I did a real bonehead thing and poured a little bit of Mobil 1 ATF in the motor oil hole. I thought that it was Mobil 1 synthetic. The two bottles look so similar, but the red fluid finally gave it away. I only poured about an 1/8 of a quart in. I am planning to have it flushed all out. Will this hurt the engine if I run it?
Nope you will be fine...just drain it out
No-
Actually it has a detergent in it that will clean your motor out very well. I used to work in a shop that serviced Bentley and Ferrari. The shop owner was a master mechanic. He would substitute a quart of oit with ATF and have the customer run it for a week. He would then do an oil change after the week(as long as it did not valve clatter). I thought he was crazy but he assured me it was fine(he had been a mechanic for over 35 years) so I guess he knew what he was talking about. It breaks loose all of the gook. I think that a little will be fine. Equate it to addind some marvel mystery oil in there between each oil change-
M
Find something else to loose sleep over. It is true that it once was a common thing to add some ATF to clean up an engine. There are better additives for that today, but a small amount will not hurt anything.
I'm intrested now, I may try this a few days before a mile change. Does it do that much or can it hurt it at all?
You can have a lot of atf in there. As long as you don't run it hard or put too many miles on it you're fine. ATF is an amazing way to clean tarnish or even hone a cylinder bore... if those rings aren't sealing right, they may seal better after good run with ATF. ATF is almost the same as conventional motor oil, except it has way more cleaning agents and less wear and tear additives. Keep the quantity to a minimum, as well as the run time and nothing will be hurt. Oh, and it won't need to be done often, a little ATF goes a long way.
I use a quart of Lucas HD Stabilizer in my Duratec. Could you use ATF as well or not? I go in for an oil change next week.
Today's oils, the ones rated GF-4 and SM, don't need any additives. They already have an exceptional additive package and use superior base stocks. Don't mess around with Lucas, Marvel Mystery Oil, Wynn's, or ATF. You just plain don't need it and you may adversly effect the additive balance.
That said, a little bit if ATF in the oil as a one time thing isn't going to make enough difference to worry about.
Beyond ocassionaly using chemicals (additives) for a specifiic reason, you just don't need to spend the money for snake oils.
I used ATF before on my SR20 240SX to unstick valves during a leakdown test.
It worked wonderful and got the car running great before the standalone ecu burnt
