There is an obvious reason why motor oil manufacturers are reluctant to recommend 3rd party additives for their products. We know that they have spent so much money on developing and testing their products. They need to maintain their reputation by assuring the market that their products could already offer enough protection and lubrication without other things. The introduction of additives to motor oil will definitely change the overall specifications of the product. It means that the motor oil can’t be guaranteed to provide the same level of protection or lubrications, although the additives could actually promise new benefits. Motor oils need to undergo specific sequence wear tests and additives could cause failure. There’s no warranty approval when additives have been added. This could also apply to car warranty. Manufacturers with dodgy reputation could actually release products that cause gradual degradation and abrasion of the engine parts. The effect may not be noticeable in a few years, but the overall operation life of the engine can be reduced.
For this reason, motor oil manufacturers don’t seem to participate in the additive market. Quite to the contrary, these manufacturers are actually involved in this industry. The aftermarket companies buy ingredients for additives from the oil companies. Major motor oil manufacturers have spent significant amount of money and their ingredients can be validated to provide the needed performance. Chevron Texaco and Exxon Mobil are two major providers of motor oils. Shell is known for its popular motor oil brand, Castrol. Quaker State has the ownership of an additive company, the Slick 50. Techron is sold by Chevron to provide solutions for car owners. It may sound like a paradox, but motor oil companies are actually selling additives to further increase their bottom lines. They may not openly provide recommendations for car owners; but they have significant involvement in this market. This is an important fact that many car owners need to know. In some cases, it is a good idea to choose additives that are released by the same manufacturer of our motor oil.
Additives are also advertised that they can provide extra performances for car engines. This is something that may or may not be true. It is important to make sure that these claims have been validated by reputable independent agencies. In the store, we could find so many products in the market, they can be quite overwhelming.
In this situation, we should talk with the sellers about these additives and they could really work in many cases. It is also a good thing to read reviews about the performance of these products. Many of these additives have been in the market for many years and they are proven to work. It is important for us to make sure that the product could really give us maximum benefits for the money we spend. However, we could actually find many car owners with old car models that still work well despite the use of standard motor oils. The most important thing is to check the oil level regularly, to make sure that our engine is protected.