Good News! (I think...)

[Naaman]

I've been putting the miles on the Z over the last couple of months, and have just performed another mileage-based oil change. The oil coming out was dark, but not "black." Still had some translucence to it.

In any case, when I inspected the drain bolt, the magnet on it had NO shrapnel at all. A very, very fine trace of shavings did come off onto my finger tip when I wiped it, but it was not the little bit of "paste" that I usually see.

Also, given that this engine is "new" to me, I decided to do the TCW3 trick for the first time since the build (to hopefully address whatever 15 years and 75k miles would do to the engine). I ran it through one full tank of gas and saw no change in smoothness or fuel economy. However, I have around 80 miles on the second tank and the early results seem to indicate that my fuel economy will be a little better. But we'll see.

I did it with virtually every fill up on the previous engine.

Also, 99% of the fuel that goes into this car is Chevron (preferred) or Shell (when I'm just too low on gas to hold out for the closest Chevron). I do notice consistently better fuel economy with a tank of Chevron over a tank of Shell (roughly 20-30 miles per tank).

On the downside, this engine/build gets as much as 50-60 miles FEWER per tank than my last (more or less stock) engine.

I'm hoping that the TCW3 makes up some of that difference, cleaning out whatever gunk may be dragging against my internals.

I'm also going to be sending in a sample for a UOA and see what else I can learn.

[Naaman]

After three tanks of gas using the TCW3 additive, I'm noticing a difference in fuel economy. Prior to using it, the best I could manage was 20 miles per gallon (usually got about 19). I have noticed increasingly better fuel economy since using the additive. My last tank I managed a little better than 23 miles per gallon. I did NOT put in any TCW3 with my previous fill up last week, but will be adding for the next fill up tomorrow.