you might want to rethink your oil you use

[sergechronos]

Unless bearings get worn and need a thicker oil to maintain oil pressure, I still don't think I'd go above a 10w30. As far as the additives he recommends, I'm not sure how I feel about his rankings including them with the non additive oils.

Mobil1 VR1 10w30 ranks pretty highly on the list without any additives at #16, but there is no ranking for it with additives. Most of the oils ahead of it are either more expensive on their own, or have the oil additives (which cost about $20 plus shipping) or both. VR1 at $35 for 6 quarts and ranking that highly without any other additives would seem like a pretty good bang for the buck deal. Most of the other oils ahead of it on the list as well are a 0w30 or a 5w30, which is thinner than OEM recommendations already. Throw in how these cars love to squeeze the oil out and have the crank kiss the bearings, and I wouldn't want to run any thinner than a 10w30.

[Chris@Rvengeperformance]

Since you guys started an oil thread...

I'm considering once I go through another change with the Valvoline vr1 20w50 that I may switch to redline 5w-50. I'd just like to do that to get a little more cold flow since I take some fairly short trips. I'm concerned about the wide spread and how many viscosity improvers they must have used, but it seems that the true group IV oils may be different. I'm also concerned that its actual viscosity is even a little thicker than the vr1 20w50 and I already have a ton of oil pressure.

I did see Trevor ran this oil on his very last setup and didn't report any issues. Does anyone have an UOAs on this or other credible information? I don't consider a Timken bearing test to be representative of what actually happens in an engine with a roller valvetrain.

[anyonebutme]

Oil is a bit more complicated than "rub these metal pieces together, and the one that have less friction is the oil you should use". It gets more complicated once you are pushing an engine past it's design HP, like 90% of us. Like it or not, our engines fall under the race category, lol. My engine hated Castrol and Valvoline VR1, among others. It sheared both into water in under 500 miles, then the hot oil pressures dove under 10 psi at idle. Also, Rotella and some others that have a JASO rating would look bad in this test because they have friction modifiers in them required for the JASO SM rating, which I didn't see him making any mention of. The way they work inside a real engine means they don't cause more wear on bearings and such, but are vital for internal clutch systems to work.

I mean, I don't know of any F1 teams putting Prolong into their multimillion dollar engines.

[99ishVR-4]

Just read the whole thing, apart from some extensively repeated paragraphs in the article, it was a good read. I won't take it as the end-all be-all for oil testing just because there is so much contradictory information out there for oils but I'll definitely consider the test results when shopping for oils in the future.

Cliffs:
- An oil additive called Prolong Engine Treatment allowed some non-designer brand ordinary oils to rank #1,2,3 out of 133 oils tested.
- Motul 300v 5w30 was the highest rated stand-alone oil (no additives)
- Ordinary Mobil 1 5w30 was the 4th highest rated stand-alone oil above Amsoil, Redline, Rotella-T. (hate reading this as I told myself I would never run Mobil1 again after spinning a bearing with it).
- Another 125+ oils tested, with a lot of "the best ever" oils not doing as good as you would expect them to compared to some ordinary oils that are available locally.
- Thinner oils > thicker oils when considering oil temp, flow, drain-back capabilities. (I wish the entirety of the internet could just decide on thick or thin oils as this is the biggest controversy to me and the more I read about it, the less I know).
- Higher zinc content doesn't = better oil.

[kywhitelightning]

Just read the whole thing, apart from some extensively repeated paragraphs in the article, it was a good read. I won't take it as the end-all be-all for oil testing just because there is so much contradictory information out there for oils but I'll definitely consider the test results when shopping for oils in the future.

Cliffs:
- An oil additive called Prolong Engine Treatment allowed some non-designer brand ordinary oils to rank #1,2,3 out of 133 oils tested.
- Motul 300v 5w30 was the highest rated stand-alone oil (no additives)
- Ordinary Mobil 1 5w30 was the 4th highest rated stand-alone oil above Amsoil, Redline, Rotella-T. (hate reading this as I told myself I would never run Mobil1 again after spinning a bearing with it).
- Another 125+ oils tested, with a lot of "the best ever" oils not doing as good as you would expect them to compared to some ordinary oils that are available locally.
- Thinner oils > thicker oils when considering oil temp, flow, drain-back capabilities. (I wish the entirety of the internet could just decide on thick or thin oils as this is the biggest controversy to me and the more I read about it, the less I know).
- Higher zinc content doesn't = better oil.

How can a spun bearing be attributed to a particular brand of oil? Bearings don't just spin because of oil brand. They can spin from a variety of different reasons, most likely none of which are related directly to the brand. Was the oil broken down (sludge), fuel diluted, or water diluted? Was the oil pump tired? Dented oil pan? Was the engine ran hot previously? Deformed rotating parts? All of these questions are precursors to the real reason bearings spin, oil starvation. Read any article about oil viscosity choice and the decision is made solely on usage. More specifically, anticipated oil temps. Normal street driving really doesn't justify high viscosity oil as this article clearly points out why. Road coarsing where there is a bunch of WOT going on for extended periods of time would be a good reason to raise the hot viscosity number.

I thought it was really cool to hear him talk about high viscosity oils causing the filters to bypass when cold because of high pressure. That point should really be ephasized. I never thought about it that way but, it makes sense. Thanks for sharing OP.

Jeff

[Hard AttacK]

Yawn.....not this shit again.

[99ishVR-4]

How can a spun bearing be attributed to a particular brand of oil? Bearings don't just spin because of oil brand. They can spin from a variety of different reasons, most likely none of which are related directly to the brand. Was the oil broken down (sludge), fuel diluted, or water diluted? Was the oil pump tired? Dented oil pan? Was the engine ran hot previously? Deformed rotating parts? All of these questions are precursors to the real reason bearings spin, oil starvation. Read any article about oil viscosity choice and the decision is made solely on usage. More specifically, anticipated oil temps. Normal street driving really doesn't justify high viscosity oil as this article clearly points out why. Road coarsing where there is a bunch of WOT going on for extended periods of time would be a good reason to raise the hot viscosity number.

I thought it was really cool to hear him talk about high viscosity oils causing the filters to bypass when cold because of high pressure. That point should really be ephasized. I never thought about it that way but, it makes sense. Thanks for sharing OP.

Jeff

Threre is no logic involved for me disliking Mobile 1, it just happened to be the brand I was using when it happened. It was also around the same time Mobil1 was getting alot of bad publicity for not being a ” true synthetic.” So it just left a bad taste in my mouth. This happened back in the days before dented oil pans were discovered to cause spun bearings and people constantly related it to oil brand or weight. Enough off topic about my car history though, back to the oil discussion.

[familyMAN]

Any mention of oil pump protection on thin oils? (Serious question.)




So thin oils flow better, offer hp increases and keeps the oil cooler....who knew?

[sergechronos]

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VpFtMsTE34o

[DocHoliday]

5W30 Mobil 1 looks pretty good. I'm persuading my dad to stop using it and use Rotella instead. Maybe I should reconsider.

Then again, I remember lawdogg did Blackstone analysis and had Rotella be far superior. And you have Ray recommend 50 weight oil.

Also this tidbit:

Diesel oils rank overall between number 17 and 113. But, if you omit the highest ranked Diesel oil which is FAR, FAR MORE CAPABLE than all the other Diesel oils, the rest only rank between 60 and 111. The poor wear protection performance of all but the one particular top ranked Diesel oil, makes it very clear that in general, Diesel oils are a poor choice for High Performance gas engines.