CR recently decided to test a Prolong ad. "This lady drove over 4
hours with
no oil in her car after treating it with Prolong, and she only
stopped because
she stopped for lunch" or something like that. They put new rebuilt
engines
in a couple of identical cars. They broke them in, added Prolong to
one,
ran it 100 miles, drained the oil from both. Both engines failed
after an
identical 13 minutes *. Many years ago when I owned a Porsche 914
which
overheated badly, I looked at everything I could find on the market.
The only
product that had real independent testing I could check out was
Tuffoil. It was
also the only product that DuPont allowed to use their trademarks
for Teflon
on the product (they forbade everyone else from using them, due to
their inability
to demonstrate product effectiveness). Tuffoil reduced engine
temperatures, and
improved shifting in the trans, but it was no miracle product, nor
was it claimed to be.
Unlike just about all the others, Tuffoil said you had to add it
with each oil change,
as nothing will be "plated on to the engine" when you drain the oil,
which is true.
Its a quality, effective product, but I stopped using it when
synthetics came down
to a reasonable price, and synthetics offer the same benefits. My
recommendation
would be to ignore anything which doesn't offer independent testing
you can
verify yourself. Testimonials are worthless in evaluating the
effectiveness of an
oil treatment or a medical treatment. The placebo effect is too
strong (of course
I ignored this when I posted a testimonial for tonneaus saving gas,
so who am
I to talk :-).
Seth Bradley
* This is from memory, if I've messed up on any details, my
apologies.
> Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 09:35:02 EDT
> From: Aengstle@aol.com
> Subject: Re: DML: Slick 50
>
> I read a test that I believe was done in Consumer reports that said that
> Slick
> 50 was great, reduced friction UNTIL it reached a certain temperature,
> then it
> lubricated worse than regular oil and caused wear. They at that time
> recommended not using it.
> I have since seen that Slick 50 has several different formulas out (at
> this
> time Slick 50 was in its original formula and there really wasn't anything
> else out on the market like it yet). Now we have Dura Lube,Motor up,
> Prolong,
> 2001, and I'm sure some that I haven't seen them all. Has anyone out there
> seen an independent test done on all of these items? I would like to see a
> comparison done before trying one on my vehicles.
> If you read each one of the bottles they pretty much cut down the other
> guy's
> product.
> Who is right? The world may never know.
>
>
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