Are pre-lubers worth it?
 

I've read a fair bit about different pre-lubers that keep your engine from being started without oil in the bearings. I can't even consider one until my warranty expires, but I was curious if anyone has ever owned one and what they concluded. Need to be a pretty long term test to see upside, but downsides could show up quick I guess.

On a street car, probably not. There are benefits for a racecar but the majority of street-only driven car will see no benefit. It's just as easy to install an oil pressure kill switch to the ignition. That way the engine will just crank until oil pressure is built then the car will start. But even that is probably overkill.

Maybe in the old days, but high quality oils leave a film on the bearings. Remember the old Castrol Syntec commercial where they drained the oil from the cars and then drove them on a dyno?

-Jay

Nah, I missed that one. A lot of the pre-luber references I found did also act as accumulators for high gee turns. I'm no racer, though, so thanks for saving me the time and effort.

I don't think most engines ever suffer from lubrication issues. It seems that most cars go to the junkyard without ever having had a problem that could have been prevented by pre-lubing, better quality oil/filter, or more frequent oil changes.

Simply using the appropriate weight of oil should do fine.

My last car died from rust. It ran just fine. Of course I bought it for $100 and it was used as a winter beater, so your results may vary. :)

The only problem I ever had with a car failing due to lubrication was when my sister drove the Buick 80 MPH with low oil. If she had bothered to check the oil that would not have happened.

-Jay

See what I mean? The next car that you keep until its death will die from rust, or from transmission failure, or fuel injection, or head gasket, or valves, or whatever...

The obsession that people have with trying to improve lubrication is entirely without foundation, based on the data I've informally gathered. There's a few cars that are more sensitive to lubrication issues, but most are not.

The websites selling these things blatantly lie as well, of course. One place I emailed asking specific technical questions would only reply with their standard claims and "so buy now!". After my third message asking them to clarify something specific, they just stopped replying. Never answered a single damn thing.

if you recall, there was a recent one comparing 2 dodge magnums i think. the oil was not drained, but the cars were revved to and maintained red line.

when the car w/ conventional oil blew its motor, a guy asks his buddy, "don't you use conventional oil?" and he replied, "not anymore."

wonder how they got dodges permission for that?