Crickets! vs. Marvel Mystery Oil
 

With the endless discussion of the fuel pump crickets and speculation about potential fixes, I have decided to approach this problem (somewhat) scientifically with my 2014 BRZ with approximately 10,000 miles on it. I had seen on another forum (not twin related) where people were running fuel additives in their cars and trucks for fuel system and upper cylinder lubrication. I'm going to try a few of these with my car and see what happens.

I'll run three tanks of each additive I try and update the results as I go, so this will take a while. I usually use 93 Chevron 10% ethanol blend and will make every attempt to stick with that brand to control for the effects of different brands, but with the weather getting warmer and the fact that I travel, I can't guarantee that the three tanks will all be the same blend. Most of my driving consists of highway miles at around 3500 RPM, so keep that in mind when comparing your results to mine.

Up first: Marvel Mystery Oil. This is a product that has been around forever and has a good reputation for solving fuel system and valve issues, even if its name does sound ridiculous.

Cost: About $6 for a 32 oz. bottle at the local O'Reilly. Surprisingly, Amazon's price is $3 higher. I haven't shopped around for a better price.

Application: The bottle says to add 4 oz. of oil to every 10 gallons of fuel. I usually fill up before I get into the reserve, so I usually pump 10 to 11 gallons. Therefore I'll just be adding 4 oz. to each new tank and should be able to get four tanks out of this bottle.

Results:

Tank 1: Approaching E on tank one, the crickets are still there. I did the drive-thru test and could clearly hear the chirping bouncing off the sound of the building. HOWEVER, they are noticeably quieter. What's more, I can report a definite and noticeable improvement in the other general noisiness of this engine. I can hardly hear the direct injectors clacking at all. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by that, but I was. It's still too soon to rule out a good tank of gas as the cause of the improvement, but the results are somewhat promising.

Tank 2: Crickets are still there.

Tank 3: Still there. Valves are still quiet, but the pump still squeaks.

Overall Result: Crickets win. Marvel Mystery Oil does not get rid of crickets.

Disclaimer: No part of this should be taken as advice on what to run in your own car. All I'm doing is reporting my own results from my own unsponsored informal semi-scientific tests. If you run this stuff in your engine and it blows up, don't blame me. Consider yourself adequately cautioned.

Tc-w3, instant fix all the time. Every time.

TC-W3 is the next thing on the list to test. After that will be Lucas Upper Cylinder Lubricant. I chose MMO first because there had been almost no discussion of it here. But I can burn through three tanks of gas only so fast, and I want the test to be under normal driving conditions and not where I went out driving just to burn fuel.

Do you have a particular brand of TC-W3 you prefer?

"Normal" driving conditions in this car should mean some high revs, drifts, and canyon roads, no? Haha

I just picked up quacker state cause it happened to be at macs when I was reading about it. I didn't even use the recommended amount (1 cap that half spilled) and it cured them right away for 2 tanks. Hopefully you guys all get the same results.

LOL. That's exactly why I mentioned what my "normal" driving conditions are up above. I drive for work, anywhere from 200 to 500 miles per week on interstates running 60 to 79 miles per hour. I know my oil temp is getting up above 220 degrees on some of these runs. When I'm off the highway, I don't drive like a granny, but I'm not out drifting either.

So even if I succeed in exterminating my crickets, I can't say for certain that whatever kills them will work for other drivers whose "normal" driving is different from mine. It's possible that something will work in city driving that doesn't work on the highway, and vice versa. I would love to be able to control for that, but I can't.