[desinia]

Just sit right right back
and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip
that started at my dealer's door
when inside I did slip...

My E was up for oil change
and yes, it was the first
and there I was with Mobil-1...
From there, the day was cursed!

I asked them "dump the oil out"
and fill it up with these
and yes sir, I want nothing more
except a Filtech please.
(The very best one please!)

"SIGH!" The rest of it is too painful to joke about. The service manager assured me there'd be no problem with it. Half an hour later, I found out that the kid doing the oil change had"

Poured the entire 5 quart jug of Mobil-1 in the engine.
Topped that off with a bottle of something called "Krex Graphite"
Let half the air out of my tires after I specifically asked to not touch them.
AND there's a three inch long scratch in the driver's door that I don't remember being there when I went in. No way to prove it though.

Because I was late to work, I signed the receipt and scooted before I saw the Krex Graphite listed at the bottom along with an $8 charge for same. Graphite in an aluminum engine? Gag... I could either go back and demand satisfaction, lose any further good will with the place in case I need warranty repairs, or could not raise a stink there but go ahead and tell the rest of the world that Basney Honda of South Bend tries to sneak in this Krex Graphite additive on every oil change they can manage.

For me? The E got its first oil change at the dealer (and last) and a valuable lesson about that dealer's service department. Basney Honda of South Bend. Because of those people, I ended up spending over $150 trying to flush as much of their garbage out of my engine as possible before it took too much damage from the load of graphite sludge eating up the aluminum.

Can you imagine how satisfied I am with them?

 

[Dallan]

Ouch..... That sounds like quite the trip!

What exactly is the Krex stuff supposed to do??

 

[Dom.five]

Graphite oil has been around for years! There is nothing wrong with it.

The "Go Kart track" in this area runs it exclusively in the all aluminum Honda engines. They are Air cooled, driven hard, and have no filter. They last for years. The Graphite is supposed to be ground so fine that it will not clog your filter. This is a link to

Krex​

sight.

Some History.

Another tidbit.

What the ACS has to say about it!

The MBTA ( Boston's city buses ) are running a synthetic oil Graphite mix in the Bio Diesel city buses. It is in an effort to move away from our foreign oil dependency. I think you will be seeing more if it in the future. It's a time proven technology.

Dom

 

[ZOMBIEinvader]

I agree the graphite is not an issue with the health of the engine.

It seems the service department has decided it is a beneficial additive. They should be asking the customers if they want it though. They shouldn't assume everyone agrees with their philosophy. $8 added to a $20 oil change is a significant percentage.

Maybe they are hiring all of their mechanics from the local GoKart track!

 

[desinia]

OK guys.

One: I had them put in a synthetic oil. The best reason for using a good synthetic is to keep it acting like lubricant during temperature extremes. Mixing it with a half pint of cheap mineral oil more or less destroyed the oil as a high/low temp oil. Even if the dealer didn't take the time to drain out at least most of the original oil from the engine, they just added another pint back in.

Two: Graphite is a wonderful friction reducer in an engine made of iron, but adding graphite in any great quantity to an aluminum engine is about like pouring in a slow acid. Over the short run, it probably does everything they claim it can do, but over the long haul, the inside of an aluminum engine full of loose graphite (not graphite alloyed in the aluminum) starts to corrode away after a few years. If you want to see this in high speed, put some mercury on aluminum instead of graphite and leave it set for an hour or so - but don't do this to anything you want to save. Once the reaction starts, it'll keep going until all the aluminum corrodes away. Graphite just works slower.

Dom.five? The wonderful news reports you quoted were written -by- the makers of Krex Graphite.

The rest of you? Every use you've mentioned has been short term only. You find someone who's had experience with graphite in aluminum -anything- over the long haul and you'll find someone who knows how to swear elequently. Seeing what Honda did to the '09 models, I intend to keep my E for a long time to come.

And for graphite in airplane engines? We've come a long way since the P51's flew in combat. Every nation's air force that I've heard of has banned putting graphite additive in a plane's engine oil. Most engine oils have a very small amount added (even Mobil-1) and that's as much as you need to balance the good points vs the damage it does.