I'm about 300 miles away from the next oil & filter change on my 1999 Dodge Ram pickup. I found a three-quarters-full quart bottle of old NAPA Dexron III ATF (made in 2000 according to its label) on the back of one of my garage shelves and rather than throw it out, I remembered Brutal's tip about pouring a bottle of any cheap ATF into your crankcase a few hundred miles prior to an oil & filter change to get some interior cleaning action going due to the detergents and additives in any ATF on the market. So because my Ram's engine oil (conventional Valvoline 10W-30) is usually very dark at its 6,000-mile changing interval, down the hatch went the old NAPA ATF into my Ram's crankcase....

It will be interesting to see how much of a difference this will make in getting some of this nearly 12-year-old engine's internal nooks and crannies clean. Never done this before, and I'm more willing to risk it on my Ram than on the S-Type or RX330. When I do the Ram's oil & filter change in the next month or so (my Ram only does about 4,000 miles per year), I'll try to remember to post the results here....

 

I put a quart of ATF in at every oil change, but it goes in the Range Rover – I have found that the high level of detergents in ATF acts like a soft brush and “gently” cleans the engine. Very favourable results however, just not brave enough to try it on the STR………………………..yet!

 

Update:

Finally did the oil & filter change on my Ram yesterday. Just under a quart of Dexron III ATF had been in the crankcase for approximately 400 miles in an effort to scrub the engine's innards clean. There's no question that it did its intended job - the old oil was darker and more syrupy than usual when I took a good look and feel after draining the oil pan and removing the old oil filter. I'm hoping that the Dexron III cleaned out some of the nooks and crannies inside my engine that typically do not fully drain during a normal oil & filter change....

Since this was the Ram's 60,000-mile service, it was time for new spark plugs (the 5.9-litre V8 engine requires Champion copper plugs per the factory sticker under the hood) and a new air filter. While I had the air filter housing off, I also went to the trouble of cleaning the throttle body butterfly plate and as far inside the throttle body as I could reach without removing it. What a difference in acceleration and performance afterwards. Some of the improvement may be attributable to the new spark plugs (the old ones were installed in October 2003 when I did the 30,000-mile service, and being copper, they were pretty much done), but I believe that most of the engine's newly-found power is a result of the throttle body cleaning....