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Recently at a Sears to get an alignment. They wanted to do an engine deep clean service because they said my ride was low on oil. I declined because I have never seen this recommended in my owner’s manual. Is this some kind of rip off or something to take serious? If a vehicle is low on oil then sell the customer oil. Just my thought.
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That doesn’t even make any sense. There are many ways to “deep clean” both the oiled parts of an engine and the combustion chambers without taking anything apart, but none of that has to do with oil level being low. The other side of that is that no “service” I’ve seen or done to do such a thing actually does anything useful.
The services meant to perform such cleanings don’t actually take enough time to do a useful job. They’re usually under $150 and take/pay less than an hour. In reality, purging a useful amount of sludge or carbon build up from a long-used engine is tedious and takes many hours no matter how you slice it. My opinion on this is based on experience. I’ve done maybe 200 fuel induction services, top engine cleans, and oil sludge cleans with BG products (same as Wynn’s in other parts of the country. I’ve also looked at internal areas before and after with a borescope and have done services like this immediately before taking the cleaned areas apart for engine work.
SEARS and deep clean – that combination would scare the daylights out of me. There are probably some great mechanics at some SEARS locations BUT…. I’d run away and take my car with me.
This why people are mostly kept ignorant. Ignorant customer is a good customer. Pays for anything a godlike SERVICE GUY suggests.
a internal combustion engine will naturally burn oil over time, that is the way it is, in order for valve stems and piston rings to get proper lubrication, some of the oil must go passed the seals and rings so they can coat the parts in a film of oil, if they don’t well they become dry and you have a damaged engine. the issue becomes when you have so much oil leaking passed its burning oil excessively…
if you change your oil on a regular bases like your supposed to, on service intervals like every 3,000 miles or what ever your manufactuer recommends there should be no issue with sludge, its just another thing they are trying to sell. 🙂
Even if they did manage to get all the crap out of an engine with a magical “deep cleaning”, it would probably cause all kinds of leaks.
Some of the nasty crap in the engine is the only thing slowing or stopping leaks.
Kind of like when you mess with house plumbing that didn’t need to be taken apart and THEN it starts leaking.Maybe a French maid will be bent over the engine bay cleaning something. In that case, go ahead and buy the service.
Most of the time the “cleaning” offered even now at a lot of dealerships is just as simple as pouring a bottle of engine cleaner into the mix and then draining it out with the old oil. Its 100% cash cow. I caught and will leave them un-named a dealer up here charging full pop for “Injection cleaning” meanwhile simply poured a bottle of injector cleaner in the tank. Nothing was directly hooked up to the fuel system.
Trouble is the oil cleaner stuff works well as a maintenance item. I use it every oil change in my car. If a qualified mechanic said you need to take the engine apart to de-gunk the pig the oil cleaner additive isn’t going to do much.
I think in this case Sears just wanted to make an extra few bucks off ya.
[quote=”JS” post=123399]
Trouble is the oil cleaner stuff works well as a maintenance item. I use it every oil change in my car.
[/quote]OK, I’ll bite! What is the “oil cleaner stuff” you use? Is it something you add to the oil and leave in place or run it a few days before changing the oil?
First Honda Dealer I used with my new car always added a bottle of Wynns during the oil change. They swore by it as a beneficial additive to add life to the car. What do you think?
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