No, not that kind of flush. Engine flush.
I had the valve cover off my son's E39 wagon over the weekend to replace a crispy gasket. The engine has 177K on it, we've had it for the last 10K miles. It has had 2 oil changes under our care and is due for one shortly.
It looks pretty good considering the miles. Should I let the detergents in the normal oil slowly clean things up or hit it with some Liqui Moly engine flush?
The patient opened up:
I think the saying is the same. If its brown, flush it down?
I did it to my 90k engine. That's a fair amount though. Might be safer to do it slow.
If it ain't broke....
Another fresh change with an "italian tuneup" would be my course of action. A few rounds of italian tuneups.
I'm wary of oil flushes. I haven't been in one of my own engines in many years so who knows what they look like, but I will continue driving and changing oil normally rather than doing a flush. I'm at 345k on the XJ so why add variables at this point?
Never.
Yeah, I don't like to put anything in engine crankcases except engine oil. I typically get around 300k miles out of my daily drivers.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:If it ain't broke....
... fix it 'till it is?
Thanks all for the input, I think I'm going to keep up the earlier than spec'd oil change interval and let the oil do the work.
Looks pretty clean to me. Run a premium oil and change it at premium intervals.
Flush should be a last resort, only time I would recommend it 100% is if the engine is coming apart for a full rebuild, then I have had good success with drain the crankcase and fill with diesel and some ATF and run it at idle to operating temp. Its all getting redone anyway.
I've seen some interesting videos recently and older threads on bob is the oil guy about some Valvoline oil that does an incredible job of cleaning engine internals. Valvoline Restore and Protect. I haven't used it yet but it sounds interesting. I'd sooner use that than a flush product
If the detergents in engine oil cleaned up sludge, then the insides of engines wouldn't get sludgey. Or rather, the sludge that develops is something that the oil's detergents don't touch, and you need to try something else.
That said.
That engine is really clean inside. There's color, to be sure, but aluminum is porous and takes on color easily. What I don't see are hard crusties, or great big gouts of goop that you can spoon out.
You're fine, don't stress a thing.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Some oils are different than others, that is to say, some leave deposits/colour, and some don't (or leave them to a much lower degree). I've found that some synthetics (Penz Platinum) seem to slowly dissolve and remove deposits left by 'lesser' oils (or excessive OCIs).
That said, the above engine is fine and I wouldn't worry about a thing. Flushing makes me a bit nervous: if it's 'really effective' where is the crud going before it hits the filter, what is the impact of the signficantly reduced oil viscocity etc. I'm aware of one case when a coworker used Seafoam to flush and it immediately resulted in rod knock and a spun rod bearing. This seems unlikely, but not impossible.
I'm not a flusher, but consider looking into the new Valvoline "Restore and Protect" oil. There seems to be a few YouTube reviews with good results. I'm going to give it a shot in my high mileage Silverado that was pretty abused in its previous life.
I'm going to look into that Valvoline restore and protect. The parts I'm thinking about the most are the ones you can't really see. For people that aren't familiar, the way the VANOS system works involves gears and oil pressure fed through the center of the cam. I've had to replace a VANOS gear on one of my other Bimmers and it isn't a fun job.
I plugged the Valvoline specs into the Lubrizol chart and it looks like the GF-6 specs more than cover the old BMW LL-98 the engine originally spec'd except for soot thickening. That is more of a diesel issue anyway.
https://online.lubrizol.com/relperftool/pc.html
Handy site if you don't know about it. Pic the specs in the drop down menu and they will overlay on the chart for easy comparing.
I've started running the Valvoline Restore and Protect in my 06 330i (N52) and am getting close to doing my first oil change with it. I had the valve cover off just before putting it in and I'll need to pop it off again soon to replace the eccentric shaft position sensor so it will be interesting to see if there is a difference after just one change. Like you I'm mostly concerned with keeping the VANOS system working well but it is also supposed to be good at cleaning (and keeping clean) the ringlands. My car has 337,000 km on it so if it helps, great.
I found Walmart had the best price, for any Canadians looking for it you cant get it on our side of the border yet so I had to slip over and grab it. CBSA gave me a funny look coming back having only grabbed oil in the US lol.
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