Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
This is a company who has contracted another company to develop an additive package for them and is using a single test to claim their product is superior despite having absolutely zero factory approvals.
Don't the M1 shear stability results disappoint you?
No.
1. It's a 0w-40, it has VII's, it is going to shear in a test designed to make an oil shear. Have you ever seen a UOA with this much shear? No, of course you haven't because this test in no way represents what happens in an actual engine.
2. This is the previous SM version of M1 0w-40, as seen by the 13.88cSt viscosity (current is 13.5) and 188 VI (current is 185) which was less shear stable in UOA's than the current SN formula, which has been on the market for years. So the bloody table not only uses a test designed to slag an oil using VII's but it uses an old version of the product on top of that, LOL!!
Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
LN Engineering, Raby Engines, Gibbs, and Lubrizol all collaborated on a low-volume oil.
Good for them. That doesn't magically make the product awesome-sauce. They still (excluding Lubrizol, who, as we've agreed here, is not making any of these claims) have an engineering budget that is likely smaller than what XOM spends on approving a single grade.
Originally Posted By: lubricatosaurus
Mobil1 0w-40 is a high volume oil found in Walmart, using GroupIII (cheaper basestock).
Mobil1 is impressive, but all those other companies have what they believe is a more premium, higher performing product.
Mobil, Castrol, SOPUS...etc all sell their products at Walmart. That doesn't make them inferior, LOL! Good Lord by that metric Leupold makes junk optics because they can be bought at Bass Pro
What's impressive is that you can buy a product approved by VW/Audi, Mercedes, Porsche.....etc at Walmart for a reasonable price and be certain that it meets a minimum level of performance GUARANTEED by the certifications that it holds/approvals that it meets. This is backed by the companies that manufacture those cars as they are the ones giving the stamp of approval. They aren't trying to sell you oil, they don't care whose product you use as long as it carries the requisite approval.
They (the group you've mentioned) can believe their product is more premium and higher performance all they want, but it isn't approved by any of those OEM's and those OEM's aren't using the product. They've chosen to use Mobil, BP or SOPUS as their lubricant partner and will use either a purpose-blended product or an OTS product depending on what's appropriate for their application. This is the part you seem to be missing. Mobil could have blended Mercedes, Porsche....etc any lubricant they wanted. They have the resources of not only Mobil, but XOM Chemical and Infineum at their disposal. They can start-to-finish blend and test any product imaginable in-house. But these companies weren't using purpose-blended products, they were using an oil they had already approved in a situation where that wasn't necessary and in which there was no requirement to use an OTS product. Mobil's name is out there regardless, whether it was M1 0w-40 or some other lube they made up, their name is still on the car as a sponsor. Think that over.