Has anyone heard of putting diesel in your car instead of oil for 10 min to clean out your engine?
Nov.13, 2008 in
Diesel Oil
josh wrote:
I heard of putting diesel in your car instead of oil and running it for 10 min to clean out your engine. Does anyone know if that works and if it would cause any other damage to your engine?
I heard of putting diesel in your car instead of oil and running it for 10 min to clean out your engine. Does anyone know if that works and if it would cause any other damage to your engine?
November 14th, 2008 at 12:16 am
I’d be afraid to that because I may ruin my car
November 15th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
i have heard about that too, i wont say for sure yes or no, but i would difinately look into it, it doesnt seem totally imposible tho, i think it might even be a good idea
November 15th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
That’s very interesting and the first I’ve heard of it. I would think that there would be some drawback to that, maybe damage to the injectors? I would probably not try this.
November 16th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Sure, if your main purpose in life is to rebuild your engine very soon. Diesel fuel does have enough lubricity to keep your crank and rod bearings from scraping together, which will lead to engine damage, quickly. If you change your engine oil and filter like you should there should be no need to “clean out” your engine.
November 19th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
THATS AN OLD WAY OF FLUSHING THE ENGINE. JUST DON’T USE TOO MUCH IF YOU DO. a quart should be fine. Some people use trans fluid also. If you change your oil often I wouldn’t worry about adding anything to the oil.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
i have heard of transmission fluid.
November 22nd, 2008 at 6:30 am
Bad idea. Diesel fuel doesn’t have the lubricant properties that prevent metal to metal contact. Also, why do you want to “clean” you engine? Is it because some maintenance oil changes were not done? If the engine had regular maintenance then it doesn’t need to be cleaned. If you want to clean the engine safely, use the lightest motor oil you can find, run the engine until it comes up to operating temperature, remove the old oil, put the thin oil in. Again run the engine (15 minutes or so). Remove the thin oil, put in the recommended weight oil.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:17 am
i have hear of it but i would not recomend it they mae stuff to do that that will not do any damage you can check at your par store for what they call 3 in one it will clean the system i use it all the time on all the cars i work on
November 27th, 2008 at 5:41 am
I haven’t heard of this being done with diesel.
However, I have heard that some people add a quart of transmission fluid before an oil change and let the car idle for about 5 min. Also heard of this being done with kerosene. The transmission fluid has a lot of detergents and can clean out the oil passages in an engine. The kerosene thins everything out and kind of rinses away gunk in the engine.
I haven’t done either personally but I’ve heard of it being done to engines with a lot of sludge.
November 30th, 2008 at 4:12 am
i own a shop,and i had a customer that did it in a high mileage car,,and it loosened up all the seals in it,,and it caused a lot of leaks,,but it did clean it out,real good ,but i don’t advise it,,its hard on the main bearings in any engine,,you also have to let one set a long time before you add real oil back to it,,all the diesel has to drain back out of it,,sometimes you have to change the oil twice in it to get all the diesel out of it,,good luck if you try it,,hope this help,s.,,have a good x-mas.
December 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 am
yea i heard of that and also you can put a quart of kerosene in your motor also.it wont hurt anything as long as you dont let it run too long,then drain it all out and change the oil and filter.ive done it before and i never had any trouble,but make sure you dont let it idle no more then 5 minutes.i know a guy that when he changes his oil and filter,he puts in 1 quart of tranny oil and the rest motor oil,to keep the engine clean.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
I would say no. If you trust the lubricant in diesel that much I guess you can try it. I wouldn’t though. What are you trying to clean? Have you ever seen how clean an engine is inside. Just change the oil !
December 7th, 2008 at 2:59 am
I have used kerosene after draining some of my oil out,about 2Qts(3qts. oil 2qts.kero),run it for about 15 minutes and it cleans it very well.I am not promoting this practice but it worked for me.It removes any sludge that has built up in your motor,regular oil changes will eliminate most problems though.
December 10th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
dont do that…..ive heard of people doing this. just put an additive to your next oil change……seafoam works wonders, so does lucas
December 11th, 2008 at 3:32 am
I wouldn’t do it. Back in the day people would put diesel or kerosene in there for a few minutes and then drain it. In today’s cars I would not risk it because there are too many new kinds of O rings and seals that can be hurt by it. There are aditives that you can get from any aftermarket parts store to add to the oil as a safer way to flush the engine. The question I have is what is the engine doing to tell you that it wants you to do anything like this. Do keep in mind that any form of a flushing or cleaning to an engine has some form of abrasive effect. If your car is not haveing oil pressure problems or some other indication that it is in need of a cleaning, I would avoid it. If your car is older with high milage often times running a flush agent can make it start leaking or even burning oil.
December 14th, 2008 at 10:29 am
sure but its retarded.
December 14th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Yes I’ve heard of it, but it is not a good idea. Most modern engine oils contain detergent additives designed to clean the engine. If you change the oil regularly your engine should not need “cleaning”. Diesal fuel would strip the engine of all its internal lubricant, causing more wear than good.
I’m an engineer and car buff… listen to the mechanics, they know.
December 17th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Bad idea, even if it does clean the engine. Why? Because oil is used to lubricate the moving parts to keep heat & friction to a minimum. Only takes a few seconds to destroy an internal combustion engine by running it without oil. Heat + friction works faster than a file to scour the piston walls.
Secondly, most automotive oils contain cleaning agents (detergents) that do a much better job of cleaning than diesel or kerosine. Therefore you don’t need to clean out the engine if you change oil & filter as recomended by manufacturer.
December 20th, 2008 at 3:13 am
It wont work, dont do it. Just keep changing your oil every 3000-5000 miles and that will keep your engine clean and running fine.
December 20th, 2008 at 10:46 am
if you ran diesil for oil 10 minutes you wouldn’t have to worry about cleaning it cause you wouldn’t have an engine. this was done long ago when oil didn’t have detergent in it. for a short while, and it still wrecked engines sometimes. these days even if an engine was abused with gummy oil (quaker state/ penzoil) a good high detergent would soon clean it out. if you feel you must just add alittle sea foam instead and change oil when it gets hot.
December 21st, 2008 at 11:39 pm
Won’t hurt as long as you don’t let it run any longer than 10 minutes
and you chang your oil and filter right away
December 23rd, 2008 at 5:15 am
if the engine is high mileage try this instead; do an oil change and replace 1 quart of oil with a quart of Marvel Mystery Oil. drive as normal. in 3,000 miles do the same. it is like doing what you suggest but safer as Marvel sells this product for this purpose. i had a car that went thru 3 quarts of oil in 100 miles on the highway. did the MMO for 3 oil changes, 9,000miles. then the car went to FL from CT on a quart of oil. the stuff is safe and conditions the seals. good luck.
December 24th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
back in the old day yes. we would prefer to put about two quarts of trans fluid in the engine oil and run it for about ten minutes or so .
But with newer engine oils there are plenty of cleaning agents added to the oil. Best just to change the oil more frequently