An autocross buddy years ago was trying to revive an abused acura he
bought cheap.  It had low compression.  he said he took out the spark
plugs and put a few ounces ATf in each cyl then left it for a couple
days.  Then cranked engine to spray out as much ATF as
possible.  Then put the plugs back in and started it to massive
smoking of course.  ran it until smoking stopped then changed the
oil.  It unstuck the piston rings and compression went way up.  Just
another tip to store in the ol' brain.  That trick might not work so
well on our boxer engines though.
Edward

At 08:12 PM 6/19/2010, Tom Hargrave wrote:
>The transmission fluid trick was a common solution for this problem
>back in the 60s. The transmission fluid dissolved all of the varnish
>and sludge back into the oil where it was pulled out with the next oil change.
>
>More modern oils have additives to prevent this from occurring. That
>is assuming you change your oil before the additive packages wear
>out, which most still don't do.
>
>Tom
>www.stir-plate.com
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM] On
>Behalf Of Dave Mcneely
>Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2010 5:28 PM
>To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
>Subject: Re: Was Techron, now MMO
>
> > BTW, when we came across a seriously sludged engine we would drain the
> > oil, pour in 4 quarts of transmission fluid and run AT IDLE for a
> few minutes.
> >