My dad swore his "engine flush" trick would save my car

Last month my car started knocking real bad, so my dad told me to dump a can of engine flush in the oil and run it for 10 minutes before changing it. I did exactly that, drove it around the block, then drained the oil. Turns out the flush loosened a ton of sludge that then clogged my oil pickup tube, and the engine seized on the highway 2 days later. Cost me $4,200 for a rebuild. Has anyone else gotten bad advice from a parent that backfired this hard?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_mila6d ago

3 cans of that stuff hit the market in 1995, and my dad swore by it too. I put it in my 1998 Civic with 180k miles and drove it hard for 15 minutes like the bottle said. The engine ran smoother after the oil change and lasted another 40k miles before I sold it. You probably had a motor that was already dying from years of neglect if the sludge was that thick. A flush can expose a problem, but it doesn't cause one that wasn't already there waiting to happen.

patriciah515d ago

@mary_foster92, does it really matter if it was '94 or '95?

mary_foster926d ago

Whoa hold on @the_mila, I think you might be mixing up a couple things there lol. The 3 cans of that stuff actually came out in 1994, not 1995. I remember because my uncle used it in his 94 Integra right when it hit the shelves. But yeah, your point about the engine condition is spot on. If someone's engine has thick sludge from years of cheap oil changes, a flush just knocks all that gunk loose and clogs up the oil pickup. Doesn't mean the flush caused the damage though, the neglect did that years ago.