So at the auto parts store there's always tons of different additives for just about every moving part in your vehicle. Do these work? They all look very tempting. Anyone have experience with good brands? or Not so useful brands?

 

Most of them work to an extent, but none are golden bullets. Lucas might keep your oil fresh a little longer, and seafoam might clean out your carbon deposits. But nothing is going to fix any mechanical problems or give you tons more power.

 

from my exp the cleaning additives such as seafom or an engine flush work as far as the horsepower improving ones and lick slick 50 are a bunch of hooky they have the same stuff in them good motor or oil has in them. lucis is good but it will thicken up your oil alot. and techron is the best gas additive out there

 

Seafoam definitely works when poured into the intake (vac line). Did that this week, and it felt like my truck got it's ***** back. As for the others..... not really worth it in my opinion.

 

If you're trying to increase power with an additive I would say that's definitely not going to happen, only ones I use are the fuel system cleaner and fuel injector cleaner

 

What I'm mainly looking at are products to maintain transmission life.

 

I'm thinking you should have mentioned that to begin with.
That would be ATF+4 only.

 

So just regular maintenance and fluid changes will keep a transmission running well for a long time?

 

Additives enhance the manufacturers bank account more than any thing else.

 

When I was growing up, my dad would put STP oil treatment in everything. He believed in it. Every car we owned ran between 100-200k miles, some had more. I have no concrete proof that it really did anything good or bad though. I have never used it in my Ram.

I have a distant family member that is an ASE mechanic and owns his own shop in Oklahoma. He swears by BG44k. He has told me of teardowns they have done before and after a 44k treatment, and he said it is night and day. They have a machine that pumps/flushes it through at pressure and high concentrate though. I have used it numerous times in my own vehicles though, and can't say that I saw any performance or mpg increase from it. Guess that doesn't necesarily mean it isn't doing anything though. I have a hard time these days paying what they want for it, so it has been awhile since I last used it.

I do know that Mopar Combustion Chamber Cleaner works though. I would recommend it.