quick fixes and additives Your thoughts?

[ladagosta]

An ex of mine (who was really a great mechanic) used to say those additives are designed to cost you a repair...
so things like lucas tranny oil and slick 50 and stop leak.. which are only of few i can think of off the top of my head.. what are your opinions of these types of remedies... are they a gimick or the real deal?

all thoughts welcome...

[Blue Bowtie]

Most of those commodities are very successful. They are designed, engineered, and marketed for one purpose - To sell. And they work very well for their intended purpose.

As far as actually solving problems, very few of them are useful. At best they are temporary fixes which either mask a problem or cause other problems.

Some of those items you mention are not necessarily "quick fix in a bottle" products. Lucas additives may be beneficial in some applications. Slick 50 was supposed to be the same kind of thing, but like ProLong, TMT, and all the other engine oil additives before them they are basically snake oil. Using a good quality lubricant and maintaining it as recommended is the best practice. Getting 300,000+ miles out of an auto trans on nothing but regular oil changes is not an accident. Getting 420,000+ miles out of a SBC with no service other than oil changes is not an accident (actually, that's an exaggeration because it needed a timing chain at 155K, but nothing else).

I can't say they are all gimmicks, but if it sounds too good to be true...

[ladagosta]

ok thanks for that.. it is basically common sense play in here..
"if you take care of it .. then it will take care of you"... or "you only get out of something what you are willing to put into it".. sort of analogy.. "treat it good and it will treat you good" logic.. I can live with that.. and taking the extra care will pay off to a degree but not when you can not do it.. like on your throw away transmissions.. they leave no room for replacing filters and tranny oil so you are stuck with junk and that will most likely make matters worse if you add it in with the junk that is in there ... better off replacing the tranny before it get worse... so now i am reduced to possibly 2 out of the 3 transmission being toast instead of 3 out of 3 being toast.. since 2 out of 3 are throw aways... only one has a tranny pan to drop.. LOL I do appreciate your view on this and anyone elses.. and I am certain others may have the same concern at some point down the line so good to have the post up for them later..