Has anybody got any thoughts on "upper cylinder' lubricant.
Years ago in England we used to put a small amount of oil in the gas tank to supposedly lubricate the valve guides a bit and of course the carb.

With the ethanol we are forced to put in the gas tanks a bit of oil might not be a bad thing? If nothing else it might protect the metal parts inside the carb from corrosion.
The product we used was called Redex if I recall correctly.

The E10 really isn't harmful from a lubrication point of view.  It is hard on rubber, steel and aluminum parts when the engine is in storage, as it can dissolve rubber and corrode or rust metal parts.

New fuels are very clean when running, and there really isn't a need to add anything to the fuel.....as long as the fuel is kept fresh and the engine is run regularly.

I do add Sta-Bil fogging oil to my engines before they go into storage for the winter.

Maybe gramps just hadn't yet adopted the whole
Use multigrade oil
idea.

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 03/18/16 at 18:06:10:


It's "Marvel Oil", and you can still find it in the red cans/bottles at some parts stores. I used it in my Packard(s) as a top end lube in the gas AND to free up the old engines that had sit for a couple of years.    

I also remember a Subaru with a carb, that thing hated ethanol. I was always replacing the rubber diaphragm for the accelerator pump.

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 03/18/16 at 19:48:55:



The meds AGAIN ??????

My Chilton 1931 Automotive Multi Guide, has a significant ad for "Marvel Mystery Oil" and shows the dispenser that could be fitted to your manifold to inject the "Mystery Oil" into the bores for upper cylinder lube.
Yes, in the 1950's to 'seventies, garages/service stations in Godzone sold Redex as an upper cylinder lube. It came in a cream coloured conical tin with a squirt injector on top and was fed into the petrol tank. My family couldn't afford it.
The Diesel theory was tried by some antique car enthusiasts here, not so much as upper cylinder lube, but to cut down the octane rating/AKI index of the current fuels in NZ, this idea is out of fashion.
A late friend of mine used a small quantity of two stroke outboard oil in his 1909  Sizaire et Naudin water cooled single as upper cylinder lubricant and was happy with the result.
I don't know if we would gain anything by these practices even if our base design is thirty or more years old.

The use of upper cylinder lubes went away when fuel injection came along, and when technology made engines that could go 300,000+ miles without a rebuild.  Fuel injection has eliminated the "choke", and you no longer wash the oil off the cylinder walls with the "too rich" fuel mixture".

Engines really don't get clogged up with carbon deposits the way they used to, and a lot of what those upper cylinder lubricants did (Rislone and Marvel Mystery Oil), is to loosen the carbon that had the piston rings locked into the grooves in the piston.   And as much as we hate the new E10 fuels, they have improved the additive package and it helps to keep the deposits off the injectors, valves, pistons and rings.