Would you recommend oil additives ?

I've never used an oil additive in my life, but it has been 2,900 miles since the last oil change on the Disco 300TDi, and I change the oil every 3,000 miles with 10W40 Semi-Synthetic, and for the 52,000 miles she has on her, it has worked great.

Not a puff of smoke, and fires right up on the original 1995 Glow Plugs!

God I love that Landy, which is why I looked into ways on preserving the engine, and oil additives came up.

Another thing I was looking at is engine flush, which I am slightly familiar with, as I used it a few times on an old engine I was fixing for a woman once, and it had really clogged up oil passages due to long oil change intervals.

engine flush is just dear paraffin, if you need to flush engine use a higher detergent oil not an engine flush ,what your doing at the moment with regular changes is all you need to do

Ah, brilliant!

How long do these engines last usually with good maintenance ?

The body of the Disco is in mint condition, and if the engine will last a long time, I will be very happy to keep on driving it until I go to my grave.

a long time first thing to wear will be shell bearings ,i often check/replace them when fitting an engine for a converson even though i new engine ran well ,just to be sure it still had many years left ,oil pressure check can indicate state , plenty of motor way runs help to, idling and pootling around are poor for engine ,a lot of engines when shell bearings are worn are generally worn too, but tdis mostly are still very good your bearings from the servicing youve done are probably good , a clean rocker box is good indicater of general cleanliness of engine in general

Well I drive the Disco very gently, partly because I didn't want to "hurt it" unnecessarily and because I use it in snow mostly and can't really gun it.

I do give it a red line for a good time every now and then to keep the exhaust clear and stop anything clogging up.

I also let it warm up fully on idle for 15-20 minutes before driving it, which I hope is good for it ? I know it is for most engines.

free revs with no torque isnt good ,hard work regulary is , engine preheater is better than idling .diesel is happiest when revs are pulled down ,as in motorway driving pushing through the air or going up long steady incline

Oh, well it doesn't get any heavy work, just snow driving.

My '94 Peugeot 405 1.9 Turbo Diesel (which I also bought new) does get heavy work though.

It is constantly lugging things around on trailers and such, but it still looks good and runs great with over 300,000 miles on the clock.

I do love diesels.

Not exactly an oil additive, but I've seen a lot of recommendations on various forums for the addition of mineral 2 stroke oil to the diesel tank (at 200:1). Claims include smoother/quieter running and improved mpg - has anyone tried this on a 300tdi?

Ask any Australian about 'Moreys', they swear by it. I have had experience of the stuff and so would I...

Morey's Heavy Duty Oil Stabilser 1 Litre

I have used something called activ8 in a couple of my bikes, and it seems to have worked well. The biggest difference I noticed was on my KTM motorcross bike, which was very highly tuned & thrashed mercilessly. The difference between using and not using was really quite noticeable. But on my road bikes the difference is probably going to be a lot less.