Re: can i turn over a packard motor with diesel instead of oil to clean out oil passages?

Posted by Fish'n Jim On 2015/10/9 13:15:09

Reminder: the key word about flushes is change "filter".
Alot of the earlier motors had NO oil filter, as my '49 288. Those that did had something not much better than a gravity filter treating a slip stream of the crankcase flow.
So deposits accumulate in the old motors depending how frequent oil is changed. Some of the earlier oils also had problems with parafins(wax), that caused even more sludge.
Detergent oils didn't come until awhile after the war.
It's a fascinating history to study lubrication from the guy in overalls with the big oil can to modern systems. It's a subject unto itself. It's still evolving and the experts disagree on what best. I've seen my boat trailer bearing lube systems change 360 in the last 25 years from grease to oil back to grease. i.e. nothing works well int hat service.
I did some work in oil recovery about 40 years ago, and it's changed alot but the elements remain the same, search for that magic fluid that prevents wear, mostly a figment of the marketing department imagination and snake oil salesmen talk. Also, oversaw some grease and solid lubricant manufacture, but did little there. We used lubricators quite a bit for high pressure/speed seals.