Engineering Explained discusses ZDDP
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OVERKILL
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Should drop the "zinc" and just say ZDDP. Zinc is an element, ZDDP is a compound with the most useful component being phosphorous (and what is restricted by the API/ILSAC).
I know I sound like a pedant, but folks look at VOA's and UOA's and fret over the wrong element in large part because of this.
Shel_B
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I think your point is valid, so I made the change.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Thank you
Good video. Elements like zinc, phosphorous, and calcium can make up ash. Some amount of ash can have benefits in some engines, but also cause problems in other engines. Some engines require very low ash limits. I'd like to see Jason (Engineering Explained) get into a more depth about that.
Good link I found on this topic: https://lubrication.expert/ash-in-gas-engine-oils/
Good link I found on this topic: https://lubrication.expert/ash-in-gas-engine-oils/
dnewton3
Staff member
The same concept (ZDDP; too much of a good thing is a bad thing) was covered by LSJr in one of his longer videos.
This is why folks should NOT be playing garage-chemist and adding things to their oils. Buy a fully formulated lube and trust that the experts did their job.
This is why folks should NOT be playing garage-chemist and adding things to their oils. Buy a fully formulated lube and trust that the experts did their job.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Bingo. This is also why we don't see obscene amounts of ZDDP in the full-SAPS Euro oils, even though there's no constraint on phosphorous.
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Zddp levels diminish over time. If your worried about it then change oil sooner or add some when the level drops. The trick is this: Oil is full of addatives that do not last as long as the oil. The good news is that you can tell exactly when additives fail. The level drops fast over about 500 miles. Might be a 1/4 quart or a half. That is when the additives break down and turn to vapor. Basically you can check your oil every week for months and then at about 3000-5000 miles you will see the small drop. That is when the addative are going and you change it. Try it and look for the sudden small drop.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
While phosphorous does deplete a bit over time, it's generally insignificant. Boron also depletes.
This is the report from my RAM 1500:
Sample #1 was M1 EP 0W-20
Sample #2 is the VOA (that they accidentally haven't flagged as the VOA, I've reached out to them to correct)
Sample #3 is my most recent run. This is the 2nd run of @High Performance Lubricants "overkill" 0W-20, but the first sample was damaged in the mail, so it was lost.
- TBN is lower and oxidation slightly higher than the Jeep UOA.
- Copper looks better than the Jeep, which makes sense, the truck has almost 4x the mileage on it.
Iron is 3.699ppm/1,000 miles, which is pretty typical for this engine family.
- Viscosity has increased...
Sample #2 is the VOA (that they accidentally haven't flagged as the VOA, I've reached out to them to correct)
Sample #3 is my most recent run. This is the 2nd run of @High Performance Lubricants "overkill" 0W-20, but the first sample was damaged in the mail, so it was lost.
- TBN is lower and oxidation slightly higher than the Jeep UOA.
- Copper looks better than the Jeep, which makes sense, the truck has almost 4x the mileage on it.
Iron is 3.699ppm/1,000 miles, which is pretty typical for this engine family.
- Viscosity has increased...
Oil had 6,758 miles on it.
So, if I check my oil every week and I never see the sudden small drop, that means that the additives are still good?
Please, there’s so much supposition and misinformation in one statement.
Even if you were correct, and some of the ZDDP has degraded, and you were able to see it through this specious and frankly superstitious method, how do you know how much to add back in to bring it to the correct level?
Too much is just as detrimental as too little.
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dnewton3
Staff member
Additives are inputs to an equation. Wear data are outputs as a result of the equation.
I do not advocate for an OCI based on inputs. Many, many times we've had this discussion. Whether your TBN/TAN goes inverted, or your vis slightly out of range, or the FP drops a tad are NOT a reason to automatically change oil. Seeing these changes in a UOA are a good reason to start paying closer attention to a shift in wear rates. But they are not, in and of themselves, a good reason to change oil.
The time to change oil is when you see the wear rates escalate or contamination go above a logical condemnation point. As a generalization, after processing tens of thousands of UOAs in my database, I can say with absolute certainty that wear rates drop all the way out to 15k miles. (That phenomenon isn't limited to 15k miles; that's just where my data stops given the sources I have.) The point being ... don't change oil until the wear rates start trending upward, OR you get a significant amount of contamination present which would likely preclude making it to the next UOA point.
We've seen folks OCI because the TBN/TAN inverted, and yet the wear rates were totally unaffected by the inversion. We've seen countless UOAs where fuel approaches 5%, and the wear rates were totally unaffected. So why change oil? Nothing bad happened to the engine. It's the nature of most BITOGers to tinker and they like to get oily. So OCIs are a mental relief for most here. "Cheap insurance" they claim. OK by me; but it's not the logical way to do things.
- The proper way to use a UOA is to first know the average and stdev values for the specific engine series you're interested in. Knowing this macro data allows one to understand what is "normal" for the engine series.
- Then set condemnation values for contamination based on real industry values and not self-imposed feel-good points. This should be imposed over known traits of the engine series (such as coolant in a Ford 3.5L internal pump application as one example).
- Then manage the OCI so that as long as the wear rates are not trending quickly upward, the engine is still safe.
The inputs only tell you something MIGHT happen; these are only predictors that a wear shift might occur soon. The wear data tells you what is ACTUALLY happening; these are the tell-tale signs of how things are truly manifesting.
It is important to note that UOAs are not fool-proof. But they are, by far, the cheapest route to understanding wear. While I agree that tear-down analysis might give more accurate data, it's not like we're inclined to pull an engine every 20k miles and do a complete teardown and reassembly, just to understand how the engine is doing. That would be grossly cost prohibitive, and actually induce other potential errors upon reassembly regarding contamination, R&R variation, etc.
UOAs are a tool. You have to understand their benefits and limitations to use them properly, just like any other tool.
To each his own.
I do not advocate for an OCI based on inputs. Many, many times we've had this discussion. Whether your TBN/TAN goes inverted, or your vis slightly out of range, or the FP drops a tad are NOT a reason to automatically change oil. Seeing these changes in a UOA are a good reason to start paying closer attention to a shift in wear rates. But they are not, in and of themselves, a good reason to change oil.
The time to change oil is when you see the wear rates escalate or contamination go above a logical condemnation point. As a generalization, after processing tens of thousands of UOAs in my database, I can say with absolute certainty that wear rates drop all the way out to 15k miles. (That phenomenon isn't limited to 15k miles; that's just where my data stops given the sources I have.) The point being ... don't change oil until the wear rates start trending upward, OR you get a significant amount of contamination present which would likely preclude making it to the next UOA point.
We've seen folks OCI because the TBN/TAN inverted, and yet the wear rates were totally unaffected by the inversion. We've seen countless UOAs where fuel approaches 5%, and the wear rates were totally unaffected. So why change oil? Nothing bad happened to the engine. It's the nature of most BITOGers to tinker and they like to get oily. So OCIs are a mental relief for most here. "Cheap insurance" they claim. OK by me; but it's not the logical way to do things.
- The proper way to use a UOA is to first know the average and stdev values for the specific engine series you're interested in. Knowing this macro data allows one to understand what is "normal" for the engine series.
- Then set condemnation values for contamination based on real industry values and not self-imposed feel-good points. This should be imposed over known traits of the engine series (such as coolant in a Ford 3.5L internal pump application as one example).
- Then manage the OCI so that as long as the wear rates are not trending quickly upward, the engine is still safe.
The inputs only tell you something MIGHT happen; these are only predictors that a wear shift might occur soon. The wear data tells you what is ACTUALLY happening; these are the tell-tale signs of how things are truly manifesting.
It is important to note that UOAs are not fool-proof. But they are, by far, the cheapest route to understanding wear. While I agree that tear-down analysis might give more accurate data, it's not like we're inclined to pull an engine every 20k miles and do a complete teardown and reassembly, just to understand how the engine is doing. That would be grossly cost prohibitive, and actually induce other potential errors upon reassembly regarding contamination, R&R variation, etc.
UOAs are a tool. You have to understand their benefits and limitations to use them properly, just like any other tool.
To each his own.
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l
….ZDDP gets used up in oil over time. The oil brands with a smaller amount of it is good for an engine that needs the most of it but for a much shorter amount of TIME. Read that again. The drop in additive I spoke of is all additives combined and not just ZDDP. There are viscosity thickeners, ,thinners, detergents and everything else that is in it that is. Most not ever tested in oil sampling. Those combined additives break down in time and when they do they often just go up in vapor thru the crankcase ventilation or burn up on cylinder walls. That drops the level. If you do not see any drop in level then the total additive level is still good. When you see the small drop it’s a great indication that the oil in that particular application needs to be changed and that is usually about the same time the ZDDP, molly or other addative you may be specifically concerned about is gone as well. Find the drop zone or milage and that is when you change it. Ones I know and remember are mitsubishy V6 only lasting 3000 miles, newer dodge V6 last 4500-5500 Miles. V10 in Ford truck is at 4000 when you see the drop in level. New company car Pacifica runs 8 or 9000 before it drops. The fleet manager lets me change it at 10,000. Best is change it at that drop level or if you want to hack the life longer because you are on the run then it’s the only OK time to add STP, lucus oil stabilizer or other snake oil additive because they are loaded with the additives that burned off.
The problem is the UOA plasma mass spectroscopy test is blind to the chemistry. It doesn’t know if the zinc / phosphorus is from an unused ZDDP molecule that’s still useful, worn off bits of the phosphate coating which are no longer useful, or just powered metal one could foolishly add that would make the ppm look amazing and lead the YouTube oil “reviewers” we all know and love to declare “wow! look at all that anti-wear additive”
ZDDP does get used up but the broken up bits of thar molecule after it’s been deposited and worn off will still show up as zinc and phosphorus.
I have no idea if companies do this but you’d need to put the sample in something like an MRI machine to identify the molecules in an oil.
I'm not sure if you're trolling or just this misinformed. I'll assume the later.
Additives aren't "burned up" in use. Have you seen ZDDP in raw form? It's quite viscous (15-18 cSt @ 100°C) with an SpG of 1.18 and boiling point of ~300°C (~570°F). It's more viscous, more dense, and less volatile than the base oil it's blended into so it's not going anywhere. If ZDDP burned up on the cylinder walls, it wouldn't be a very good anti-wear additive.
Any drop in P, Zn, Mo, Ti, Ca, or Mg, in UOAs, is due to machine scatter within a margin of error. An ICP-AES is only accurate to within +/- 5% and that's with an extended focus on each individual element in the spectrum. These <$50 sample labs are spitting it through in about 10 seconds. It also can't tell you what those elements are from.
STP Oil Treatment is just a cheap, junk OCP VII with very little additive, much less anything that'll extend the life of the oil. It actually moves RPVOT oxidation in the opposite direction toward a shorter service life due to it diluting the additives already in your oil. Lucas Oil Stabilizer is like STP Oil Treatment in that it's a cheap, junk OCP VII, but it differs from STP in additive content. Where STP only contains a trace of additive, Lucas Oil Stabilizer contains no additive whatsoever. It's just a bottle of dirt cheap goo with a ~72,000% profit margin. Similarly, it moves oxidation resistance downward in a negative direction, shortening service life, not prolonging it. There is no situation in which using an oil supplement is a good idea. None whatsoever. Even with the supplements that do contain substantial additive content, you still have the risk of base oil incompatibility and additive clash. If there's ever a scenario in which your oil isn't up to the task of your application, you need a better oil, not a supplement.
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Wow! Great explanation. It is weird how the effectiveness goes away but it still shows up in the sample as being there. Back in the day when the problems first showed up due to levels that were reduced to protect catalytic converters the wise men said that the most important thing to do was to keep the oil fresh.
Lucas oil stabilizer and STP for that matter are not “loaded with the additives” that as already explained, do not burn off.
Another stunning post of just rank misunderstanding.
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Naah. Those little bottles of STP and oil treatment are great when you are half a quart low and milking it out till you can get home and change it. And yes, the additives do go away, and I specifically mentioned the additives are a lot more things than ZZDP but thanks for commenting and yes, you’re in information is valid.
Did Slick 50 make your boat faster?
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Troll bait?
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