Drive Clean 7500

[1911]

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Originally posted by Terry:
1911, to answer your query, the theories and thought I am sharing affects all the lubricated areas of a engine.

No one , including me is arguing engineering or accepted physics theory, because thats not my business. Nor do I have an interest in using my time to prove something I already do on a proprietary basis for hire. There are plenty of well read and educated folks here that can argue neat theories all day, and not make a dime....or save an engine or put the customer in the winners circle !

What I am saying , using your example of the fluid flow dynamics of a air foil, is that things change in application, especially in automotive engines. Much like the Dyson Theory
of laminar flow vs. turbulent flow in lubes that
are synthetic ( engineered molacules) and relatively thin compared to the viscosities most accept and are familiar with.

What happens when that fluid film is disturbed and in a turbulent flow mode ? Like air flow over a wing in stall the physics change and if captured can be extremely helpful to the tribologist.

I disagree that tribologists and lube engineering is not one in the same in automotive applications, especially racing applications. The crossover in working a problem with chemists,engineers,physicists,engine builders, formulators, and the poor humble lube analyst is truly amazing. Molakule is a good example of that kind of tribologist. He does not rely on conventional thought to develop,and formulate cutting edge lubricants. Ask Too Slick about the crossover in racing engines to NASA engineering issues on a theoretical vs practical application level.

Films are sure important but which film ? The hostlube hydrodynamic film, the chemical, polymer, film ? Maybe a mixture of both, or what about relying on the coatings films that were applied to the actual moving parts or embedded in the alloys during assembly or manufacture ?

Point is , it is not as cut and dried as your "we all know " statement to Ugly3 came across.

1911, check out a article published and presented at the STLE 58th annual meeting by Tung and Gao on " A study in Break-in film development with different piston ring coatings and correlation with electrical contact resistance measurements". Find the article in LE magazine Vol 59 No.9 9/2003.

25w-70 is a bit heavy for the pillow, John !!! Better than a horse head though.

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Thank you Terry,

In the automotive/diesel engine world, I agree with you that those circles representing tribology and lubrication engineering may have a lot of overlap. With other machinery, perhaps they do not!!! Perhaps we could measure the overlap by correlating it with how much AW. EP, etc type additives are needed in the lubricant for that application. I can tell you that some of the lube system designers I worked with at GE on 40 million dollar turbines knew almost nothing about tribology. They did know all about flows, pumps, pre start/post stop lube demands, bearing sealing, tilt pad journal bearings, etc. Their job was top keep the tribolists away. Some of these babies would run 50K hours with negligible wear (especially if the start count was low).

Thanks again. I look forward to learning a little bit of tribology on this board.

1911

 

[1911]

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Originally posted by Jay:

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Originally posted by 1911:
... Thick film lubrication is still the ticket.

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Have you proven that in your Mazda 4? If so, please post your UOA results that show this. I trust you've done carefully controlled tests that back up your theories.

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Jay,

I did not come up with any lubrication theories so I don't know you are talking about. What I said is no different than saying "a plane can fly because the shape of the wings creates higher pressure underneath them what exists above them (when the plane is moving fast enough). It's a known and quite obvious fact (or the plane would not fly), it's not my theory brother. Likewise, the other stuff I said about speed and lubricant viscosity being needed to create a stable oil film is a very basic fact used in infinite applications daily. These facts are known and have never been debated technically. For example, lets take a simple lab setup with a simple journal bearing where weights can be used to the load pressure, the speed can be changed, and the lubricant viscosity can be changed.

IF you place a proximity probe (a Bently Nevada type probe) on the shaft near the journal, you will see that with the other factors controlled or kept constant, the oil film thickness goes up when the shaft speed increases, when the viscosity of the lube goes up, and when the load is decreased. Gee.......Just like an airplane wing never seems to push the plane down into the ground, adding a higher viscosity lubricant never fails to create a thicker oil film (under given loading and RPM)......wow, isn't that amazing. Like the airplane flys two days in a row, you can duplicate this experiment the next day and see the same exact result. You can duplicate it forever, and it never changes. There are no exceptions......and you have the nerve to refer to these unargued well known basics of hydrodynamic lubrication as "my theory"?

It pretty scary that you can come on a board like this and say somthing like "force = mass times acceleration" and then you get all kinds of people saying "Prove it..........that's textbook stuff.......". No it's a fact brother.
The higher the net forces are acting on a mass, the higher is the degree of acceleration or deceleration...........no exceptions.......nobody would argue it ............except perhaps for you.

The most general purpose of your motor oil is to form a wedge which keeps metal from touching metal.........you think this is my theory?.......where did you get this silly idea? The viscosity of the lubricant is selected to make sure this happens at your main and rod bearings. In fact your engine manufacturers know the thickness of these film under different load conditions and lube viscosities (at the bearing inlet).

Also, it should not take an engineering degree to understand why having the film thickness larger than the diameter of any solid debris particles helps to minimize or eliminate the effect of having said particle score the jounal or bearing. That's not my theory either.

 

[dustyjoe1]

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I was kind of thinking that Drive Clean 7500 synthetic blend may represent a good value in the $2.50 to $3 price range with some group 4 PAO in it. Do we know whether or not the conventional portion is group 2 or group 3 or a mix of conventional types?

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Carpy posted that it was g3/g4 blend. I have not read anything that would make me doubt that.

 

[C4Dave]

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Originally posted by 1911:

Also, using used oil analysis to fine tune oil choice preferences is not very bright for 30 or so reasons which others here have already made known in addition to lubricant suppliers/researchers themselves. That is not what they should or were intended to be used for. Anybody here with a background in science and statistics should know better. Many on this board do.

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Well, Terry. You heard it here first. Time for you to get another job.

 

[C4Dave]

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Originally posted by 1911:

The most general purpose of your motor oil is to form a wedge which keeps metal from touching metal.........you think this is my theory?.......where did you get this silly idea? The viscosity of the lubricant is selected to make sure this happens at your main and rod bearings. In fact your engine manufacturers know the thickness of these film under different load conditions and lube viscosities (at the bearing inlet).

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Originally posted by 1911:

I'm one of those guys who is not comfortable with running the 20wt in 100F summer weather with high engine temps.

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Guess I'm a little lost here. The manufacturer selects a certain viscosity for his engine, and you second guess that decision based on what? Your feelings???

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Based on driving habits Dave!

20Ws in combination with heat & a heavy left-lane, highway foot pedal creates a higher consumption risk than a thicker name brand oil. If you drive your vehicle like Grandpa next door, then your risk is reduced/eliminated.

 

[1911]

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Originally posted by C4Dave:

quote:

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Originally posted by 1911:

The most general purpose of your motor oil is to form a wedge which keeps metal from touching metal.........you think this is my theory?.......where did you get this silly idea? The viscosity of the lubricant is selected to make sure this happens at your main and rod bearings. In fact your engine manufacturers know the thickness of these film under different load conditions and lube viscosities (at the bearing inlet).

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quote:

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Originally posted by 1911:

I'm one of those guys who is not comfortable with running the 20wt in 100F summer weather with high engine temps.

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Guess I'm a little lost here. The manufacturer selects a certain viscosity for his engine, and you second guess that decision based on what? Your feelings???

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C4 Dave,

Happy Easter, You make a good point and I already addressed it in one of my conversations above with "However, the high temp film thicknesses will go down at the main bearing and con-rod bearings (relative to using thicker oils) and there is thus a lower factor of safety as far as approaching a point where the film can rupture or fail if temps go a little higher than expected. There is also most clearly a increased propensity toward bearing scoring as the film thickness drops since particles larger than the film thickness tend to score the bearings. Now good filters minimize this for sure. Now there were some papers going around recently about the benefits of filtering out smaller particles (less than 20 microns I believe) than common filters can trap for this very reason (maybe the Amsoil guys can point to these as they make good filters. They score or embed in the bearings.

Basically, Dave, in engineering there is something called margin of safety or "service factor" as it's sometimes called. It's all a compromise. Since the film thickness goes up with viscosity, the engineers have simply reduced some of the margin of safety, especially for operation in extremely hot climates like stop and go traffic in the Phoenix summer. This should be pretty much common sense since we know there is point (with 215F oil) where as we go to thinner and thinner viscosities, we will lose "thick film" lubrication under some load conditions. If this weren't true, we'd all be running 0wt oils and getting better mileage. The margin of safety could be an issue if you ran your car really hard in hot weather(almost a race type simulator on the street) or in cases I have seen where folks with a cooling system problem try to go a few extra miles to get the car home or to a garage. The 20 weight oils may help with start-up wear and fuel mileage but add some risk under some circumstances in other areas.

As is often the case here,I believe you are overlooking climate issues too. If Joe in Phoenix who makes long time trips in stop and go traffic when it is 110F out uses 5w30 and Steve in Toronto uses 5W-20 in the winter, whose running with thinner oil, it's Joe and I don't think the Mazda engineers would mind that.

PLease note that this is why owner's manuals had often seemed to allow different viscosities based on climate and they would supply a little chart. Well that chart is suspiciously missing on the Mazda 3 brother. Does that mean that climate no longest affects motor oil viscosity? I don't think they want to give the impression that a 5w30, 10w30 or 5W-40 would work fine. However Dave, in Australia and other places with the exact same motors, the manuals spec out higher viscosoty motor oils and even spec out multiple grades based on ambient conditions.

Also, for those who don't like VII, they should not like Mobil 1 0w-20 (I guess it's gone now). A member here (ZoomZoom)showed the viscosities of Mobil 1 products here. Some folks here have been foolishly believing because the "spread" is 20 points on the 0W-20 and 25 on the 5w30 that the 5w30 would be more inclined to contain VII. I recommend actually doing this properly and making a graph on Microsoft excel. If you do this, you can see that the 0W-20 line is much flatter than the others. How about that?

It's interesting to note the 20wt oils seem to have a high temp viscosity not too far off some of the 30 wt ones like Mobil 1. This may be required for engine survivability. Does the Ford Spec call out for heavy 20 wt visocisties? I don't know but maybe one can help me here?

 

[sgtgeek]

Great string guys....learning alot....and don't even have to go to class

Thank you all.....Reminds me of some of the geek software "discussions" I get into with my people.....many sides/many conclusions/all right/ all wrong/ all at the same time Textbook programming and real world application of a software solution sometimes clash...Thank you again for an excellent string here.....

 

[1911]

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Originally posted by C4Dave:

quote:

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Originally posted by 1911:

Also, using used oil analysis to fine tune oil choice preferences is not very bright for 30 or so reasons which others here have already made known in addition to lubricant suppliers/researchers themselves. That is not what they should or were intended to be used for. Anybody here with a background in science and statistics should know better. Many on this board do.

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Well, Terry. You heard it here first. Time for you to get another job.

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O Dave, let me digress a bit here. Have you ever studied statisitics? If Terry is working with race motors, there are several factors which may be making what he does a lot more sensible than what the average jabroni is trying to do here with used oil analysis. Many here seem to be playing this little game, they go with Havoline for one oil change and then Mobil 1 with the next and then to sit there and go, wow, my iron was 11 ppm with M1 and only 10 with the havoline so the Havoline is better for my engine. They neglect to consider that they used the Mobil 1 in the winter and the Havoline in the summer. They forget that that it had not rained and was very dry and dusty when they ran the M1. They forget that they changed jobs and thus ran completely different duty cycles with each oil. They don't consider that with one oil, some of the wear and corrosion debris may be more likely to stay in the motor. They do not consider that they had 108 cold starts during the one change in cold weather and 52 warm ones in the other. Tehy forget that there engine is undergoing break in and may have undergone a lot more of that with the one lube than the other, etc, etc, etc

They thus do not understand that all the used oil analysis really told them was that both lubricants provided good overall protection; that there's not any major problems with coolant leaks or the lube system, and it also told him some things about reserve life potential in both oils. All these things are important but needles cannot be threaded here.

Now for Terry, perhaps the studies are a little (abbreviated to mean "a lot") more controlled. Perhaps the wear rates are much higher allowing there to be statistically significant differences? Perhaps the engine material compositions are all known. Perhaps Terry can better tell whether iron and chromium are from a roller timing chain,cam lobe, or hardened steel press fit valve guide? Perhaps Terry has done enough of the same engine type that the effect of break-in characteristics on UOA results are well understood and thus accounted for? Perhaps service conditions for Terry are more correlatable and are measured in hot laps instead of wildly mixed service street driving?
And best of all, perhaps Terry is a scientist and that can make all the difference? And that is the bottom line.

 

[1sttruck]

High budget racing applications don't seem very relevant for most of us as engines end up being an expected consumable. Lower budget, owner owned racing like some doing a season of autocross (?), where you expect your vehicle to last, seems more in line with typical 'hard use'. What oils do people use in such applications ? Probably a similar load would be owning a car in Germany, what's a common oil over there for something like a newer Honda ?

 

[C4Dave]

One thing not mentioned about 20 weight oils is that operating temperatures for the oil tend to be lower. This lower temperature results is a slightly more viscous fluid. So at actual operating conditions, a "heavy" 20 weight could have the same viscosity as a "light" 30 weight at a slightly higher temperature. So where is the safety margin?

As for Terry specializing in races engines, I thought that was just a side line for him. And your statement about "using used oil analysis to fine tune oil choice preferences is not very bright" is way off base. It all depends on getting an accurate interpretation of the analysis. And Terry is second to none in that regards.

You are new here. Read some more and you will understand.

 

[TallPaul]

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Originally posted by 1911:
They thus do not understand that all the used oil analysis really told them was that both lubricants provided good overall protection; that there's not any major problems with coolant leaks or the lube system, and it also told him some things about reserve life potential in both oils. All these things are important but needles cannot be threaded here.

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1911 makes perfect sense to me. As he states here, this is all I expect to get out of a used oil analysis unless I want to hire Terry to do the interpretation, but if I am going to spend the money for that, I will want to consult Terry first to see how I can best hold as many factors constant (weather, trip length, etc), which is pretty hard to do in the everyday driving and changing seasons environment I have to deal with. Anybody ever have a course in experimental design will see that we average folks are just guessing to make much of comparing a couple random used oil analysis off this site, or even a couple used oil analysis from our own vehicle--unless we control, control, control as many variables as possible. And even then we really have an extremely limited sample size to make much inference.

 

[1911]

quote:

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Originally posted by C4Dave:
One thing not mentioned about 20 weight oils is that operating temperatures for the oil tend to be lower. This lower temperature results is a slightly more viscous fluid. So at actual operating conditions, a "heavy" 20 weight could have the same viscosity as a "light" 30 weight at a slightly higher temperature. So where is the safety margin?

As for Terry specializing in races engines, I thought that was just a side line for him. And your statement about "using used oil analysis to fine tune oil choice preferences is not very bright" is way off base. It all depends on getting an accurate interpretation of the analysis. And Terry is second to none in that regards.

You are new here. Read some more and you will understand.

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Dave,

I like your reasoning Dave, I guess we should run 0wt or 5wt oils since they must operate at lower sump and bearing inlet temperatures This will lead them to have the same viscosity as a 30wt would at the higher temperatures that it would run at in the same engine. Dave, if your reasoning were correct, we'd be using the lightest viscosity fluids we could. But I'll cut you a little slack, it is true technically speaking that it takes less work to shear a lower viscosity lube and therefore, less heat energy is pumped into the lubricant as it passes through the bearing area. However, as I allude to with my comment above, if using thinner oils could lead to significantly lower lube temps, we'd all be running 0wt oils and let the self correcting effect you descibe above take the helm. Evidently then, it isn't a very significant effect.

Now Dave, have you noticed something interesting about a lot of the 20wt spec motors. I've been accused here of making up crazy theories to justify somekind of distaste for these lubricants (even though I use them). Do you want to hear what a crazy theory sounds like? It sounds like this: "The motors where 20wt oils are specified were specifically designed to use these lubricants. They have smaller oil passages and tighter clearances"

If Mazda had specifically designed these motors to use 5w-20 oil in all climates, why would they spec out 10w30, 10W-40, 15w40 for users of these exact same motors overseas? The only difference in the overseas motors is the filler cap. GE does not spec out different recommended turbine oil weights for users in different countries. It is quite obvious to anybody with a brain what happened here. The engines were designed and the engineers specified the heavier weight oils and even went as far to make the typical temperature charts
which show that you may want to use thinner oils in the cold and thicker ones in the warm weather. Somebody comes along and says hey, for the US market, we would like to use 5W-20 oils..........will this be OK? The engineers do some testing and do some of the film thickness calculations and say......."yeah, but we're pushing it to the limits here.....if this weight were ideal, that's what we would have specified for all the engines worldwide...or if that oil was not available there, we'd have specified 5w30 only." How do we know this is true........because the manufacturers would never ever (in today's world) specify oils way way thicker than needed (for a sensible margin of safety) due to both cold start and fuel economy concerns. They would never say, 5W-20 is perfect for all climates but we'll tell the Australians to use 15w40 in hot weather so tehy can get worse fuel mileage and have more cold start wear. That must be the ridiculous kind of thing you prefer to believe Dave. What does this tell you about the 5W-20 lubes Dave........what is the logical response? If you're not getting it by now, you never will mate. Heck, some of the Ford motors were 5/10W-30 specified before the 5W-20 oils even came out, they were surely not specially designed for it.

SO people overseas are cool using 10W-40 but folks here who are a little weary of using these thin lubes in the Phoenix summer are nutsy guys who thus must make up all kinds of fake theories to justify their well founded concerns for margins of safety. They are really arrogant folks who think they know more than the engine designers. And speaking of those folks, Redline for over 10 years (and maybe they still do) always said that many of the OEM engineers working with engine lubes will not even run 5w30 oils in the summer. Redline claimed that the engineers knew that this was a CAFE oil at least with DINO. IF that's a CAFE oil then what is the 5W-20?. Maybe Redline was wrong, but I'd doubt you (the guy who somehow took offense to an un-opinionated and very basic description of hydrodynamic lubrication) before I doubted them. You should have been thanking me as it was quite clear you'd never heard this basic material.

And here is a good UOA question for Terry. Are a lot of the wear particles large enough to be trapped in the oil filter. If so, doesn't this add another interpretability problem when trying to fine-tune oils for wear. Corrosion particles should easily pass through the filter unless you really had a severe problem. Corrosion products could be literally down to just about the atomic size.

I'm out,

1911.......the brainchild of John Moses Browning

 

[1sttruck]

From what I've been able to figure out you need to do more than a used oil analysis or even several to try to estimate wear that impacts engine life. I think it's an important distinction as if you're using used oil analysis to monitor possible problems on engines that aren't expected to last your requirements are fewer. For others, depending where at on the 'bathtub life curve', you may need to do quite a bit more:

1. On an older engine you may need to do a cleaning first as there may be a fair amount of film/sludge present that could result in higher than actual metals with a different type of oil being used.

2. The better the filtering the more important it may be to monitor filter debris.

3. You need to trend the results, and from what I've seen you need to try to estimate what the apparent wear is for each interval as opposed to just using an average. It also seems important to try to obtain more than one sample on longer oil change intervals for this reason as you may be obscuring an increase in wear beyond some point.

4. It's important to keep track of top off oil qty, and for comparison it seems reasonable to try to account for different sump sizes and engine displacement.

5. At the conclusion of an evaluation you may need to do another cleaning, measure filter debris, and at record but perhaps also try to apply the additional metals over the intervals measured.

6. It appears that you need to monitor sludge problems with other techniques as used oil analysis don't seem to pick it up.

7. You need to try to monitor other engine parameters like compression, maybe output, etc., as 'acceptable' used oil analysis can still result in long term degradation.

8. The real value in using different oils is doing them over exteneded intervals, but that's boring for most of us.

 

[novadude]

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Many here seem to be playing this little game, they go with Havoline for one oil change and then Mobil 1 with the next and then to sit there and go, wow, my iron was 11 ppm with M1 and only 10 with the havoline so the Havoline is better for my engine. They neglect to consider that they used the Mobil 1 in the winter and the Havoline in the summer. They forget that that it had not rained and was very dry and dusty when they ran the M1. They forget that they changed jobs and thus ran completely different duty cycles with each oil. They don't consider that with one oil, some of the wear and corrosion debris may be more likely to stay in the motor. They do not consider that they had 108 cold starts during the one change in cold weather and 52 warm ones in the other. Tehy forget that there engine is undergoing break in and may have undergone a lot more of that with the one lube than the other, etc, etc, etc

They thus do not understand that all the used oil analysis really told them was that both lubricants provided good overall protection; that there's not any major problems with coolant leaks or the lube system, and it also told him some things about reserve life potential in both oils. All these things are important but needles cannot be threaded here.

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Bravo, 1911, Bravo! I hope everyone reads this and takes the time to consider what you are saying.