On this episode of Drive Radio: The Extra Mile, John Rush and Luke Cashman go deep on one of the most confusing parts of car care: additives. John breaks down what’s legit, what’s marketing fluff, and what can actually cause problems if you pour the wrong thing into the wrong vehicle.
They start with fuel—why Top Tier gasoline exists, why pump-added “extra cleaners” usually aren’t worth it, and how to think about price vs quality at the station. John also shares real-world guidance on BG 44K for injector/combustion cleaning and BG Supercharge for fuel stability—especially for classic cars and equipment
SPEAKER 04 :
This is Drive Radio, The Extra Mile, with your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 02 :
And welcome back. Another edition of Drive Radio, The Extra Mile. And again, thank you all for listening. I appreciate it greatly. I know you do because I get text messages in during this particular program. Yes, Luke Cashman and I record this program earlier in the week. This happens to be Tuesday that we’re recording the Saturday edition. So for those of you that want to know kind of what the time frame is like, and it’s actually beautiful. We should be outside instead of inside. But anyways, it’s a really nice day. And for those of you that are listening to us, we appreciate it greatly. Drive Radio, The Extra Mile, heard every Saturday right here on KLZ. And for those of you listening now, you know it’s 3 to 4 p.m. Those of you that don’t, maybe you’re listening to a replay. The main number one time we actually air this program is, again, Saturday, 3 to 4 p.m. And then, of course, if you want to listen to the replays, you can. And you can always go to our website, drive-radio.com. Listen to Drive Radio there. You can listen to The Extra Mile as well. And today’s topic, and I say this all the time, if there’s a topic you want me to cover, please let me know. Today we’re going to cover additives across the board. And this topic came from you guys. Somebody texted me a week ago and said, hey, you know, a topic for the extra mile, especially when it’s cold out and there’s all the different information and honestly, lots of misinformation when it comes to additives. Is that a particular topic you’d be willing to cover? And I said, yeah. And Luke and I talked about this even before the show today. And I’m like, man, I don’t know if I can do. full hour on just additives so you guys all you know bear with me i think i’ve broken it up enough to where i can get you know right where i can stretch this out and not sound too boring and i’ll have luke ask some questions as well but i think we can we can handle this and i will say that i think additives in general because of lots of just marketing and things that have happened all through the years. I mean, I’ve been in this industry since I was a young man, a young boy, actually. I was 10, 11 years of age, and remember even the additive end of things prior to that. So, I mean, I’ve been around this stuff for a long, long time, and there has been – I mean, really good, solid additives. I’ll talk about some of those today. There’s that. And honestly, folks, there has been a lot of what I would call snake oil that has been sold throughout the years as well. And lots of claims of additives, you know, that would do X, Y, Z. And in some cases, they couldn’t do any of that. Some people have even been, you know, companies have been sued over certain things and so on. And so before I get going, let me say this right off the bat. Because any time you would hear an additive company make a claim along these lines, it’s something to run from. And that is, you know, we impregnate the metal, and we will do X, Y, Z, and blah, blah, blah, and that’s how our additives work. And, folks, nothing. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I’m not a chemist, so let me just get that out, you know, straight out there. But what I can tell you is I know for a fact that oil and or additives do not impregnate oil, or do not impregnate metal. You can coat… So, for example, back in World War II, a lot of things were shipped. They used to ship entire Jeeps and parts and so on, and they would put cosmoline, like a wax, on top of all of the parts that they had fear of rusting at that time so that when they arrived, you’d take the cosmoline off, you’d have a nice good part, you’d put everything together, and off you’d go. So you can coat a metal part to not have it rust and have it last longer, but But nothing impregnates the oil. And there’s lots of examples of what I’m talking about here whereby you would know that that’s the case. But any time a company, an additive company, Slick 50 back in the day used to have this big claim that they impregnated the oil and so on and so forth. And frankly, they got sued because that was false advertisement because no, oil does not impregnate metal. Not in the case of a of a engine and the way things work internally and so on, no, it’s not impregnating. And the other reason why I can say that is I have seen, you know, just raw metal. They’ll coat that raw metal. They’ll try to get something on it, you know, sometimes even an oily surface. But eventually, if left outside… long enough, with just regular rain and the elements and so on, that coating goes away, and that metal will start to rust. It’s a simple fact. Point being, nothing impregnates the metal. If there is something out there, and one of you want to share that with me, I am all ears, but I have yet to see any additive that ever does that. Now, the other thing I will also tell you is, If there’s a claim to fame on this, it’s also wrong and run. There’s no engine fix in a can. So anytime you see, oh, yeah, we’ve got this additive and it’ll all of a sudden, you know, it’ll fix a leak and it’ll seal up the engine and it’ll make the rings work better and this, that and the other. Now, I’ll talk about rings and so on with some of the additives that are out there that I talk about on Drive Radio. But there’s no fix it, you know, engine fix it in a can. And a lot of folks think there is. And back in the day, there was even some additives out there that were super thick. It was almost like adding 98 oil to your engine. And essentially, all those were doing was thickening up the oil enough to where if you had any kind of internal oil, you know bearing issues or even a seal you’re thickening the oil up so much that it was in fact helping to some extent along those lines with modern engines today and the way the internals work and the fact that we have adjustable cams and all sorts of other things going on inside of the engine you can’t do that anymore it just it’s not it’s not feasible it’s in fact you would damage the engine in doing that so again that old saying if it sounds too good to be true it is And Luke, I’m going to throw this to you for just a minute, because you’ve seen, you know, you’re not a car guy. I mean, you are a little bit, I guess I could say, but you’re not me. And yet you see a lot of these ads and a lot of the claim to fame, you know, on these particular products as well.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, definitely a little bit. I think I see it the most in gas stations. I think that’s the biggest thing for me. And for a while, I didn’t know what it was. Driving down the road, you have a Shell gas station on your left. It’s $0.10, $0.15, $0.20 more than the Conoco on the right. What’s going on? Why are these people all going to the gas station that’s more expensive? Well, apparently Shell adds a little something to their mix.
SPEAKER 02 :
It’s top tier fuel.
SPEAKER 01 :
I don’t know if that’s, you know.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ll explain that. No, that’s a great question.
SPEAKER 01 :
If that’s a big, you know, if it’s worth the 20 cents more, but that’s what I see the most.
SPEAKER 02 :
And Luke just brought up a great question. In fact, I could start with that because we could start on the fuel sides of things. And, again, I think I can cover – I’ve got enough time here to cover all of this. And, in fact, we may find this being one of those topics that we actually run out of time on. I’ll see how this all goes. But we’re going to break this up into – what I’m going to try to do is break it up into – we’ll now talk fuel. I’ll do this first segment in fuel. And then I will do my best to kind of break it up into engine and transmission and kind of that end of things. But the fuel is a big deal. And the reality is, and folks, I mean this, the reality is, yes, there is a difference in the quality of fuel, very much so. And the reality is, You get what you pay for in a lot of cases. And what I mean by that is, let me explain. When you go and do what Luke is talking about, where you end up at a particular service station or filling station, I won’t name names, but you’ll see some of them where, especially at grocery stores, whereby you’ll have the ability to add an ad pack to that particular fuel now again to me uh if you’re buying really good fuel there’s no need to add any additives now i get it they’re trying to add you know everything from uh you know a fuel injector cleaner and different things along those lines are trying to sell you on that and i am one where if you’re going to do anything along those lines and i’ll talk about some of this during this particular segment you’re better off to just buy the right additive that you know is going to take care of whatever it is you’re looking to do in your vehicle, for your vehicle, I guess is the way I should say that, Luke, and then do that accordingly. Having additives added at the pump that aren’t already in the fuel, yeah, not my recommendation. In fact, I tell people on Drive Radio this all the time. Realistically, buy… The fuel that works best for your vehicle, and we always recommend top tier. And if you want to know about top tier, you can go read about it. Now, top tier fuel, gasoline, and they’re now starting to even do that on the diesel side. But top tier on gasoline came around a long time ago from the manufacturers, from the car manufacturers. So I think the thing to look at here is, you know, what is top tier fuel and why is it so different than other fuels? Because the manufacturers at one point in time got together and said, listen, we need some consistency. And I grew up during this time. we need some consistency in the fuel that we’re getting so that we can quote unquote and i’m being very broad here but i we can tune the car to a particular fuel, and we know the engine and everything in the vehicle will run properly when doing so. And I grew up in a time where fuel went through lots of changes. Some of it was really decent. Some of it was awful. And even the decent fuel isn’t honestly what we have today. That’s the other thing most people don’t understand. We actually do have better fuel today than we did. What happened is when they started to take lead out of gasoline, and they were trying to get the formula for unleaded all dialed in. They struggled, and I’ll be straight up honest. They were struggling, struggling to make it so that the car wouldn’t vapor lock and all sorts of issues along those lines. And so the manufacturers came along, and I don’t know exactly what the date is, but they came along, got together, and said, listen, again, we need some consistency. And the fuel that we’re being delivered that we can recommend to our customers so that we know when we’ve got some sort of a drivability problem with the car. And if we ask the customer are using top tier fuel, we at least know, hey, we’ve got a good starting point on looking at the diagnostic side of things and then moving forward. If they were using, you know, quote unquote, crap fuel. Well, the dealership had a problem with trying to. to establish a baseline, if you would, on that particular vehicle and on that particular scenario. So they got together, came up with top tier, established some baselines with the fuel companies that you need to meet these particular line items, let me say it that way. And if you do, your fuel can be labeled top tier. And top tier became really, grew, became a bigger and bigger deal to the point now to where all of your, and I mean this, all of your top rated fuel stations including Costco. So Costco, I think Valero’s in it, Shell, Philips, Exxon, you get the drift. All of the top guys, they are using what we call top tier fuel. Now, some of your what I call cut rate stations, they are not using top tier fuel. And that’s where you’re typically going to find, hey, would you like these particular additives added into the fuel to essentially make it what top tier would be? And if you do the math, you’d be better off just going down the road, get top tier fuel in the first place. And for a lot of you that have grocery store points, in a lot of cases, the shell stations that are nearby the grocery store, I’ll just say it, King Soopers Kroger, if you go look at a shell station nearby, it will still give you the same discount and the ability to put in your King Soopers code, your phone number basically, and still get some sort of a discount and earn points over time if you’d like for fuel. No, it’s not as substantial as what you would get at King Soopers itself. But personally, I wouldn’t fill up with – I don’t ever use King Soopers gas. I just don’t. And it’s nothing against King Soopers or any of the other stations like that. I want to put the top-rated fuel in my vehicle at all times. So I want the best additives. I want that top-tier status. There was an article put out here recently from Porsche. so if any of you know porsche and what they make and the high-end cars and so on you kind of understand you know what the scoop is there and reality is even porsche’s come out of late within the last six months with a big article on why do we recommend top-tier fuel keep in mind most of their engines are turbocharged and so on and that that lays into a whole nother topic that i’ll do my best to get into again When I first told Luke we were going to do this, I’m like, I don’t know if I’ve got enough material to cover a full hour. Well, we’re almost done with this first segment, and I haven’t even got into oil additives and all of that yet. So, yes, we’re going to have plenty of material along these lines. So on the fuel additive sides of things, yes, I do think there’s some fuel additives you should use on a routine basis. On Drive Radio, we talk about the BG products, and that’s mainly what I’m going to talk about today. Now, are there other products out there that are just as good as BG? I think there are. I think there’s some other top rated additives that are out there that do a really good job. They’ve done really great testing on things. Lucas, Justice Brothers, there’s some other brands out there that are very strong. I happen to be a BG guy just because I’ll be straight up honest. They were a sponsor of mine for years. And not only that, but I have been around BG since I can remember. And that’s because I grew up in a dealership that used BG products. And literally, I have seen the logo. And I’m not exaggerating. I’ve seen the BG logo for as long as I can remember. Because my dad would wear it on his jacket with me growing up. So by the time I was four or five years of age and was looking at him, I remember the pen protectors and his jacket and the pencils and the pens, I should say, and the little flathead screwdrivers, the pocket screwdrivers, all of those had BG on them. Because that’s what we used as a dealership. So part of my fondness of BG is because it’s been around that long. I’ve seen their products work in action over all of these years. And I know what they do. And I sold them, I use them, I still do. So it’s a product that I fully believe in. So you’re going to probably hear me refer more to the bg product line than probably any other brand that doesn’t mean that there isn’t other brands out there that work it’s just i know the bg products i know the bg product line and i’ve got extreme faith 100 faith and confidence in the products that they make mainly because i know how long they’ve been around and how much more development they keep coming out with when it comes to the additive so when it comes to fuel BG makes a product called – there’s two products. There’s SuperCharge and 44K. For actual cleaning of the engine, you know, the top – wherever fuel would hit. Let me say it this way. If you’re trying to clean anything the fuel hits, injectors and so on, that’s 44K. And it’s recommended, depending upon the vehicle that you have, to use it either – uh twice a year or in sometimes three times a year depending upon your oil change intervals and the type of engine that you have direct injection engines require a little bit more cleaning because of the configuration of the engine i’m not getting into that today because literally i could do an entire hour on it on direct injection engines all by itself so i’m not going down that path but if you’ve got certain vehicles and you can ask me specific questions on that send me a text 307 200, 82, 22. And I can tell you what types of products you should be using in your vehicle at that particular time. And again, we talk about a lot of that on drive radio on a regular basis. But when it comes to gasoline additives, use top tier fuel and then add a can of 44K at least twice a year. So every six months for some of you, depending upon what you’re driving. And if you have a direct injection engine, every oil change. And it’s going to sound like a little bit of overkill to some, but really it’s not. And the 44K is a great product. It’s designed to be put in and then drive the vehicle. Don’t put it in and let it sit. Put it in and drive it. The other mistake people make on 44K is if you’ve got a large gas tank like on a full-size pickup truck, you may need two cans. in that fuel system instead of one if it’s full now if you run a half a tank you can run a can just look at the label i mean as with anything read the instructions guys ladies do this all the time but guys read the instructions and put the can you know put the necessary additive in for the amount of fuel you have in the truck at that given time and utilize it that way so yeah that’s the way to do that and yes i’m a big one on 44k now i’m going to slip this in really quick i’ve got time i believe the supercharged product from bg which by the way i believe this particular product I don’t know that there’s another product out that works as well as this. This is one of those where I feel like they have one-upped everybody else. They’re supercharged product, which is more of a fuel kind of maintenance product you can put in literally every tank if you want to. But for a lot of you guys that have hot rods, classic cars, snowblowers, lawnmowers, any place you might have fuel sitting, for any length of time in something, again, a can, a snowblower, a lawnmower, a vehicle, motorcycle, whatever. If you know you’re gonna have fuel sitting for an extended length of time, treat it with supercharge. And I personally, and this is my own personal testimony, have used that in my classic car, in my 68 Buick Grand Sport, which is a vented fuel system, meaning air’s getting into the fuel, meaning it deteriorates faster than a non-vented system does. I have gone as long as two plus years. with original fuel with bg supercharged and not had that fuel varnish that’s how well that particular product works so why do i believe in bg i just gave you another example not only is a 44k one of the best products on the market when it comes to cleaning injectors and doing things on the top end of the engine but their supercharged product when it comes to keeping fuel stable and using it even around the house for some of you again that have just different types of equipment and things like that where you may have fuel that actually sits in something a little longer than you would like you have the ability to actually use that supercharge and extend the life of that fuel for quite some time so all right that’s it for segment one i might have a little bit more along those lines when we come back but we’re going to take a quick break we’ll come back here in just one minute this is drive radio the extra mile right here on klz 560.
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SPEAKER 04 :
This program was recorded earlier for broadcast at this time. No phone calls can be accepted.
SPEAKER 02 :
We are back. Drive Radio, The Extra Mile, right here on KLZ 560. And again, thank you so much for listening to us. I can’t say that enough. This hour is building, and we’re getting more and more engagement, I guess is what I should say. And I always need to remind people, if there’s a particular topic, something you don’t really understand, or maybe you’ve got a… neighbor or a co-worker or something where you know you heard something and you just don’t understand exactly how such-and-such works you know what that’s what this particular hour is for we call it the extra mile because we can go the extra mile with a topic and really delve into things. Like today, we’re talking about additives. And literally, I can do much, much more in this particular time frame than I can in Drive Radio. And again, nothing against all of you that call in. We love calls on Saturdays. That’s a live call-in show. That’s why we do that. There’s a reason we do it that way. It’s perfect. And reality is this works in that manner so point being if you’ve got something you want us to talk about send me a text message like today’s program is and all you have to do is send me a text message and i’ll work that you can also send me an email by the way some of you do that as well send me an email and that’s easy as well and the text line 307 200 82 22 307 200 82 22 and then again you can go to drive hyphen radio dot com all right with the first segment of today’s program the extra mile i did on fuel now i can talk a lot more about fuel and the stability of and all sorts of things along those lines but really the the bottom line is what we have to do is use top-tier fuel. You should do, I should say, but it includes all of us. Top-tier fuel. Do what I talked about with 44K, and if you’ve got something where you’ve got a classic car or something like that where it’s going to sit for a while, go ahead and put some BG Supercharge. But really, when it comes to fuel additives… All of the other advertisements that you see, and I wanted to add this during the first segment, so let me do this here. I should have mentioned this earlier, too, to Luke. If you see an ad for, you know, pour this in and get two miles to the gallon extra. Yeah, no. Folks, it’s not happening. You know, do this and see this boost in power, or do this and see this result. Typically, you’re not going to see any results in doing that at all. So at the end of the day… just use good fuel. And, you know, something else on the good fuel sides of things, you know, you buy it from reputable distributors as well. And what I mean by that is, again, nothing against, I get it, people are trying to save money and so on. But, you know, there are some of these like little fly-by-night corner stations where you have the foggiest idea what even the tanks look like under the ground. And You know, what kind of contamination do they, you know, may they have and, and, and. I mean, there are just places I look at and I’m like, you know, unless I was desperate, I’m not buying fuel there. I mean, if it was the last place to buy fuel and you had no choice, then maybe I would do that. And this is a note, by the way, for some of you that even do road trips and things like that. Try to, there’s apps now. Plan ahead. where your stops are going to be so you don’t end up with that rinky dink, you know, fuel station where you have no idea what kind of fuel you’re actually going to be putting in to your vehicle. So, all right, that’s enough for the fuel sides of things. You can always ask me questions. And by the way, a lot of you do. And the other thing that I could probably spend a bunch of time on is just the difference in octane. What does it mean? What should you run in your vehicle? I get questions on that continually. And that’s one of those where it’s really vehicle specific. So if you have a question when it comes to octane, Please send me a text message. I can help you out with your individual vehicle and do it that way. It’s really that simple. Okay, let’s talk about oil, engine oil in this particular case. Now, this applies to really all oils, I guess you could say. And again, this gets really specific to specific vehicles because we’ve entered into a day and age now whereby it used to be, and I know because I was a shop owner for years and years and years, and I remember even growing up in the dealership, you had two weights of oil you carried. That was all you did. That’s all you had, two weights. Back then, we had 1040 and 2050. Now, that’s a long time ago because 1040 and 2050 is hardly even sold anymore, but those are the two types of oils that were sold back when I was a kid. Now, there’s a plethora of. I mean, I can’t even rattle off how many different weights of oil You know, there are today from zero weight to five to 10. Yes, there’s still some 20 weight oils for certain applications and so on. 15 weight for diesel engines and so on. But there is a plethora of to the point now where the majority of shops used to be in a shop. You’d have bulk oil and you’d even see the reels and stuff. You still see that in some auto shops or some dealerships whereby they may work on only one or two types of vehicles. So I was at the Porsche dealership a while back. There was an event there I went to one night, and they had all the reels and everything. I’m thinking, yeah, this probably works here because the type of vehicles that they’re working on, there’s probably only one or two viscosities of oil that they’re using for that particular brand. And in that case, that works fine. In an independent auto shop where they’re working on a lot of different brands, it’s getting harder and harder to have bulk oil. And the reason for that is because, again, all of the plethora of choices, not choices, the plethora of oils you have to use. It’s not a choice. It’s mandatory that you use that oil in that car, in that engine. And if it’s a new car and you don’t, you’re going to avoid your warranty. And if it’s an older car and you don’t, you’re probably going to have problems because the manufacturer designed that vehicle to run with that particular oil. Now, there’s some variations, and I’ve talked about that on Drive Radio in the past as how some of that works. But at the end of the day, you need to use the specific oil that is required for your vehicle. What does the oil do, by the way? I think that’s something that I don’t know that anybody really ever talks about because they know that an engine has to have oil, has to have lubrication, or it doesn’t work properly. And the thing to remember about oil, and this is where the additive thing comes into play. So what the oil does in an engine is, number one, all engines today are pressurized. Way back in the early days of engines, they weren’t pressurized. They used what they called a splash system. The crankshaft would roll down. It would splash oil up. It would kind of collect in different parts of the engine, and it would keep things lubricated that way. But the reality is that’s why engines didn’t last super long. Because they weren’t pressurized. Lo and behold, they figured out, wait a minute, we can put an oil pump in a different type of oil filter, and we can pressurize the engine, meaning we can get better oil control into different places that really need better oil and better flow, and we can make an engine last longer. And once that pressurization started, well, man, it has expanded from there greatly, and every engine today made better. is a pressurized engine meaning it’s got an oil pump with a filter and that oil pump is driving the oil pushing the oil it’s picking it up there’s a sump in the oil pan some dry sump systems are different but for the average vehicle on the road today there’s an oil pan and the oil is stored there and recirculated and falls down into that area I guess you could say That’s why you have to have multi-quart capacities because the engine itself takes a certain amount, and then you always want to have a reserve down in that pan that’s being sucked up by the oil pump, pressurizing, pushing that out pressurization-wise into the rest of the engine and really oiling everything from camshafts and the valve train to the piston, not the pistons itself, but the crankshaft, camshaft, all of that. So anything that’s rotating, or even in some cases rubbing against one another, like a rocker arm does. They don’t rotate, but they are rubbing against the valve. In those cases, you need lubrication. Because we all know that if you don’t have lubrication between two metal parts, what happens? They wear out. In fact, they not only wear out, but they flake off completely. grind on one another, if you would, and you end up with metal particulates there now that are in the oil. And once that happens, that becomes more damaging because it’s like sandpaper that you’re now throwing through the engine. So now it’s making everything worse because those metal filings are there. So, yes, you need good lubrication. What people don’t understand, though, in most engines, all engines, is… There’s no surfaces that are running metal to metal. There’s that thin film of oil that’s always there as a layer of cushion. Let’s say it that way. So crankshaft and the bearings that are there. The bearing is there to… to provide the proper clearance and everything, and it’s the right material to whereby when that oil is injected into that area, literally it’s floating on this film of oil. It will wear on the bearing a little bit at times, but it’s really designed to really ride on that film of oil. And if you looked at it microscopically, you’d see it that way. It’s hard to see in a rotating mass that’s running at 3, 4, 10,000 RPM, depending upon the engine and the application. But literally, it’s running on a little film of oil, a cushion, if you would, to keep those metal parts from running onto one another, metal to metal. And on top of that, the oil helps cool. Because remember, an engine is not only creating heat, because of the fact that there’s a fire inside of it. We all kind of forget that sometimes, but that combustion chamber, every single time that the spark plug fires, It’s a fire. We call it firing because you’re creating a fire, an explosion. It’s called combustion. It’s what’s pushing the piston down, which is giving you the ability to actually drive the wheels on the car. It’s because of that momentum, that crankshaft being pushed down, that you’re able then to move forward with the vehicle. So there is an explosion happening. So when you start that car, you’ve literally started a little fire. And if it’s a four-cylinder, there’s four fires. Or if it’s a six-cylinder, there’s six. If it’s an eight, you get the drift. So however many cylinders are there, that’s how many times you’re starting basically a little fire every single time, meaning you’re creating heat. And that heat, yes, we’re cooling the engine with the coolant itself. I’ll talk about potentially some additives there on today’s program as well. But that coolant is cooling the engine, but so does the oil. And I think that’s where some people also have a little misconception. They think, well, it’s just the coolant that’s cooling the engine. No, the oil does a job of cooling as well. In fact, a lot of vehicles even today, not just heavy applications like trucks, will have a separate oil cooler to keep the oil even cool. Because manufacturers know the cooler we keep the oil, the less damage we have on the engine, the better the longevity, the better our fuel economy is, so on and so forth. And a lot of this, too, I can get into the fuel economy sides of things and what manufacturers have done to try to meet CAFE ratings and so on. And a lot of that’s been done through the oil sides of things as well. But remember, the oil is there to not only lubricate. but it’s also there to cool. Now we have to seal the oil in. We want to keep seals nice and soft because the softer they are, believe it or not, they actually work better and seal better when they’re soft versus when they’re hard. By the way, they get hard with extreme heat. Lack of oil, by the way, because remember, that seal has oil running up against it as well. That’s partially what’s keeping the seal, quote-unquote, lubricated. And we want to keep that seal nice and moist, if you would. In other words, we want that seal to be pliable. The last thing you want with a seal is getting nice and hard and stiff, because when that happens, it leaks. So we want to keep all of those things lubricated. There’s lots of things inside of the engine that, again, are requiring different things when it comes to oil, from variable valve timing to General Motors and other manufacturers even shut cylinders off through the lifter mechanism at times. There’s lots of things that are happening along those lines. Now, I talked a couple of weeks ago. on cold starts and how long you should let an engine warm up in the wintertime we haven’t had super cold weather in colorado this year so it hasn’t been a huge huge factor but that cold start is the hardest part on the engine you know it’s the hardest time on an engine is the cold starts And a lot of people think it’s start-stop. Once the engine’s warmed up, the start-stop’s not as big of a deal. It’s that initial cold where the oil has – it doesn’t all run out of the engine, but some of it has. And so that cold start is always the hardest and the most wear and tear, I guess you could say, on an engine at that point in time. Now, I’ve got in my notes here, because I used AI for some of this, that some of the myths – of oil is 3,000 miles or lifetime. And by the way, I think both of those are myths. There’s very few vehicles today that require 3,000 miles, although most require four. And there’s a lot of folk out there, a lot of OEMs even, that’ll tell you that, oh, you can go 7,500 miles. You can go 10,000 miles on an oil change. No, you can’t. You can, but you’re not going to have the longevity in that engine that you would like if you do so. So realistically, you want to be changing that oil about every 4,000 miles so that you can keep up on things and really have an engine that lasts a very long time. And that comes back to the whole direct injection sides of things I talked about earlier. Yes, we’re running full synthetic oil, which I can talk about in a moment. Yes, we can go a little bit longer because we’ve got higher quality filters now. Yes, we’ve got better tolerances in the engine now. and better componentry if you would inside of the engine in some cases some manufacturers have struggled a little bit with that but at the end of the day yes typically we’ve got better components in there but you still need to change oil in most cases not all but in most cases about every four months four thousand miles depending upon your application and there is no lifetime oil I grew up, and I still think this is a factor today, or I think this is still sold today, used to be able to put a system on. Luke’s going to laugh at this. Used to be able to put a system on your car where literally it gave you like these two cans, and you would integrate that into the pressurization of the oil system. And inside of each one of those cans, you’d put up a roll of toilet paper. And the theory was the toilet paper acted as the filter, and you literally, rule of thumb was back then, all you had to ever do was change the toilet paper and add a quart of oil. And Luke’s laughing. How well did that work? In my opinion, not very. Now, people did it. I even saw systems being used back in the day, Luke, when I was a kid. And most technicians that had any kind of wherewithal would look at those and just, like we’re doing, would really laugh and just shake our head and say, yeah, that’s not going to work out very well. So, no, I am not a fan of that. I even knew guys back in the day where literally they would change the oil filter, they would add a quart of oil, and they’d keep running the engine that way. No, folks, that’s like having a dirty dish sink if you would, in your dirty dishwater, and draining a little bit down, putting new in, and hoping that it’s still going to wash dishes. No, you need new fluid when it’s all said and done. If you really want proper lubrication, you want things to be done correctly, the only way to do that is to get fresh oil in it, and in the case of a direct injection engine, every 4,000 miles. Now, we’ll touch on really quick direct injection, and BG’s product is called EPR, Engine Performance Restoration, E-P-R. And remember that it comes in a red can, and that is to be used every oil change. Now, what EPR does, which is different than an oil additive you’re using for protection, is EPR in a direct injection engine is going in and cleaning the undersides of the rings. In that process, the way EPR works is you take a lukewarm engine, even a cold engine, you pour EPR in, you let the engine run for about 10 minutes at about 1,100 RPM, no load on it, no torque on it, no load on it, and you let the engine warm up. Once the engine’s warmed up, you drain all of that out, you put fresh oil in it, and off you go. And what the EPR is doing is it’s literally trying to, or it does clean, those ring lands and so on that can get very carboned up in a direct injection engine. And I’m not going to get behind all of the reasonings as to why that happens. Again, that’s a whole topic in and of itself in regards to direct injection engines and how they work different than a regular port injection or throttle body injection and so on. And I’m not going to go down that path because, again, it’s a topic literally in and of itself, so I’m not going there. But on direct injection engines, the engine performance restoration, which, once again, Now, this is something I haven’t done because I’m in pretty tight with BG, but to my knowledge, I don’t know of another product like that. And if there is, it’s probably not exactly like what BG is doing, but I don’t know of another product similar to BG EPR. Which, does it work on direct injection engines? Yes. In fact, does it work on high mileage engines where you might have some carbon buildup on the rings? Yes. I’ve seen it fix vehicles that have oil consumption problems. I’ve seen it fix vehicles that might even have a slight drivability problem because of a lack of compression or some oil leaking around the rings, things like that. The EPR does do a fabulous job of helping in all of those areas. And that’s why, again, on a direct injection engine, you want to use it every single oil change. Now, does that drive the price of an oil change up? Yes, folks, it does. I’m sorry, it does. Because you’re going to use BG EPR. You’re going to use what I talked about earlier, the 44K. both of those products combined is probably close to 40 bucks just with those two products alone and then on top of that we’re going to put some motor oil additives some additive oil additive if you would from bgn as well which also helps with some of the things i’m talking about keeps the oil stable helps with the friction modification so on and so forth again another roughly you know 15 to 20 bucks a can so think about this you’ve got almost 60 dollars of additives, and it might be above that, I haven’t looked at the retail prices, but you’re $60 or above just for the additives, you haven’t bought oil, filter, or labor yet. Meaning, a full EPR type direct injection oil change is $150. And frankly, side note here, the shop doing that’s not making any money. they’re making very little profit even at $150. Think about what I just said in the cost of the product, not counting the oil and the filter. Yes, a full synthetic EPR-driven oil change for a direct injection engine is going to be somewhere around $150. Now, what you gain out of the direct injection engine and your fuel economy and drivability and performance and so on, is it worth it? I think every penny of it, yes. Every penny. But you need to make sure you’re maintaining it and taking care of it correctly because if you’re not, you’re going to find yourself with bigger repair bills on down the road. Now, really quick before I end this on the engine oil additive end of things. I’ve got other things I want to talk about as well. One thing to remember is, yes, we do have synthetic oil. And, yes, every vehicle should have that today. I’m one – I’ll just say it straight up. I don’t think any of the oil should be sold. That’s the level where I’m at. Knowing what synthetic oil does versus what non-synthetic oil does, I’m at a stage where I don’t think you should use anything but synthetic oil, and that includes your lawnmower. What you gain and the little bit of cost that’s different between regular oil versus synthetic oil, even the lawnmower, and the additional protection you end up with, is it worth running synthetic? Yes, and I do. And we run synthetic in my fleet as well. So that should tell you something. So, yes, I’m a big believer in synthetic oil, big believer in high-quality oil filters. There’s a big difference between a $2 China filter and a $10 Napa Gold filter. vast difference between those two products and you can go to all sorts of videos on on YouTube Bob the oil guy and others where they do cutaways of these and compare the media the can the strength the backflow valve all of the different things that are in there they literally cut a lot of these apart and what’s what’s really interesting is some of what you would consider to be a high-end oil filter air quotes around high-end aren’t any better than some of the cheap ones it’s the branding of that they’re going off of not actually the quality of the filter so it’s really interesting at times that some of what they consider to be high-end oil filters aren’t any better than some of the other low-end choices that are on the market so point being here is know your oil filters know what you’re getting because in my opinion that’s as important as the oil the additives and even the fuel as i talked about during the first segment when it comes to all of this so again is all of this a big deal in keeping your car maintained and having it run as long as possible and ultimately saving you money and i’m going to end with this and i’ll come back and keep talking about this but the saving money part is huge a lot of people think well these things add cost to me driving they do but it’s the old pay me now pay me later do you want to pay on the front side or do you want to pay on the back side Either way, you’re going to pay. And I’ve learned through the years I’ve been taught this, that it’s always easier and cheaper to pay on the front side than it is to pay on the back side. This is Drive Radio, The Extra Mile, right here on KLZ 560.
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This program was recorded earlier for broadcast at this time. No phone calls can be accepted.
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We are back. Drive Radio, the Extra Mile, KLZ 516. Again, heard every Saturday, 3 to 4 p.m. It’s not a live program. I am guessing that if I were here during that time, you’d hear the phones ring. I know I get text messages during that time, which is fine. I’ll always answer those messages when this program is running, especially during that 3 to 4 o’clock hour on Saturdays. I’m typically hanging out and kind of finishing up my day anyway. So if you’ve ever got a text message that you want to send, feel free to do so. 307- 200 82 22 307 200 82 22 okay let’s talk about additives that you may not want to use and i’m i’m being very serious in this there are additives by the way that you may not want to use And this is where you need to know your vehicle. In other words, what are you driving? What kind of engine’s in it? What kind of exhaust system, by the way, is on it? Because there are some additives that actually can damage the exhaust system, i.e. the catalytic converter. So be careful with some additives that you’re running, not just fuel, but oil as well. Now, everything I’ve talked about so far today, none of that will have any issues with your catalytic converter and your exhaust system. All of the BG products that I’m mentioning, when used the proper manner, will do nothing but aid in helping those components out, not harming them. And what I mean by some of the additives that are out there is, man, you’ll see a lot of, again, you’ll see a lot of repair in a can. You know, let’s make this vehicle pass emissions, pour this in. Be careful. It may or may not work when it’s all said and done. Now, if you’ve got an older vehicle and it’s a gamble and you really don’t care, okay, knock your socks off. But generally speaking, you need to be really careful with some of that because you could actually cause some damage. And this is true with a lot of additives. So before you go pour additives of any kind into your engine, know what you’re driving. even know what the owner’s manual says about some of these things. And what I mean by that is some oil additives will thicken the oil, which in a lot of applications is the last thing we want to have done. We don’t want the oil thicker. Now, I know a lot of folks think, especially folks that grew up in my era that thicker oil is better. Not in today’s modern engines, it’s not. No, it really isn’t. In fact, that thicker oil will slow down lubrication. It won’t get to a lot of the parts and components like I was talking about in the last segment. It actually, at the end of the day, is more detrimental to the engine than you would imagine. So no, we have to be careful with what we’re putting in and making sure that it does not add to the viscosity or the thickness of the oil. In other words, we want an additive that is helping lubricate With that oil and keeping those detergent packs and other things that are there more stable over time. And that’s what a lot of additives will do is they will aid in what I’m just talking about. Corrosion inhibitors, anti-foam, anti-wear. That’s what a lot of good additives will do. They’re aiding what’s already in a high quality synthetic oil in the first place. And that’s what we want. The last thing we want to do is contaminate that. Again, contaminated by adding a oil additive that, frankly, isn’t cracked up to be what it says it is. So, again, be careful with that. Now, let me shift gears here for a minute, and let’s talk about transmissions. And this is another one that comes up a lot, and I get this from folks. No, there is no such thing as lifetime transmission fluid. I don’t care what dealership tells you that. And there’s a lot of dealerships, by the way, that will say that. Oh, it’s life of the car. No, it’s not. No, it’s not. Those lifetime fluids are usually good to about 100,000 miles, and even if you change then, you might have other issues that you’re running into. So, no, there’s no such thing. In fact, I will say this. There is no such thing as lifetime oil in any component on your vehicle. There’s no such thing as lifetime coolant. There’s no such thing as lifetime transmission fluid, differential fluid, transfer case fluid. You get my drift fluid. There isn’t any. All fluid because of wear and tear becoming contaminated with some of the things that happen inside of components whereby there’s wear and there’s metal shavings and so on and heat and condensation buildup and, and, and. And one thing to remember when we leave the engine sides of things is something else to remember. I know there’s a couple of exceptions, and I always get somebody that corrects me when I say something. So I understand that, yes, there are some transmissions that have oil filters on them, but most do not. So my point there is, is that fluid that’s inside of the transmission, as it’s wearing, which it naturally does, because there’s clutch packs inside that are rubbing on one another that literally those are wearing off, and that’s happening continuously inside of the transmission every time you drive the car, that contamination is working its way down into the oil. Yes, there are some screens, and yes, in some cases, they may have a spongy-looking kind of a filter, felt-type filter in the transmission, but it’s really a screen to really keep out large components, you know, large metal shavings and things from getting into the rest of the oil. It’s not a filter, not like you would find on engine oil, or on an engine, I should say, you know, filtering out the engine oil itself. Now, I get it. In turn, you don’t have the same componentry inside of the transmission, nor does it need change this often. Because keep in mind, too, I didn’t mention this during the engine oil segment. I should have. The reason why engine oil has to be changed more than other components is because it’s contaminated faster. Going back to the whole we’re burning something. Well, anytime we’re burning something, there’s going to be some contamination, combustion, if you would, that’s going to get down into the oil. That’s why when you start with oil and it looks almost just a tad brown, you put it in, it’s kind of that golden color. But when you go to change it, it’s black. That’s because the carbon and stuff that’s happening during that combustion process, it’s working its way back down into the oil and it changes the color. That’s why it has to be changed. I think sometimes folks don’t understand why we change engine oil, but it’s because there’s combustion going on. And through that combustion, we’re throwing particulates and things into the oil that, frankly, other boxes on the car, if you would, transmission, differentials, and so on, don’t have that. There’s wear going on, let’s say, in a transmission, like I said a moment ago, with clutch packs and even the torque converter and so on. But there’s not a combustion to contaminate the oil like there is on an engine. That’s why we can go a lot longer with oil change intervals on other things on the car besides the engine. And I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t understand. Some people probably just change oil because they’ve been told to change oil. They have no idea why it’s getting dirty. I just explained it. And literally, you can watch that. Most people don’t do this, but if you were to go and get your oil changed and pull the stick, and it’s almost clear, darn near anymore with synthetic oil, and then look at it a week, and then two, and then three, and then four. And if you really want to do a test, take a picture each time on the dipstick and watch the color change. And you’ll notice that, yeah, it’s getting darker as time goes by because of what I just said. That combustion effect is happening, and it’s contaminating the oil as time goes by. And that’s where some of these additives come in is they help with that contamination. So other boxes, though. Transmission. Think of the transmission basically, a regular automatic transmission, as being one big, huge hydraulic pump. It’s basically what it is. It’s got a torque converter in the front. It’s got a sprag and some clutches in it that slip when you’re at a stop. It’s driving another pump, though, all the time, and that pump is creating pressure. The pressure is what’s used inside of the transmission to apply clutch packs and things like that based upon the valve body. The valve body is controlled now by solenoids. It used to be all manual, but now it’s all controlled by electronic solenoids that tell it what to do. We need to shift from first to second, second to third, third to fourth, and so on. We need to go to neutral. We need to go to reverse. Oh, by the way, I need to lock up that torque converter as I’m in third or fourth gear. And, oh, I might have a double overdrive. You get my drift here as to what’s happening. But in essence, and this hasn’t changed for eons, it’s one big hydraulic pump. That’s all that transmission is. So, like anything hydraulic, if we keep better fluid in it, it works better. And this is where I go against everything the manufacturers and the dealerships will tell you is because it’s a hydraulic pump, like I just said, and the cleaner we keep that, naturally, it’s going to last longer. In fact, I will go as far as to say, can you over-service an automatic transmission? No, you cannot. Now, can you over-service it and affect your wallet? Absolutely. But are you going to over-service it and affect the transmission itself? Never. Never, because clean fluid is always better than dirty fluid, especially in a transmission, because the way automatic transmission fluid works is it’s designed to even allow some – it depends on the fluid. Some transmission fluid makes things slippery. Some transmission fluid actually makes things stickier. In fact, back in the old race car days, it was very well known that in an automatic transmission, if you use GM fluid, which is designed to be slicker – versus Ford Type F, which is designed to be stickier, you could take a GM transmission and run Type F in it and have it shift really hard because you put sticky fluid in clutch packs that were designed to have slick fluid in it. I’m simplifying this, but back in race car days, that’s what a lot of guys did. I used to do that in my race car. Because you could make things shift faster and harder by using that sticky fluid. And I’m simplifying it, I know. But that sticky fluid inside of a slippery clutch pack that was designed for slippery fluid. So point being is in today’s world, every transmission in what I just mentioned in regards to fluid applies in the same way. That transmission is designed for a particular fluid to be used inside of it, and they’re all synthetic now. That’s another thing. They’re all synthetic automatic transmission fluid, and they’re designed to have that specific fluid in it. Now, this is where I’m a big one. I would only ever use, because, again, I know the product. If I was ever going to run an additive in a transmission, it would be BGs and no one else’s. Period. And if you’re having problems with your automatic transmission, it’s slipping, it’s coming out of gear, it doesn’t want to shift properly, whatever the case may be, I’ll just say this straight up. A service might help you, so a fluid exchange might help you, but there’s not an additive out there that will. I’ll just tell you straight up, there is not an additive out there that’s going to fix that transmission. I’m going back to what we were talking about on the engine side. There’s not an additive one you can pour in that is going to fix that particular problem because it’s mechanical. It’s not a fluid issue. So, again, I have fixed some problems and even had listeners where we fixed some problems with different things happening in the transmission itself by doing a transmission service. Service meaning we’re exchanging the fluid out. Now, this is for a regular vehicle. automatic transmission everything i’ve talked about so far is for a regular automatic transmission i can talk about cvts and uh you know uh the the the clutch type transmissions as well um i’m not right now that that in fact i could do a whole entire hour on just transmissions i’m not going to from manual to the dual clutch transmissions to uh CVTs and so on. Right now, I’m just talking about the regular automatic transmission. Now, a CVT and the others, yes, they require service as well. In fact, they require more service than a regular automatic does because they’ve got more wearable components in them than actually a regular automatic does. Again, I’m not going to get into that today because, as I figured, we’re getting close on time. I’ve only got three or four minutes left. So that’s something that I can talk about on down the road. So, yes, if you want to run an automatic transmission additive, which you’re more than welcome to do, I would run the BG. Now, here’s what I’m going to tell you on it. If you do the BG service, the fluid flush service, that shop’s already adding that. So when you do a BG service at a shop, which all of our Colorado Select facilities do that, they’re already doing what I’m talking about with additives. So you don’t have to do anything else. Just do your service intervals at whatever they tell you. In some cases, it’s 50K, 70K, 60K, 40K. Every transmission is a little bit different, and how you drive might be a little bit different as far as that interval is concerned. But at the end of the day, just do what they’re telling you, and there’s no need for you to add anything else. In fact, most modern transmissions today have no ability to add fluid. including additive. There’s no stick. They’ve done that on purpose to keep things sealed up, and you have no ability to add anything to it whatsoever. Now, that’s going to sound weird to some people, but that’s the reality of how it is, believe me. And last but not least, when it comes to automatic transmissions especially, please, please, please, please, please only use what’s specified. Now, again, most of you don’t have a choice because you don’t even have the ability because you have to have a scan tool and other things to even add fluid. So most of you aren’t going to even do that in the first place. But some of you guys that are driving older vehicles, you have the ability to add fluid. Just make sure you’re using the proper fluid. Last but not least, let me close with this. Coolant. Again, something where you really don’t need a coolant additive if you’re keeping the coolant clean. And what I mean by that is it needs service about every five years. Five years, 50,000 miles, that’s kind of the rough numbers when it comes to coolant. And yes, that needs to be serviced. No matter what they tell you, no, there’s no such thing as lifetime coolant. That’s another one of those myths that they talk about. And again, I’m one of those with coolant where you really don’t need to add an additive, but if you do the BG service, again… on coolant you’re getting that anyways at the time of that service so it’s all handled and done there’s no need to you know try to go to the overflow bottle and add an additive to it and do things along those lines when it comes to your coolant because you just don’t need to do that so you really no need to add any other additives when it comes to coolant the rest of the things that are in your vehicle That’s where you really need to talk to your shop and decide, should I add some additives to my transfer case if you’ve got a four-wheel drive, to my differentials if you have a four-wheel drive or an all-wheel drive? They will tell you what you should or shouldn’t do in those particular cases. Sometimes you may. Sometimes you may not. And that includes power steering and other things. Now, last but not least, diesels. Let me kind of close with this because I’m going to do this originally with the fuel section and I forgot. Remember with diesels. When the temperature drops, yes, you need an anti-gel additive in the fuel, period. No, they do not put enough anti-gel at the pump, no matter who’s selling it, no matter where you’re buying it. I don’t care where it’s coming from. If we get cold enough weather, 10 below or more, it’s going to gel up. I don’t care what it is. Better be safe than sorry. Just go ahead and add your anti-gel additive to that. All of you diesel owners should have some of that on hand at all times. In fact, you should just keep it in the truck. And if you know you’re going to get into a position where you’re going to have really, really cold weather, pour that in. By the way, not the day of, but a day or so before that weather comes in so you know you’re covered. Nothing worse than a gelled-up diesel and the amount of time it takes to get all of that ungelled and back on the road. Folks, it’s miserable. Been there, done that. All right, that’s another edition of Drive Radio The Extra Mile. Once again, any topics you’d like to cover, send me a text message, 307-200-8222. Thanks for listening. Drive Radio The Extra Mile right here on KLZ 560.
