Worst advice for new car buyer ever?

My father-in-law sent an email full of fatherly advice to one of his daughters who just purchased a new car. Among the pearls of wisdom was the following: "get a bottle of top oil and add a measure of this to every OTHER tank of gas. I can't think of the name of it but its really good upper cylinder lubricant) will text it to you later. you will also get about 2 more miles per gallon it you do this on a regular basis." I do remember a time when I had to add a lubricant to a car that was designed to run on leaded fuel once leaded fuel was outlawed - but WTF is he going on about? I guess if you need your upper cylinders lubricated... Anyway, I have vetoed the practice of dumping motor oil into the fuel tank of my sister-in-law's new car, but I thought I'd post this up for comments.

My 2-cycle string trimmer needs to have oil added to the fuel. That's the only place I would do it! Fatherly wisdom sometimes reaches a peak and then goes downhill from there. My father-in-law still gives his kids and grandkids advice on how to drive, including pumping the brakes if you start to slide on a slippery road. I've told him and told him about ABS, and how new cars work, and his advice is still to pump the brakes. My wife and I got into a nice argument about this when we were teaching my sons to drive. She insisted (based on her father's advice) that you should pump the brakes. I finally won that argument, but it took lots of discussion and a few print-outs from the internet to convince her!

Will always be second to: "Buy an Aztek."

The Aztek has been reborn as the BMW X4 and/or X6!

My father-in-law is a good guy, but he has a track record of buying crappy cars and then doing awful things to them to keep 'em running. If you've ever wondered who buys the stuff you dump into your radiator to seal up leaks, or stuff you add to your crank case to fix blow-by, or any of the other stuff you wouldn't with a clear conscience dump into your car...he's the guy. I once towed three of his cars in a single evening back when my wife and I were still dating...one of them was from home, and the other two had been abandoned where they broke down during the preceding days. He had an affinity for Tauruses.

Very old school - Marvel Mystery Oil! Add to every tank...LOL

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I love that you towed THREE of his cars in one night! Some wreckers don't see that much action!

Marvels is good stuff... in an air tool!

Holy crap - I think he MUST have been talking about Marvel Mystery Oil...the Seafoam of yesteryear!

"Drive it like you stole it" belongs near the top if not at the top of the list.

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One of my best "MacGyver" moments happened due to his collection of crappy cars. I was on a date with my wife-to-be; she was driving the family Vanagon. We were headed up a long, gradual hill when the throttle cable snapped.... She pulled over, and I jumped over the back seat, pulled up the engine hatch, and hand-throttled the engine all the way back home. There are not many times in my life when I've felt exceptionally cool, but that was definitely one of 'em.

So, you were on a date when you jumped in the backseat and (your words) "hand-throttled" it all the way home? Sounds a little X-rated. So, I say, "Pics or it never happened!!"

I was working at a pizza place in the 80's and my boss' wife's Honda Civic broke down. I went to help him tow it home. I diagnosed the broken throttle cable quickly. I tied some twine to the carburetor linkage, routed it out the corner of the hood, then through the driver's window and drove it to his house. The Honda cable was almost $50, but I had a buddy who worked at a shop that made custom motorcycle cables make one for something like $8. I got a raise shortly after that!

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I would never let my daughter go on a date in a van! Based on your Father-In-Law's car buying advice, his affinity for Tauruses, and letting his daughter go on dates in a van, I think he has some questionable decision making skills.

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Nice.

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#3: Don't bother with insurance... When we were buying the Murano, the credit manager mentioned insurance at least five times - enough that we asked her why she kept repeating it. Apparently, some dude had recently taken delivery of his GT-R, never bothered calling in the purchase to his insurance agent, and totaled it two days later...

How can you buy a car without Ins. ? In Illinois you can't even sign the paper work till they copy your DL and Ins. card?

One piece of advice give to me was for older vehicles that needed an oil change real bad... Buy a quart of the cheapest AT fluid you can buy and pour it right into the motor... Drive around for a few days with it before you change your oil and filter... Supposedly the detergents in the AT fluid will do a number on the sludge and grim in the motor and sticking to the pan and flow right out when you finally change it out! The only thing I have to support this claim is that I have never seen a sludgy AT oil pain... dirty and sometimes a lot of clutch band debris but never sludge... every AT pan I have ever removed has always wiped clean and all surfaces were super shiny... Maybe the detergents in the AT fluid can be used as a quick engine flush? PS. Flame Suit ON!

In CA, you sign a document indicating your intent to provide insurance for the car, but you are not required to show proof of insurance as part of the transaction...

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In Mississippi if you don't finance it, nobody cares but the police. If you get pulled over without proof of insurance you are given a ticket. I can only assume it is a very cheap ticket given the number of uninsured motorists here.

In California, the DMV reaches out to your insurance company (usually electronically, if you have coverage with one of the major insurers), and verifies coverage before sending your renewal documents. They may also do this through the year. And your lien holder may do the same. Without coverage, they're exposed, and they'll add a policy to your loan payment to ensure they're covered so long as your have a car note. My carrier (USAA) provides coverage for 30 days after purchase of a new car to give time to get a policy sorted out. Marvel Mystery Oil, or just 2-stroke oil, was used in the first few tanks of fuel when breaking in an old VW or Porsche air cooled engine after a rebuild. With modern engines, this would likely poison the catalytic converter and damage the O2 sensors, so I can't imagine doing it on anything recent. But too much lubrication is always preferable than too little...

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Guys have been doing this quite a bit in the past. Also depending on the car make, just like you see some enthusiasts of certain car makes religiously use sea-foam or things like Penzoil Synchrmesh for their trannys.

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Lol nice

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The reason you never see a sludgy AT pan is the AT fluid is not exposed to combustion byproducts. Modern oils, at least those approved for use in our cars, are high detergent oils and will help keep sludge from forming. If an engine is sludged up I'm not sure I would want to add something to the oil that would loosen all the sludge up at once. In this case unless I was prepared to tear down the engine and do a through cleaning -- as part of a rebuild perhaps -- I'd just let sleeping dogs lie. Actually, my real preference is to ensure that no engine in any of my cars ever gets this way to begin with. Thus I follow a good oil change interval and use a proper oil and so far none of my car engines has ever manifested any signs of sludging.

Ohhh great! So along with whatever goes wrong with your car - drop the engine. And then, completely dismantle the engine to do a "through cleaning". Where will it all end...where will it end???? At this rate our cars will spend their entire lives dismantled in the garage for cleaning. LOL!

I'm not sure that Macster was recommending a drop-n-clean so much as suggesting that running a solvent through a car can wind up causing more problems than it solves. But I like the frustration. Your post reads like a Bad Religion song about preventive maintenance.