Which Diesel Anti Gel Fuel Additive Brand Wins?
We compared 13 diesel anti gel fuel additive options head to head. Hot Shot's Secret came out on top. See the measured results, the runner-up, the budget pick, and a link to the full test video.
Hot Shot's Secret
Price shown in test: $17 for 16 oz
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PEAK
Price shown in test: $17 for two 16 oz bottles
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The measured results
Every number below is read straight from the test. Scroll sideways to see all measurements. Products are listed in the order they finished.
| Product | Lubricity/wear scar test | Anti-gel/cloud point test (first dose) | Double dosage retest | Flammability test | Water separation test | Corrosion test (24hr rust panel) | Rescue/emergency de-icer sub-category (secondary) | Average finish | Rescue/emergency de-icer sub-category |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Hot Shot's Secret$17 for 16 oz | 5.2 mm wear scar (second best of anti-gel brands, behind Archoil's 5.17 mm); energy use meter dipped below 400 watts at 20 seconds, the best of the anti-gel brands at that point | performed better than all other anti-gel brands except Peak; top inch of container had not yet reached cloud point, rated 2 alongside Peak (best rating in this test) | extra additive helped only a little, still quite a bit of cloudy fuel | performed by far the best of all anti-gel brands, best possible rating of 1 | broke down the water bead into droplets, about the same performance as Opti-Lube | finished in first place (best) of 13 entries, very large area of the panel without any rust | also the top performer among the 6 rescue-brand thaw-speed test, finished first | 1.6 (stated, best of all anti-gel brands) | not tested |
| 2PEAK$17 for two 16 oz bottles | 5.34 mm wear scar, third-best of anti-gel brands; energy use meter in the 470s initial, best at that point in the sequence | performed the best of all anti-gel brands at that point in the narration, top inch not yet reached cloud point, rest of fuel low viscosity, rated 2 alongside Hot Shot's | extra dose didn't help much, about the same amount of non-cloudy fuel as before | more flammable than Ford in its paired comparison | no impact on the water bead even after 20 drops added (does not claim to demulsify water) | 8th of 13 entries (less rust than Ford, a little more than STA-BIL) | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 3Amsoil$12 for 16 oz | 6.41 mm wear scar, performed better than average | did not perform as well as Peak but had a very low viscosity compared to most other brands | quite a bit of improvement, looked as good as Peak and Ford after the extra dose | performed well with a rating of 2 alongside Power Service Diesel | no impact on the water bead (does not claim to remove water) | 5th of 13 entries, very superficial rust, finished just ahead of Howes | 4th of 6 in the rescue thaw-speed test, barely behind Power Service Diesel | not tested | not tested |
| 4STA-BIL$15 for 32 oz | 5.46 mm wear scar; energy use meter down to just above 400 watts at 20 seconds | looked better than Power Service Diesel; reached cloud point but with lower viscosity than Power Service Diesel | some improvement, not quite as much as Howes and Power Service Diesel | not very flammable in its paired comparison with Stanadyne | broke down the water bead into small droplets, settled at the bottom (claims to demulsify water) | 7th of 13 entries, finished just ahead of Peak | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 5Ford | 7.83 mm wear scar, described as not too bad or too good; 443 watts at 20 seconds | struggled, most of the fuel turned into a slushy mix especially at the bottom of the container | quite a bit of improvement, looked about the same as Peak after the extra dose | less flammable than Peak in its paired comparison; does not claim to add cetane or help cold starts | no impact on the water bead (claims corrosion prevention, not water removal) | 9th of 13 entries, a little less rust than Opti-Lube | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 6Opti-Lube$32 for 32 oz | 5.72 mm wear scar, third place among the brands tested up to that point in the video | reached cloud point, higher viscosity than Amsoil | no visible difference from before adding the extra dose | more flammable than untreated diesel in its paired comparison; claims to add 3 cetane points | attacked the water bead, causing it to form tiny droplets (claims to demulsify water) | 11th of 13 entries, larger rust patches but less overall oxidized surface area than Power Service Diesel | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 7Archoil$45 for 41 oz or $19 per ounce | 5.17 mm wear scar, the best of all anti-gel brands (narrowly edges out Hot Shot's 5.2 mm) | did not perform quite as well as Hot Shot's; all fuel reached cloud point but with lower viscosity than most other brands | did not seem to benefit much from the extra dose, still pretty cloudy | performed by far the best in its paired comparison against Hot Shot's (per transcript, though the exact numeric rating for Archoil vs Hot Shot's in this specific pairing is ambiguous, see notes) | did a great job attacking the water bead, about the same as Hot Shot's | 10th of 13 entries, very close to Ford's result | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 8Howes$20 for 64 oz | 8.8 mm wear scar, performed slightly better than the untreated-diesel baseline and slightly better than Lucas | performed quite a bit better than Lucas, all the diesel remained in liquid form though it still reached cloud point | positive impact for the most part, but fuel still at cloud point | less flammable than Power Service Diesel in its paired comparison | no impact on the water bead (does not claim to include a dispersant) | 6th of 13 entries, oxidation a little less intense than STA-BIL | 5th of 6 in the rescue thaw-speed test | not tested | not tested |
| 9Power Service Diesel$27 for 64 oz | 6.83 mm wear scar, a lot less damage than the previously-tested brands at that point (best yet in narration order) | similar result to Lucas but lower viscosity; entire contents reached cloud point | extra additive helped improve performance, but most of the diesel was still very cloudy | more flammable than Howes in its paired comparison, matches its own marketing claim of increasing cetane | no impact on the water bead (does not claim to contain dispersants) | 12th of 13 entries (second worst), oxidation everywhere though not as intense as Lucas | 3rd of 6 in the rescue thaw-speed test, barely ahead of Amsoil | not tested | not tested |
| 10Stanadyne$32 for 64 oz | 9.07 mm wear scar, almost as bad as Lucas; energy use meter in the 450s at 20 seconds indicating a lot of damage | fuel frozen from top to bottom, the worst-performing anti-gel result recorded | no longer completely frozen, but still some gelled fuel present | not very flammable in its paired comparison with STA-BIL | no impact on the water bead (does not claim to demulsify water) | 3rd of 13 entries, performed very well | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 11Lucas$14 for 64 oz or 22 cents per ounce | 9.21 mm wear scar, just a little smaller than the untreated-diesel baseline (9.34 mm), described as struggling almost as much as untreated fuel | completely solid/frozen, the worst anti-gel result in the video | not completely frozen this time, but some of the diesel had gelled and the rest was at cloud point | neither Lucas nor untreated diesel was very flammable; narrator notes Lucas does not claim to increase cetane or help cold starts, so this is not held against it | broke the water bead down into tiny droplets that settled at the bottom (claims real water dispersants) | 13th of 13 entries (worst), a lot of rust formed | not tested | not tested | not tested |
| 12FPPF$15 for 32 oz | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | 2nd of 6 in the rescue thaw-speed test, a few minutes behind Hot Shot's Secret |
| 13CleanBoost$25 for 32 oz | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | not tested | 6th of 6 (last) in the rescue thaw-speed test, barely behind Howes |
How it was tested
- lubricity/wear scar test (energy use meter in watts plus microscope wear-scar measurement in mm, treated diesel vs untreated baseline and a bonus two-stroke-oil comparison)
- anti-gel/cloud point test (recommended, often doubled, dosage; fuel chilled to -38F for 24 hours; assessed for solid/gelled/cloud-point state and viscosity)
- double dosage anti-gel retest (fuel re-frozen at -38F for 24 hours after doubling the dose a second time)
- flammability test (paired brand comparisons, lower flash point framed as more flammable/easier cold-weather ignition)
- water separation/demulsification test (drops of product added to water-contaminated fuel in a test tube, checked for water bead breakdown)
- corrosion test (product applied to bare steel, then an aggressive rusting agent of hydrogen peroxide, vinegar and salt applied, checked after 24 hours)
- rescue/emergency de-icer thaw-speed test (secondary sub-category: separate rescue-branded products applied to fully frozen fuel, first in-freezer then at ambient ~70F, timed to see which thaws fastest)
“the hot shot Secrets came in on top with the best average finisher rating of 1.6”
Data notes and caveats
This video covers two related but distinct product categories: 11 anti-gel fuel additive brands (Hot Shot's Secret, PEAK, Archoil, STA-BIL, Opti-Lube, Power Service Diesel, Howes, Stanadyne, Ford, Lucas, Amsoil) tested across lubricity, cloud point (single and double dose), flammability, water separation, and corrosion; and a secondary sub-category of 6 rescue/emergency de-icer products (Hot Shot's Secret, FPPF, CleanBoost, Power Service Diesel, Howes, Amsoil) tested for thaw speed only. The title frames the anti-gel category as primary, so category/winner/runnerUp reflect that; the rescue sub-category's separate ranking (Hot Shot's 1st, FPPF 2nd, Power Service Diesel 3rd, Amsoil 4th, Howes 5th, CleanBoost 6th) is preserved in the relevant products' notes so a build step could split this into two pages later. The meta chapter titles (Lucas test, Howes test, Power Service test, Sta-bil test, Stanadyne test, Peak test, Ford test, Amsoil test, Opti-Lube test, Hot Shot's test, Archoil test, Two-stroke oil test) exactly match the transcript's brand-testing order and independently confirmed every mangled-name resolution, especially the heavily garbled Stanadyne (appeared as aedine/standy/stadon/sadine/aanad/tadine/Sardine) and STA-BIL (captioned as stable/a stable). An untreated-diesel baseline and a bonus non-anti-gel Amsoil two-stroke-oil comparison were also tested throughout (used as reference points, not ranked competing products) and are noted under the Amsoil entry rather than given their own product entries. Four price mentions were garbled or internally inconsistent and were either nulled (Ford, where 20oz at 55 cents/oz implies about $11, not the stated $1) or kept verbatim with a flag rather than corrected (Archoil's $45-for-41oz-or-$19-per-ounce does not reconcile arithmetically; Stanadyne's '5050 cents per ounce' looks like a collapsed decimal; Hot Shot's anti-gel per-ounce figure was transcribed as an unreadable fragment). A single mid-test mention of 'the Archer' making quick thaw progress during the rescue test does not fit any of the 6 named rescue brands and was treated as an unresolved caption artifact, not assigned to any product, since the video's own explicit final rescue ranking (Hot Shot's, FPPF, Power Service Diesel, Amsoil, Howes, CleanBoost) accounts for all 6 rescue brands cleanly without it.
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