My 95 Saturn has 170,000 miles on it and for the last several months has burned increasingly more oil. When I got it at 70,000 miles, it burned about a quart every 3,000 miles. By July it was up to a quart every 200 miles. I also had a noticeable loss of power. I tried several oil additives and stop leak formulas by the more common brand names and had no noticeable effect. I’d heard Lucas Oil stabilizer recommended by several people, including a couple mechanics, so I decided to give it a shot. It’s more expensive than the other additives, but instead of a few ounces you get a full quart. I added a quart to the oil when the engine was a quart low and I went an extra day before it hit the add line. (60 mile daily commute round trip) When it hit the add line, I added a second quart. Since that I have altered Lucas Oil with regular oil (Valvoline High Mileage 10W30) and the engine is burning a quart about every 350 miles and the power has improved. Still an awful lot of oil to burn, but a 75% improvement and I’m not using the maximum amount of the additive recommended for badly worn engines.

Since the luck was good there, when I had a bad knocking problem, I decided to give the Lucas Oil Fuel Treatment a try. It reduced the knocking considerably and I noticed that when I next added a quart of the Oil Stabilizer the problem was virtually eliminated, the combination of the two has the engine running like it was at 100,000 miles in terms of smoothness, noise, and power. The gas mileage on this car has never really suffered as long as use Texaco or Shell gasoline, but with the additives it is up a bit over 5% consistently.

The downside, as noted, is that these additives cost more than other brands. STP oil treatment is about 1/3 the price of the Lucas Oil Stabilizer, but you get about 1/3 the amount. If you used an equal amount of STP you might get an equal effect, but you’d be using more than the recommended so there might be some danger of engine damage and the cost would be the same. The fuel treatment is also more expensive than most others and in this case you actually get less- but the effect substantially greater. The only fuel treatment that helped with the knocking problem at all was Heet, at about 1/3 the cost of the Lucas Oil product, but where Heet cut the problem by about 1/3, the Lucas Oil Fuel Treatment virtually eliminated it.

For a car in good condition, the judicious application of these products should help the problems even starting in the first place and with the gas over $2/gallon the mileage improvement may pay for the additives.

Thanks,
Bob Barker
7307 N. Meade
Chicago, IL 60646