How do I read the date code on Pennz LL 15w-40?

[Chris142]

I saw a few very dusty gallon jugs of the stuff at K-Mart today.

How do I determin if it's the stuff with Moly? How do I read all the crazy #'s on the bottom of the jug?

 

[Gary Allan]

I'm not certain of what's on your jug, but if it's something like COA268160/10124, that would be the batch/# (I assume) and the date of (probably) packaging (10/12/04). That's what's on my 5 gallon pail. On my 1 gallon jug the numbers are partially eroded ..but it appears to work in the same format (almost) ...there's a SOA#######/?????? XYZT. I believe the ?????? should be the date. The XYZT may be the same as the stock # that is on the 5 gallon pail (in my case 3724), since it too is in a 4 digit numeric code. Sometimes the batch/lot# is a Julian calender date ...but I can't get that to work although the 268th day (on my 5 gallon pail) would work out to end of Aug ..and the package date would be Oct.

This is all speculation ..so is totally subject to getting "spanked"

 

[Gary Allan]

I forgot to say that there is an alleged date where the formula changed ..and that should help you determine if the product you are looking at was before or after that date. read this