by Tammy Williams
VehicleMD Staff Writer
Originally published in Fall 2010 Issue

After spaghetti night you’re kitchen looks about the same as always, if you’re lucky. But have you ever left the spaghetti mess until morning? You wake up to a stuck-on, red sauce battlefield. It could take 20 minutes to scrub the pot you heated your sauce in—or with a touch of soap and water, it comes right off.

Believe it or not, the same kind of stuck-on mess can happen in your vehicle’s engine.

“There are some engines that are prone to building a lot of oil deposits,” said Jim Davis, technical service manager for Sea Foam Sales. “It’s in their design. There are certain engines that will cook the oil on the inside of the engine. This leaves a lot of oil residue and can actually just keep building and building.”

You can think of this situation like spaghetti sauce that gets burned on the sides of a pot as it cooks. It may seem impossible to get off, but it’s not. Just like your dish soap and water can fight the cooked-on spaghetti mess, an oil additive can help fight the cooked-on mess inside your engine.

An oil additive can actually dissolve and re-liquefy most kinds of oil buildup. It helps turn varnish, gum, oil deposits—or any other gunk that might be in your engine—back into a liquid state. Plus, any contaminants trapped in the deposits will be filtered through the oil filter. Since the nasty deposits are liquefied, you can feel confident that they will be removed safely.

Your vehicle may be sending you some signals that it’s time for an oil additive. You might see smoke out the tailpipe, or you might have to add a quart of oil in between oil changes. Also, if you start your car up in the morning and hear a “tick, tick, tick,” that’s a sign that the lifters in your engine are coated with varnish and not operating properly. These are all telltale signs of a problem in your engine that an oil additive can help remedy.

“If you put an additive in your oil that will help get rid of oil buildup, as well as prevent it all together, you’re going to have a lot less wear and tear on the parts,” Davis said. “When you get an engine that is gummed up, oil can’t get to everything it needs and you can have a lot of premature oil failures due to excess oil buildup. Any time you can keep an engine clean, it can make your car last longer and run more efficiently.”

So whether you went a few miles over on your last oil change or you just bought a used car with an unknown maintenance history, an oil additive can help clean up the stuck-on mess that may be lurking in your engine.

Unfortunately, it can’t do anything for that pile of dishes in your kitchen sink.