Does using engine oil/fuel additives improve the health of motorcycle ?

I own a 2 year old single cylinder motorcycle serviced as per manual timelines and use Higher Grade petrol (BP XP95, HP Power, Shell) whenever possible.

BHPian kaizengadi recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Does using engine oil additives and fuel additives make a difference in the overall health of the motorcycle or in the bigger picture does the benefit offered by these additives not make sense in real-life scenarios?

I own a 2-year-old single-cylinder motorcycle serviced as per manual timelines and use Higher Grade petrol (BP XP95, HP Power, Shell) whenever possible. Should I use these products during my next service or just skip it?

Below are the few products I have come across online.

• Engine Oil Additives: MsO2 Liqui Moly Shooter, Armarol Nano Ultra
• Engine Flush: Liqui Moly Engine Flush, 3M Engine Flush
• Fuel Additive: Liqui Moly 4T Shooter

Please share your experience with these additives.

Thanks.

Here's what GTO had to say on the matter:

I don't believe in using fuel or oil additives at all, and most of their reported benefits are placebo effects. What I do believe in though is filling pure unadulterated petrol or diesel (preferably from company-owned-company-operated pumps) and good quality engine oil. This has worked well for all my cars, be it German luxury sedans or offroaders or beaters.

Some manufacturers have a sticker on the fuel lid saying "strictly no additives". That says it all.

Just stick to the maintenance schedule in your ownership manual and you'll be all set for 100,000 - 200,000 km of ownership.

Here's what BHPian Jeroen had to say on the matter:

The short answer is yes it’s snake oil. The effects reported are just wishful thinking at best, but more likely to be a simple placebo.

I have yet to see any credible test of any of these products. A credible test means running multiple engines under identical circumstances for a couple of thousand hours taking all those engines apart, measuring wear and tear on all the components, and comparing.

Anything else is simply not a real test and personal experience is of course completely and utterly irrelevant to something like this.

Without concrete performance and wear and tear data before and after they are just opinions. Nothing to it.

There are a few additives that can be tested fairly easily in laboratories. It’s mostly about additives to prevent diesel bugs and diesel degradation. More of a problem in marine diesel (e.g. on my boat) than on cars.

Also, additives to counter the negative effects of ethanol in fuel can be lab-tested. Spoiler alert, none of them really work, at best they cause some delay, but never protect fully.

Here's what BHPian Roy.S had to say on the matter:

I've used all manner of additives in my G13BB Swift over the last 17 years and 2 lac km. Engine flushes, Gearbox oil additives, petrol additives, injector cleaning additives.

I never passed up a chance to use an additive and my addictive addiction got worse after Amazon started selling them.

I guarantee you all of them are snake oil or worse.

The only thing that made a difference was fully synthetic oil and unadulterated fuel.

My name is Roy S. and I'm a former additive addict.

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