I am a "by the book" sort of person. I use Castrol 5W20 ever since I bought the truck. It had 56000 on it when I picked it up from Metro out on Richmond Rd. Ran like a jewel until last summer and it seemed from one tankful to the next, the fuel economy dropped in half. No fault codes, I replace the map sensor last summer and all 4 O2 sensors ....... twice. Had to return the ones from Amazon because they were pure garbage. Put in a set from Auto Value and it ran a bit better. After doing a lot of reading, the information was pointing to a PCM so I bought one from Flagship 1. Drivability is marginally better.
Everything tests OK, all sensors are behaving properly.
After testing all sensors and replacing the PCM, the only thing left is the teletype machine under the hood. Or at least it sure sounds like one. No miss, no soft cylinders but I'm suspecting there is enough noise to activate the detonation sensors.
I am really upset with myself because I used to be darn good at solving this stuff.
Once the weather warms up enough, I'm going to do a tear down and flush all the oil galleries, new cam, lifters AND a Hellcat pump.
That's most unfortunate, I recall your sudden mileage decrease without any explanation.
Have you read the LubeGard poll thread?
There's some interesting stories but the stats speak for themselves.
30% claimed that LubeGard cured their tick.
46% claimed improved but not 100%.
With 76% of users reporting a positive result, I can't ignore the potential for positive results from adding it to my own routine.
Regardless if the noise was a true hemi tick or not, this solution satisfied the majority of users.
It might be worth the gamble to try LubeGard and a full synthetic oil with a better quality synthetic oil filter at your next OCI as an experiment.
At least once before you decide to perform the full overhaul.
If all you have to lose is a few $ and the sounds of your underhood teletype machine, hmmm.
The Fram Ultra oil filters are available from Walmart at about $14.25, the last time that I looked.
The XG-2 won't fit in my truck but the Fram filter I use is larger, better quality, and more suited to synthetic oil than the Mopar recommended filter.
So early results are in fellas, I'm pretty happy with them, we look like we have a viable option other then redline. And as we see some areas redline is impossible to get, you can get this and have a real decent shot at killing tick. The main take away, the science of redline's formula led us...
www.ramforum.com
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