"without oil"

One that provided improved film strength.

--scott

An oil pressure gauge and a quick foot on the clutch. Not sure anything else would have worked.

nate

None. If your car is that low slung it should have a metal guard added to protect the pan.

Loosing oil / oil pressure quickly leads to a catastrophic failure regardless of what additive might have been in the oil.

Yes, but an oil with a higher film strength and higher breakdown temperature will last a little longer when the oil circulation stops. That might not be enough, but it improves your odds a little bit.

--scott

if you are referring to things like "slick50" or whatever its called, shown on tv running with no oil, I would NOT count on it in a real situation.

Oil pressure guage and stop as soon as it goes low.

Young friend of mine had an S-15 Blazer with the 2.8L I believe and was heading downtown for a concert with friends. The power dropped on the expressway and he noticed the cloud of smoke and oil on the tailgator's windshields.(Big laugh over that.) They continued on about five miles to the concert. They came out. It started and they headed for a gas station to add oil. They added several quarts of oil two times and made it back fifteen miles before the motor seized. They had more than a ripped pan. They had a rod out the bottom. Amazing things can happen if you are lucky. I'm partial to STP no matter what others say. Unless it's an all out emergency, when the red light comes on, the key goes off.

back when, before the ptfe craze, bardahl had an oil additive that I can attest to it's merit.

this is a case where a limp-in mode provided by the bardahl additive saved the day.

after knocking the drain plug out(losing the oil) in a 12 cylinder graham-paige automobile w/bardhal additive in the crankcase -

it was able two travel 2-3 miles without any noticeable damage.

to my knowledge this product is no longer available - off the shelf.

m h o =A0v =83e

The same one that was used for the same protection back before the catcon was in wide use. zinc dialkyldithiophosphate. Only problem is that is poisons the catcon in large amounts and can cause deposits on the plugs and valves.

True. But, nothing gives the equivalent protection compared to the sulfur compounds.

Doesn't make a darn if the base stock is 'synthetic' or not.

Unless you ran another identical engine without Bardahl and oil there is no way to tell whether that snake oil did any good.

Make that post-WW2; pretty much any auto engine designed after WW2 was a high-compression, overhead-valve design with pressure lubrication.

nate

Steve wrote:

Whatever one thinks of its virtues or vices as an additive, STP is a good mnemonic. Safe place to stop, Turn off the key, and Pray you haven't spun a bearing or seized or galled the heck out of anything in the time it took to do even that.

Also STay off the Power, assuming you can get through traffic and come to a safe place without it. (Safety first -- live to buy another engine.)

And you definitely shouldn't try driving off unless you know what the problem is and can be positive that you've solved it.

It probably helps to have an engine that is more robust in these regards (good luck figuring out which ones those are, besieds which, prioritizing the ability to survive a low-probability failure is kind of a goofy way to select a car). Definitely helps to have quality oil with a lot of shear strength at the molecular level and a good ability to withstand temperature and a tendency to stick tenaciously to metal.

Cheers,

--Joe

Consumer Reports tried to verify a claim made by Prolong where a person drove a car treated with Prolong forr 4 hours and 40 minutes without oil and stopped only because she wanted to grab a bite to eat. They took a pair of factory rebuilt GM 3.4L V-6 engines, treated one with Prolong, and ran with the oil plugs removed. Both seized simultaneously after just 13 minutes or 5 miles.

There is some basis in fact in STP. It is a high molecular weight polyalphaolefin (higher than the PAO's used in synthetic lubricants) and is known in the lubrication industry for some of its unusual properties.

Here is an important song about STP:

--scott

Well, "high" compression in 1955 was still in the 9:1 range, but yeah. Most manufacturers had thin shell-type steel-backed bearings and (except for Chevrolet's 6) full-pressure lubrication by WWII.

Nate Nagel wrote:

Manna from heaven. :-)