Esters in motor oil

[Mystic]

Some motor oils apparently contain a lot of esters. Redline I believe is one and some people believe that the German Castrol (0W-30) must contain a lot of esters because of the low pour point.

Would these motor oils be able to actually clean an engine? After all, there are esters in Auto-RX and Neutra, right? How would these oils affect Auto-RX and Neutra? Would Lube Control still be effective in them?

 

[Patman]

I believe these types of oils do clean the engine, as Terry has mentioned here in the past that many of his customers who use Redline for the first time will see higher wear metals on the first interval due to this cleaning action, it's actually cleaning off baked on wear metals from previous oils. Then as you run your second and third interval with the oil, the wear metals come down much further.

It'll be interesting to see if the UOA on the German 0w30 in my sister's car shows high wear metals or not and if so, was it due to this cleaning action?

 

[YZF150]

And if the metals ARE high, what will you conclude?

 

[pscholte]

I would say nothing for sure from the solo sample...seems to me it would take subsequent samples and any observed trends to begin to discern something in which you could put confidence.

 

[Patman]

quote:

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Originally posted by YZF150:
And if the metals ARE high, what will you conclude?

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That'll be a problem, because I won't truly know if the wear metals were from cleaning, or from this oil possibly having high iron right out of the bottle, or if it was a poor oil. The second UOA with this oil will be the true test, IMO. And if my sister does indeed move out to BC this fall, that second UOA will be the last one, since she'll be selling her car before she goes (and even if she didn't, how could I possibly do a UOA on it when she's living on the other side of Canada?)