I saw a can of oil treatment at Autozone that was manufactured by "Restore Automotive Products". I have seen ads for this product in Road and Track. It claims to restore any engine's compression levels to near new by adding this can of liquid to the engine oil. It has a money back guarantee and several testimonials on the can. The money-back guarantee says that if your engine has 60,000 or more miles on it, you will feel a difference in power and throttle response within the first few miles or your money back. It only costs 5-6 bucks, so I am planning to buy a can, and test my compression before and after I use the stuff. I will post results on this site if I decide to use it. Has anyone used this "Restore" compression restorer before?

 

Ill be interested to find out!

 

I wouldn't do it. Are you having problems with your engine? I doubt that you have scratches on your cylinder walls. Don't we have some kind of molybdenum (sp?) treatment on the cylinder walls? My friend is doing a engine rebuild on his 98 max. He used to drive his car pretty hard. Then he installed a UDP, but some keyhole thing fell out of place, he rotated the crank by hand and bent a few of his valves when the cylinders crashed into them. Even with all this abuse, he said the cylinder walls didn't have a scratch on them when he opened up the engine. you could still see the honing marks from when the engine was made.
So unless you are seeing a noticeable problem, I would not do this.

 

how did he bend his valves? it doesnt make sense to me.

 

when that keyhole thing fell out of place the valves did not move with the timing chain. when he rotated the crank, the pistons went up and down and since the valves were not moving, those that were open got bent.
He was turning the crank by hand, but that was enough to bend the valves. he learned his lesson, and is building his engine better than ever with a quaiffe, JWT cams, and act clutch. along with his original UDP mod.

 

i dunno about the credibility of this stuff, but it sounds about as credible as fuel injector cleaner. shops like rc engineering use special machinery and tools to clean fuel injectors thoroughly using an in-depth process, so i don't see how some of these things can do the same thing that equipment can for a few bucks....

 

ok, i guess that makes sense then. that sux, but the valves are not THAT expensive to replace, i mean if the engine was already out of the car.

 

I've seen engine restore work. My friend put it in his 1985 Ford Crown Victoria. It dropped the stopwatch 0-60 time from about 20 seconds to about 15 seconds. It also made a big improvement in his overall fuel economy.

That said, I wouldn't recommend putting it in your car that has been properly maintained.

 

Carborator cleaner works similarly to fuel injection cleaner, and you can see a dramatic difference in carbon buildup on a carborator afer its use. I've used restore in my old '91 integra with 200k miles on it and it worked well. I also used it on my old '92 prelude at about 85k miles and did not notice any harm. If anything it did help.

 

you are talking about throttle body cleaner, not injector cleaner, injector cleaner is a fuel additive.

 

n/s; but fuel injector cleaner works the same way by removing carbon deposits. There's just less of it

 

Restore is recommended by Cartalk's Tom and Ray as a LAST resort for a dying engine. I would not use it unless you have proven compression loss.

 

I wouldn't use "Restore" either. If you are looking for a great way to make sure your rings are clean and free moving.... then use CD-2 oil detergent. It's labelled as "quiet noisy valves" in a plastic yellow bottle. I use it for a few hundred miles just b4 changing my oil.
It helps quite a bit. Sticky (or worn) rings are often the cause of compression loss. Can't do anything about worn rings except replace 'em.

 

I guess you've never replaced valves before. Valves for a Chevy V-8 go for $7 a piece and they are very very common. For a Maxima, I'm sure they are more. Also, when you have 4 valves per cylinder times 6 cylinders, lets see, carry the one... that's close to $200 just for valves. This is not even including the gasket set which likely runs close to $100. Not only that, but when you do that kind of damage to the engine, you want to have the cams checked out for wear and have any machining done. You can easily spend upwards of $400 for parts and such when you mess up an interferance engine like the Maxima's.