Fuel Lube or not

Any thoughts on here as to wheather or not the cummins engines or any other for that matter would benefit from a lubricant additive for the injectors and CP3???

We run stanadyne fuel additive in all of our bulk tanks.

But I can’t specifically comment on common rail fuel systems

I would take the money you would waste on additive and stick it in a coffee can.

Chassisman said:

Any thoughts on here as to wheather or not the cummins engines or any other for that matter would benefit from a lubricant additive for the injectors and CP3???

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Old engines yes, the new engines that are designed for ULSD not likely to seen any benefits.

If any additive you use has an emulsifier in it, you could have issues with water in the fuel system, those types of treatments breakdown the water small enough that a water separator filter may not catch it, but it could still cause damage to the fuel injectors.

Ashless 2stroke oil is a very common additive for fuel lubricant, and can be had fairly cheap.
Now, I'm not going to comment on the arguments pro or con on using it, but I will say it is commonly used.

Given that all commonrail 5.9s were around when the LSD (500ppm) was around, I don't think it's a bad idea to run an additive.
The 5.9 Cummins and LB7 injectors were such a POS design from the start, that anything to help them along isn't a bad idea.

All one has to do is drop the tank on a ~200k truck and see all of the metal debris in the bottom, to know that they, and the CP3, are self destructing from the start.

It has been mentioned that (blended) biodiesel does lubricate the fuel system and from my personal experience, the engines do seem to run quieter when biodiesel is added.

Mark.

We legitimately saw a decrease in mechanical fuel pump issues when we started using additive. Mostly with the old rotary CAV pUmps. We only have one commonrail engine and it doesn’t have enough hours on it to comment about.

I’d like to hear a Seth’s opinion on this subject.

At the pump shop I worked at we saw pumps that ran fuel lube/cleaner ,the Plungers and injectors looked so much better. Seems the cleaner in the additives is equally important .

Rich dzl said:

At the pump shop I worked at we saw pumps that ran fuel lube/cleaner ,the Plungers and injectors looked so much better. Seems the cleaner in the additives is equally important .

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They may have looked better but the pump was still torn apart so did they really save anything?

IMO Do the math. Cost of addictive vs the potential cost of repairs. If it costs $10 a week and you keep your truck 5 yrs, is a set of injectors or a pump more or less than $2600? Personally to me that’s not a good ROI, I have better odds in Vegas.

I see lots of semis with every type of fuel system and I see no difference in issues between ones that have jugs of fuel additive in the side boxes vs the ones that don’t.

When a guys pump plunger explodes on his common rail ISX, it wasn’t because he didn’t buy a $20 jug of additive every fill up.

Brother in law hauls propellers all across the US with a pickup. Had a 2002 Chevy and ran it 300,000 miles and put one set of injectors in it. No way that additive math adds up. Only fuel issue the local Co-Op has seen was from bio diesel.

I haven’t seen a rash if mechanical truck motors die because of the fuel. And a 100k mile per year truck would surely show signs before a farm tractor that works a few months a year.

Cummins 5.9 commonrail is Bosch, Bosch is european and we have had ULSD since 1990 or something like that, only problems have been with rotary pumps, they are so weak design.