Havoline Equilon??

[Mike K]

Three questions for the oil guru's out there! 1. I was at Walmart this past weekend looking for Texaco Havoline motor oil. They had it for 0.94 a quart. I didn't buy it because it said "equilon" on the back. I heard on this board that wasn't good. My last Havoline oil change was with "chevron/texaco" Havoline bought at Autozone, but it was $1.40. Why is equilon a concern???? I ended up buying Valvoline standard GF-3 oil. 2. What is MOLY? And why should I care?? 3. Opinions on the Regular Valvoline 10w-30 please? Thanks in advance!

 

[Ken2]

In 1998 Texaco and Shell formed a joint venture called Equilon where they shared refining and marketing. In February, 2002, Chevron bought Texaco and Equilon was disolved. (There are corporate agreements among several involved parties that are much more complex than my simple history.) Shell retained the right to market gasoline under the Texaco brand until 2004. So...any Equilon Havoline oil is old stock. It's not bad oil, but there are better oils. Moly?...do a search for MoTDC or molybdenun triaklyldithiocarbamate. These are the properties--a liquid soluble type of Moly that plates to the metal surfaces of the engine. Once plated, the Moly forms a long lasting lubricant film, which prevents the metal surfaces from coming into contact with each other. By preventing metal-to-metal contact, damaging frictional wear is eliminated, thus leading to less downtime, longer engine life and increased fuel economy. MoTDC as an antiwear agent becomes activated at temperatures where the usual ZDDP (zinc dialkyldithiophosphate) antiwear agent is breaking down. Valvoline?... Ken

 

[boxcartommie22]

does this work the same way if you are using mobil delvac 1?

 

[MNgopher]

I'm one of the very few folks here who has been using and testing Valvoline stuff. I ran a batch of 10w30 All Climate (the plain jane dino) in my '88 Jeep Cherokee. Hard to tell how it did for a couple of reasons. I had a leak in the intake that led to slightly elevated silicon which led to slightly high wear metals. I also had an EGR malfunction that threw off the nitration numbers. Generally, folks here feel Valvoline has a weak additive package (no moly except in diesel oils), shears quickly (mine sheared to a 20 weight in 3500 miles), and they play marketing games (like selling Synpower as a full synthetic when it is group III like Castrol Syntec). However, it had very good TBN retention in this application (no oil added and TBN was at 8). I have had decent luck with the Durablend line in my F150's. I've had two tested with 4,000 miles. One was done as far as wear protection was concerned but it did its job and gave good wear numbers, just couldn't have gone farther. The other was exceptionally good (truck is garaged, sees more freeway miles, etc...) and will be extended to 5,000 miles this change.