Complaint Review: RESTORE - ENGINE OIL ADDITIVE

 For everyone who wrote in, some with the same issue, others who have not had trouble...yet...and those incredulous this could happen at all: YES IT DID HAPPEN and it IS BECAUSE OF RESTORE and not because my car had a crap engine or what have you.  This product should be removed from the shelves and it makers forced to take ownership and pay up.  And until they do, as I promised RESTORE many years ago, I will keep talking about what happened to me.

 Glad your engines have not yet siezed.  Still, as stated, I had engine analysis done and this crap clogged my oil pump to the point no oil got to the engine and that caused the issue.  See Michael's comment with what happened on his Land Cruiser.  It could be that Euro cars have less tollerance for this crud.  The bottom line is that this product caused my engine to sieze and nothing else.  The engine was absolutely fine.  I am not throwing stones at windows that do not deserve to be broken.  With regard to RESTORE still being on the market, well, it took us how long to ban DDT and Monstanto Corp is still around killing us all off slowly for money as well. 

 Michael, EXACTLY...that WHINE...I still hear it in my head, after all these years.  So I assume you tried and failed to get anything out of RESTORE as well?  I actually threatened to fly a banner over their building.  But I was pretty cash strapped back then...hmmmm...doesnt prevent me from doing so today though...what's that saying..hell hath no fury...?  :)  When one makes a product, they should do all necessary testing and back their product.  If they SAY it is guaranteed, then they should honor those apparently empty words printed on the can.  I meticulously kept up with my GT-6 and it was my first car.  I still dream of driving it.

 Well, thanks for not saying RESTORE was faultless.  You are right, the BL products had their flaws.  Beautiful exteriors, awesome engines and every other part around that crap.  It was the fabulous engine that kept me going with refurbishing the entire vehicle.  LOL...yes, I buy Japanese and one German, now but the point is that this RESTORE product was indeed the undoing of the engine.  The engine had to be a complete rebuild over the block and it cost a kings ransom to do it and even with my engine oil analysis; clogged filter due to this product proof in my hands, RESTORE DID NOTHING.  That isnt right.  No, they did not build the car, they did not create Lucas Wiring, but they are at fault for ruining my beautiful engine...the engine..the ONE thing, other than the body and pretty interior, that worked so well.  My old mechanic still has this car and it runs.  I had to come up with all the money to refurbish (notice my avoidance of the word restore) the engine after RESTORE TRASHED IT, and in the months the car had to sit waiting for that, the rear end rusted up.  Sold the car for 1k to my mechanic; a steal for him since he got paid to do the entire engine and had already done most of the work (or saw me do the work he didnt do correctly) and saw the bargain.  What I did not appreciate was him driving the car over to my house every year showing how great my old car was...that kinda hurt.

 My dad was a mechanic.  Lucas wiring is a nightmare but the engines and dual strombergs were fabulous.  I never had a lick of trouble with either.  I did my own oil, built my own plugwires, did alot of stuff myself.  Same company made Jaguar.  You either got a good one or you didnt.  Ask other Jag owners.  The engine was not the trouble with that car.  RESTORE was.  This is a true and honest account of a bad company making a bad product and trashing a young girls car.  It was not fair, it was not right.  For you to cast stones when you know nothing about my car, nothing about me is not fair either.  The engine and the vehicle overal, was in immaculate condition and had been completely refurbished.  Again, the engine was NOT a problem. RESTORE IS A PROBLEM.  DO you work there or something?  Why don't you try this product on your vehicle and get back with me.  Try it on a euro car, a Jag, Porsche etc.  Then you may have something to say.

 pardon me, but you do not know the facts.  I am the one that sent my oil out for analysis, worked with my mechanic and went through this nightmare.  Catrol is NOT a problem, then or now so no mud slinging against Castrol, which makes a fine engine oil, always has.  RESTORE whenever I see this product on shelves, to this day, I hold up a can, explain what it did to my car and turn ALL cans backwards on the shelves.  This produc is horrid and the people behind it will not take any ownership, although the can did have a guarantee etc.  My engine was fine prior to using this product and there wasnt anything mechanically wrong with my oil pump.  This crap clogged up my oil pump, which worked just fine once all that goo was removed/cleaned out of the pump...sadly too late to halt a total engine overhaul that RESTORE did NOT pay for!

I have read this post. I find it od as there is NO way this product caused any of these problems, why cause this product isn't design to fix problems, and using  Castrol10W40 and engine restore is going to cause problems. an oil pump being old is the problem plus said Oil filter failed. why cause it's old so its you're problem. not the product of said company. I personal use it with "NO PROBLEMS" at all. furthermore, I have a jeep with over 160k , I use Castrol oil 10W30 and engine restore.

 guess what "NO PROBLEMS" and passes smog ,No burning of oil, by adding wrong oil and an oil additive your going to damage you're engine. another problem is you fail to mention if you did a rebuild on said engine was ever done. I have done many engine rebuilds. guess what, I find ether slug, meaning old oil build-up, a non working Oil-pump, or a defective Oil-filter.

The cause is human era ,plus  going over your post many times you've would have spent well over 40k or more being it's an 1973 Triumph GT6. facts speak for them self since there's NO mention of an tear-down of the engine, having oil sample analysed isn't free, about this problem too many wholes' in this post plus NO Ripoff ect.

Although I have no experience with Restore, I have plenty with the Triumph GT6...I had one.  The car you loved so much was produced by a company called British-Leyland.  A good looking car, it was an electrical and mechanical nightmare.  As stated in an earlier comment, the engines were what I call "throw-aways", and not really worth rebuillding.  They certainly weren't engineered to last.  If you got 100KMI out of one, you could consider yourself lucky...even with diligent maintenance.  It sounds as if you were backwards in doing your restoration, making it look pretty and disregarding the mechanical aspect.  Lessons learned.  I don't recommend using engine oil additives as a general rule....they were born of shady used-car salesmen attempting to hide deeper problems long enough to sell the car.  If you believed what was written on the label without researching it, then smack yourself up side the head!  My GT6 ended up with a small block Chevy under the hood and a modified Corvette drivetrain.

     Ok, so I realize how important it was to find and restore your Triumph. For many years I wanted an XKE Jaguar. But I found out that English cars just aren't made that well. If you think about it, we should have seen a lot of them after WW2, but instead we saw German and Japanese ones. It sounds like your engine 'spun a bearing'. To avoid similar problems in the future your local community college has automotive classes, many 'geared' towards women so they don't get taken advantage of by unscruplous mechanics.  I have to agree with Robert with this one. Knowledge is power, and if you'd understand more on how the engine works...and fails you'd realize it was a mechanical problem unrelated to the use of 'Restore'. Logically, if the product caused major malfunctions, it wouldn't last very long, would it? Just because you make something pretty doesn't make it so. Surely you can think of someone attractive that's awful inside? I have a Jeep that's 35 years old and only by diligent maintenance am I able to keep the old girl going back and forth to work every day...at 40 below in the winter, too. Good luck with your future cars...

I would like to thank the person who filed this report and commend her for her efforts and activism dealing with the Restore corporation even though from what I understand they never accepted responsibility. I'm very sorry to learn about your story and to hear about what happened to your nice car. Please keep up the good work in telling others your experiances with this product.

Here is my story:

I have a 1999 Land Rover Discovery II 4.0 V8 meticulously maintained since day one. I was up for an oil change and found Restore at the Autozone. I thought "why not"? the worst that can happen is it wont work and most importantly - it can't hurt.

WRONG.

After adding restore my Land Rover started to make an odd whining noise. I listend close but I could not tell if it was GOOD whining noise or a BAD whining noise so I just drove it home. The next day I was coming back from the other side of town when my car started struggling for power and the service engine now light starts flashing like crazy. Again this  happened IMMEDIATLY after I added restore with an oil change. I admit I did notice how thick and purple and globby it was but thought that was normal so I added it.

After towing the car to the Land Rover dealer they informed me the car had somehow "overheated" myseriously without the temperature gauge ever going up - and as a result the head gaskets were blown. It needed new heads, a valve job and 2 new upper cylinder heads and a thermostat. I was quoted a massive repair cost of over $5,000 total.

My Land Rover was PAMPERED LIKE A BABY it was garage kept and meticously maintained since DAY ONE. I did MORE maintenance than was required and drove it like a Senior Citizen. On top of that it had never been driven off-road (which is what Land Rovers are designed for). 

When happened it had been driven less then 50 miles after adding RESTORE.

Is this just a spectacular coincidance? The company claimed it was and refused to take responsibility claiming I could not prove it was thier product which caused the problems since the mechanic could not verify the cause of the overheating and blown heads.

I'm pretty sure there is no doubt for such a massive repair cost to occur directly after adding this goopy product for the first time. On a super clean well perfectly maintained engine none the less.

I would think twice before adding this purple goop to your car. Even with the repair my Land Rover's engine has never sounded the same since!

It's hard to believe that you would be complaining about a product that you supposedly used some 15 years ago, in a car that itself was 20 years old at the time. Obviously any car with that age and mileage is going to have mechanical issues regardless of what you put in the oil. All engines wear out and break down at some point. They don't last forever and they are not free of problems during their lifespan. It's easy to be a victim and "blame" someone rather than deal with the fact that your problem was simply caused by the normal aging process of the engine, and not because of the Restore product.

I have experienced great results when I've used Restore in my cars. I know people who have used it in their vehicles for many years and they have never had any problems either. Your point about the company still being in business is sufficient logical proof to dismiss your emotional allegations and conclude they do make a good product that has satisfied millions of customers.

It baffles me why someone would put snake-oil in a perfectly good engine. This particular additive is used on very tired engines that are on their last legs. You may get a few thousand more miles, but it's certainly not going to fix anything.

Generally speaking, all of the popular brands of snake-oil are not very effective at doing anything other than lightening your wallet. On the other hand, since they are nothing more than motor oil with a few chemicals added, they don't usually do any harm either. I'd have to agree with Robert that your finely crafted brit engine most likely died a natural death.

Twenty years ago, the car was restored. That's great. I have always considered the Spifire and the TR-6 to be two of the most beautiful cars made.

So now, with a 30 year old car, and at least a 20 year old engine of questionable integrity, the car quits. And you blame it on an oil additive. Sure.

Restore is useless. It does nothing. And it will not harm the engine. The engine already had an issue. This is why you tried to fix it with a can-O-stuff.

The Triumph oil pumps are barely adequate, and the crankshafts were known to travel. The camshafts would wear down, and the valve guides had no provisions for seals. This all combined to create engines that were reliable when new, but quickly wore out. The metal has to go somewhere, and the bearings paid the price. They were also built to run on very high(100+) octane gasoline, which was very readily available back then, but unheard of now.

If you believe you will prevail, sue them in small claims court. I think you will lose. Suck it up, and get another engine.