Ummm, Gary you challenge everything everybody ever says on these boards. If I said you were one smart guy then you would challenge me on it and dare me to prove it.
Honestly, education assumes intelligence and experience and its not always true. I know more than a few chemical and mechanical engineers working in refineries who dont know as much about how motor oil works in a car as you do. Some of the people I respect the most are some of the least educated. On the flip side, some of the stupidist people that I know are the most educated and whats worse they assume education covers their ignorance so they are both stupid and even more so for not realizing it. Education has its merits but it can also be a mistaken fallacy to value the ideals of its worth based on presumptions.
Gary, You may be a silver tongued deeeeeeeeeeeeevil but I guarantee you that if our toilets stopped flushing that we would respect those things as being important inventions. Anyway, I for one learn from you and appreciate your input.
Anyway enough with the spit and polish. Lets get back to discussing the film theory and consistant UOA analysis. For a UOA to have value in predicative theory (ugh I have beeeg word Gary disease) we need to establish verifiable trends. For us to establish those trends we need to be put on UOA programs where our analysis esteems the quality of performance over variables. We need to reduce the striations of random potential. When Blackstone sends back their oil samples they compare the numbers with all the others they have received on the engine. In the Uoa world the firm with the largest database to compare with is the firm with the most valuable numbers.
Now, Ive pointed out in the past that I dont think boutique oils like Royal Purple, Amsoil, and Schaeffers get a fair shake in our analysis of them because we dont have large sample sizes on them. Terry seems to love Redline and he probably does have a large sample size as a point of reference. Thats why we listen to him.
Still there are certain cars that have popularity levels where we can start to see trends emerge. There are lots of Civics, Camrys, Accords, Taurus, F-150s on the road and when youve looked over a few dozen UOA's on them you can see trends emerge.
Gary you are on the restrictive side of the fence on the filter debate and I cant help but wonder how oil filters impact the findings. Ted is a really smart guy and he says that most particles 10 microns and under show up in the UOA but you have to wonder how a reading will vary between say a pure 1 that can filter to 10 versus a Stp that might only filter down to 20.
It would be interesting to debate surfactant cleaning versus solvent cleaning and whether oils that can coat and film such as esters do either trap or release particles that perhaps skew initial findings.
I think even Terry would agree that somebody that does 10 UOA's with 20 variables as to filter, additives, and brand and viscosity usage will see the picture more darkly than somebody that does 10 UOA's with a minimum of variables.
I do think Uoa's have value but we all need a bit more education as to how to limit our variables so that we can get proper interpretations from them. You can do scientific experiments forever but if you use contaminated dirty vials then your results will be less accurate.
In short if we are going to debate the true merits of UOA's then we must do so in a framework which predicates that people are setting up programs to maximize their use and potential.
Happy Motoring All,
Bugshu
