I saw datsa mention this product a couple times in some other threads and it sparked my interest. Has anyone used it?

I add about 1/2L of Lucas Oil Stabilizer to my oil right now (and have on every car I've owned).

I tried it on my girlfriends 1999 Prizm which is an oil burner and didn't really notice any changes. I'm more a believer in seafoam than the autorx stuff.

I put some seafoam down the plug holes onto the top of the cylinders hoping it would clear things up and i did actually notice the oil burning slow down.

Yeah when I was searching for info on Auto Rx (mostly on the Toyota Nation forums), I found lots of info on Seafoam, but everytime Auto RX was mentioned it looked like a made up comment by someone making a commission, so it just kinda gave me a weird feeling.

I'm not having any major problems, but I want to use one of these as a maintenance tool. I'm dropping a WHOLE BUNCH of money on this car next week finally, so the plan is definitely to try and keep it for at least 3 years until school is done and I can put a smile on my bank account again! I won't be using anything for another week or so though, so if anyone else has an opinion please weigh in!

Quoted from dylangumby

I saw datsa mention this product a couple times in some other threads and it sparked my interest. Has anyone used it?

I add about 1/2L of Lucas Oil Stabilizer to my oil right now (and have on every car I've owned).

A bit of information on Auto-Rx http://www.auto-rx.com and SeaFoam http://www.seafoamsales.com.

But: 3 disclaimers
First, I am NOT affiliated with Auto-Rx or its inventor, Frank Miller nor with SeaFoam Sales.  

Second, I am a chemist (among other things), although I am not a mechanical engineer nor a petroleum engineer.

Third, I am self-taught at auto repair.

SeaFoam: SeaFoam is claimed to be 100% petroleum product, but it actually only contains 3 petroleum-related products: "pale oil" and naphtha and IPA.  "Pale oil" is actually a heavy parafinic (parafin = wax) oil that is normally used in pesticide products, but here it is probably used as a cleaner.  Naphtha is a lightweight petroleum distillate that has a variety of uses, but in this case it is to clean gunk out of the engine. Remember the adage of "like dissolves like" so the petroleum distillate naphtha helps dissolve byproducts of combustion and since it is lightweight it doesn't gunk things up in doing so.   The third ingredient is IPA, better known as isopropyl alcohol, the same stuff you can buy at the drug store.
Alcohol and paraffin also help to drive out moisture, so that is why SeaFoam can claim to reduce the effects of water in gasoline.

Here is the MSDS = Material Safety Data Sheets for SeaFoam that, by law, lists these ingredients. http://www.seafoamsales.com/component/option,com_rokdownloads/Itemid,17/view,file/

Auto-Rx: Auto-Rx is an entirely different product than most petroleum distillate-based cleaners.  It is not a petroleum-based cleaner but a series of three esters (a class of chemical compound) which sticks to the metal walls, and which actually reacts with the carbons and hydrogens in motor oil and in the carbonized deposits to change these deposits from a solid into a liquid NOT through dissolving them and diluting them (this is essentially how SeaFoam and similar products work) but by converting the carbon sludge into another compound that happens to be a liquid.  Liquids flow (whereas carbonized deposits are solid), and this liquid is sucked by the car's oil pump and deposited into the car's oil filter.  Because Auto-Rx sticks to the metal walls of the engine and is no longer suspended in the motor oil, it can keep working against carbon deposits and sludge even when motor oil gives out due to thermal breakdown of paraffin and lubricants in the motor oil.

The difference in my engine valve train has been dramatic.  I also put it into my rear differential and manual transmission/transfer case (the transfer and manual transmission cases are connected in 5-speed Corolla A-Ts but they are separate compartments in automatic Corolla All-Tracs).

So why is Auto-Rx so expensive? Because 1) the demand is low so that price is high; 2) the company that markets Auto-Rx can get away with charging a higher price than otherwise; 3) they don't actually make the product themselves but outsource it to a chemical company in the midwest (Illinois, I think), so they are the middle man even if they also own the patent or at least Frank Miller owns the patent (and I have read the patent myself, but unless you know chemistry, it will not make much sense.)

Do I recommend you use it to keep your A-T alive?  I'll leave that decision up to you after reading this page and the Auto-Rx and SeaFoam pages.  Both products work well, but Auto-Rx is more for long-term cleaning, whereas SeaFoam is better at short-term cleaning since it is suspended in the oil rather than adhering to the walls of the engine.

I'm not mechanically inclined at all really, I did some time in a Welding and Machine shop where I did learn quite a bit about the general workings of things, but not really cars. I'm in a very Oil & Gas rich area so most of our work was based on Drilling, Extraction, and Refinery machines. I do have a better understanding of the applicable chemistry than the average joe, I'd like to think, but not enough to make any kind of sense of that patent I'm sure. =)

Isopropyl has amazing cleaning properties for all things petroleum and oil based, including grease build up on your walls, or even in your deep fryer if you use one, which I don't. I keep some around, for sure, but using it to clean hardened deposits wouldn't work well in my mind.

Paraffin Wax also has some interesting applications, like bolt removal in cases where you have access to fine point acetylene torch, and a very stationary bolt! I wasn't aware of its cleaning properties though.

This is the kind of comparison I was looking for, I see what you mean now. I'm not concerned about water in the gas, I rarely run my tank below 1/4 full, and every Spring I run a couple tanks of water remover just in case theres some condensation built up over the winter. The temperature changes up here are drastic, it can be 10c in the day and -20c at night sometimes so I'm a bit prone to condensation.

I think I will order some Auto RX in the next couple weeks after getting my car back. It says to use it with conventional oil, but the maintenance section says either conventional or synthetic is fine. I was planning a switch to synthetic anyway, so I suppose I'll wait until after the cleaning application.

Have you only used Auto RX once? How often do you plan on using it?

Wouldn't the isopropyl alcohol tend to boil off once the engine warms? IIRC its boiling point is rather less than that of water (180 degrees F according to Wikipedia). Does mixing with the other ingredients or with engine oil or water affect the boiling point?

Sorry for the delay in posting. I've been very busy lately.
I bought 6 bottles of the stuff in 2008 to get a discount, and have used all but 2 bottles.

I have only used Auto-Rx for the engine once: put in a full 12 oz. bottle for the initial fill, and then  put in a few ounces  with every oil change.
I also put it into the tranny and rear diff, ran the car for 1000 miles, then drained and refill both along with 1 ounce of the stuff.

Seems to work fine at cleaning the valve train.

Yes, I know that it is expensive, so I tried to get a deal by buying in bulk and when they send holiday specials.

Quoted from koanhead

Wouldn't the isopropyl alcohol tend to boil off once the engine warms? IIRC its boiling point is rather less than that of water (180 degrees F according to Wikipedia). Does mixing with the other ingredients or with engine oil or water affect the boiling point?

Yes, isopropyl alcohol would boil off in the engine rather quickly, but if enough was put in, it would do some of its work before evaporating entirely.  Chemically, mixing two compounds can alter their boiling and freezing point, typically raising the boiling point and depressing the freezing point.  But how much depends on the compounds.  However, the higher boiling point and lower freezing point would be negligible given that the IPA isopropyl alcohol would boil off in a short time.  This process, however, is how antifreeze works.  Antifreeze (ethylene glycol or propylene glycol) plus water in just the right proportion lowers the freezing point and raises the boiling point better than pure water or pure antifreeze.  The reason is how the molecules of water and antifreeze interact with each other and dilute each other.  The reason that pure water and pure antifreeze don't work as well as the mixture of the two is because they are NOT mixtures but the pure compounds; it is their mixing ratios/diluting ratio rather than what they are that makes the most difference.