventional oil. But there aren't anymore GP IV oils unless you want to get into boutique oils that cost 12-15 bucks a qt. You can get a great cleaning using any HDEO motor oil. An HDEO would be like Rotella, Delo, or DelVac. You would want to use a 10w-30 or the 15w-40 and skip the other viscosities like a 5w-40. Primarily though, no engine really needs a flush. If the engine has been neglected, use a quality oil like Pennzoil Yellow Bottle, and change every 3000 miles for the next 3 changes. It will slowly clean the internals and you won't have chunks floating around in the engine doing damage like a flush would do. And NEVER put the likes of Seafoam in the oil. It's 15% IPA. IPA stands for IsoPropyl Alcohol. Alcohol will damage and destroy seals and do it in a hurry. Yet another snake oil additive that needs to go away.
Just want to clarify I did not mean to sound like I said to use synthetic oil to flush. I meant to switch to synthetic as the cost difference between regular oil and flush agent would equal the cost of synthetic oil.
And synthetic oil is really not that expensive considering the longer change intervals.
I have never used any additives to any of my engine fluids. Be it coolant, oil or any other. And I refuse to let any quick change joint touch my vehicle.
I have an old, creaky engine with about 240K miles on it. The first time I flushed it, oh my, the
tar-black gunk that came out of the engine was pretty crazy. After the flush, oil-change and adding 1 quart of Duralube, it runs quieter and cooler.
Engine flush has nothing to do with the oil...it your cooling system!! Yes you should, I do mine every fall then put fresh antifreeze in!!
I know this is an old post, but I hope nobody took the advice of this poster.
Most modern cars need the coolant system flushed every 100,000 miles per manufacturer specs. Changing it every year is just flushing $100s of dollars down the toilet each time.
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