01 Audi S4, GC 0w30 (green), 10260 mi

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This GC is from my stash and has a date code M04xxxxxxxx so it's 11 years old. Got 19 qts left - not quite 3 OCIs worth. From the last UOA I found a missing clip on the air box that was allowing air to bypass the filter. New clip and good seal on the air box fixed the extra wear. Some of extra iron may have been from this car having only been driven 9000 miles in the previous 6 years before the previous 9500 mil OCI.

This OCI has a 2500mi road trip on expressways and the rest is 90mi a day Metro Atlanta commuting.


Miles on oil: 10260
Miles on Unit: 10600
Makeup oil: 1/2 qt

Oil: German Castrol 0w30 (Green)


Code:




GC Liqui Unvi Avg (5300 mi)

Moly

miles 10260 9500

ALUMINUM 3 7 3

CHROMIUM 0 1 1

IRON 19 51 17

COPPER 10 11 5

LEAD 1 1 2

TIN 0 4 1

MOLYBDENUM 27 236 65

NICKEL 2 1 1

MANGANESE 1 2 3

SILVER 0 0 0

TITANIUM 0 1 0

POTASSIUM 0 8 2

BORON 16 266 77

SILICON 10 23 7

SODIUM 5 0 21

CALCIUM 2964 3420 2290

MAGNESIUM 113 15 302

PHOSPHORUS 758 840 848

ZINC 866 1042 1016

BARIUM 0 0 0

should be

SUS Viscosity @ 210F 64.8 58-65

cSt Viscosity @ 100C 11.56 9.6-11.9

Flash point in F 345 >385

Fuel % 2.0
Antifreeze % 0.0 0.0

Water % 0.0 0.1

Insolubles % 0.2 0.6

TBN 4.5


previous oil in UOA is
Liqui Moly Leichtlauf High Tech 5W-40
Additive: CeraTec
 
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really good UOA given the miles on the oil, copper perhaps a tad high but without a longer trend on this unit hard to say that is abnormal. total miles of 10,600, is that is misprint?
 
That stuff probably has a 30 year shelf life if kept sealed up, no problem here.

Was wondering why moly was so high, then noticed you put in Ceratec in your previous LiquiMoly oil. Ceratec actually has a lot of moly (even though LM doesn't advertise Ceratec's high moly content much!), along with the high hexagonal boron nitride its touted as having.

Green GC doesn't have any boron or moly in it at all, so you're seeing mixing from leftovers in the sump.
Oddly, your GC had very low levels of phosphorous. I'm wondering if you shook the bottles or not before pouring ????????????? Settling of ZDDP is a problem in old bottles.

Being a little short of ZDDP (phosphorous source AW additive) means you were missing some AW action there. Maybe Ceratec left over on the internal surfaces compensated nicely though.
 
Originally Posted By: Spector
total miles of 10,600, is that is misprint?



Yeah. Should be 100,600 miles.

I did shake the bottles a bit. Nothing like a paino can shaker. :)
 
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Originally Posted By: bobbydavro
Magnesium looks low for GC.

Settling in an old bottle off the shelf? I think he lost some ZDDP too, so it would make sense. Must look into empty bottle after pouring I guess to check for it.

bobbydavro, Do you like Ceratec here, maybe even in small 3% amounts? 6% is supposed to be max. You have a strong association in some way with Castrol, so just an anonymous opinion here of course.
 
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These are for the A4 1.8T I had. The center 3 uoas are for GC 0w30 from the same stash. The 2006 and 2008 uoas are probably M03xxxxxx but the 2010 may have been M4xxxxxxx. I can't find the original post here so here is original Blackstone reports.



Btw: my GC stash was 150+ qts of all Green M03xxxxxx and M4xxxxxx. No Gold. IIRC it was $2.99 or $3.99 a quart.
 
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Wow, magnesium and phosphorous was always low and calcium high, even several years ago in the GC UOA's. Usually it doesn't escape much through the rings, so I'm going with the settling theory still.
Blending variability? Scary thought.
 
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I've got an old spreadsheet somewhere that has VOAs of different batches of GC from when it was first available. I'll see if I can find it and post the numbers.
 
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Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
Originally Posted By: bobbydavro
Magnesium looks low for GC.

Settling in an old bottle off the shelf? I think he lost some ZDDP too, so it would make sense. Must look into empty bottle after pouring I guess to check for it.

bobbydavro, Do you like Ceratec here, maybe even in small 3% amounts? 6% is supposed to be max. You have a strong association in some way with Castrol, so just an anonymous opinion here of course.


First thing to fall out is silicon over long periods. For detergent to fall out then the bottom of the bottle would be covered in white metals! That won't be settling but it does seem strange.

It wont be blend variability. As this would mean every element would be low. 10% hangup from the previous oil is normal plus fuel and water will dilute additives a bit

Its probably the test if i had to pick something to explain , ICP can give 20% variation.

Never see the need for aftermarket additives.
 
Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus

Blending variability? Scary thought.



Why is that a scary thought? There are going to be normal production variances, and the testing equipment that Blackstone has is not 100% accurate anyway. Also, many of the additives are bought from companies like Lubrizol, and they too can't guarantee things down to a single PPM.

Don't believe me? Buy a bunch of bottles of the same oil with different batch numbers and send each out for a VOA. I'd bet you a dollar that none of them will match the manufacturer's technical datasheet. The printed sheets are just "typical".
 
I think this UOA sorta confirms the idea that GC really had the purported "magic properties."

9000 miles is a reasonably long interval and the oil seems to have held up okay.
 
Originally Posted By: B320i
I think this UOA sorta confirms the idea that GC really had the purported "magic properties."

9000 miles is a reasonably long interval and the oil seems to have held up okay.



I completely disagree.

9,000 miles isn't a big deal considering a lot of the Euro engines have change intervals of 10k-15k (even performance cars).

Also, I can't agree that it has "held up okay". Looking at the historical reports of that oil that he posted, it seems to have issues falling out of grade, among other things.

May as well keep using it, but I wouldn't be going out of my way to find bottles of it at this point. I think we've shown on here that modern OTS 0w40s have surpassed it.
 
I wonder what the lab's unpublished variability is. When I was running AA on oil for college it was quite a bit, especially when the tested values were low. These days with ICP I'm sure it's better.

Originally Posted By: audi_guy
I collected these VOAs from BITOG when the GC craze was in full force. I didn't note which Labs did the analysis.
 
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