Is there any solid scientific evidence that Mobil 1 is good for extended drains?

[QuadDriver]

quote:

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Originally posted by Dan4510:

I finally submit that all these empirical numbers that QD points to making synthetic only 10% better dont capture other factors in performance that are probably more important in the final analysis. We dont have tests for them yet.

Like most empirical research, numbers dont tell it all....or in some cases only tell the most insignificant part of the story.

Dan

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but but but...(heh heh) when you run a UOA, the returned data is once again those same numbers to look for a shift. Are you now telling me that the 'things' that make a syn oil 'better' are unmeasurable other than 'gut feeling'....well thats a crappy reason why to make technical decisions no?

and FWIW....How many top fuel records were held on non syn oil? I dont have exact data but Im thinking that drag racing has been going on a lot longer than 10 years (not to mention the oil study I once published that I alluded to in another thread. The top oil amongst racers (mostly drag - nhra, ihra, div 3 and up mostly, super gas etc) was valvoline dino....) You cant make the claim that your cars would not have done what they did on dino oil, simply because you didnt test it to find out.....no evidence is still no evidence

 

[Terry]

QuadDriver said; "Then the 'bet' is on! someone here who has meticulously done maint and done UOAs will 'bring her over' for a teardown at the end of the service life. You will make a prediction on the limits I find in the motor +/- 20%, Ill use hte mic of your chosing. Ill pay for the labor(mostly my own, but I gotta pay a guy to extract/insert it), and parts to reassem the motor!

Since we know dumb things like timing chains stretch and main seals harden and wear, we will look for the following parms: cyl bore oversize, taper and out of round, main. rod and cam bearing clearance, rod side clearance, oil pump gearto cover clearance, wrist pin dia, piston pin inner dia, skirt erosion, ring gap, wear scar depth on rockers, cam lobe profiles, lifter bore size.

Is this acceptable?"


This is not a bet, but my business. Time is money and this will take alot of my time.

You oversimplify in the financial my engineering friend.

If you sincerely want to perform this testing verification that is done daily at SWRI and other labs I question your professional judgement.

Having said that;

pay my professional consult rate of $100 per hour including travel,incidentals. Pay all costs incurred by Southwest Research Institute as an independent third party lab who will setup the controls and protocals to verify the results,pay for all the testing costs incurred by Dyson Analysis for interpretation, screens,techniques of my choice. All paid up front. Let me know when you want to begin and WE can begin setting up the the test phase at SWRI. Duration your choice but time is money.

For instance for the 4.6L Ford V-8 is commonly used now in standardized testing for wear and lubes a SEQ IV A test of the overhead valvetrain and camshaft wear you mention above is $15,163. SWRI is non profit so the money must be paid upfront for them also.

I'm putting my reputation on the line so I want professional controls that both of us feel comfortable with.

For further coordination see my address and Email at www.bobistheoilguy.com/terry.html

 

[QuadDriver]

quote:

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Originally posted by mph:
Wear numbers from UOA. I don't think VOA or specs tell you much about an oil's protective qualities.

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and I have asked for UOAs on dino under the same conditions but no one wants to do them


Now, if you looked at temperatures much higher or lower than those mandated by the 5W-30 rating, you might see the difference.

Oh good, it sounds like you have and compared....can you please post the data?


The synthetic VI benefit is that the base oil has a good VI to begin with. The dino oil requires additives (VII's) to get the VI of the finished product into the range necessary to meet the grade. So comparing VI of the finished product doesn't tell you much--you would need to compare the VI's of the base oils, without additives.

and you have numbers for this as well? excellent! please post! lets see if the 10% rule has held....so far NO ONE on any BBS in the last 10 years, be it prodigy, AOL, here, cartalk, blue oval etc etc, has EVER shown this type of data. I *****REALLLY****** wanna see it.

See the problem? your arguments get reduced to wishful thinking when presented with real world data. Dont despair, the same reaction has occured on every BBS where this debate has ever taken place. And for the record, the lube engineers who make the stuff, do read this stuff and they ARE amused. I have it first hand.

 

[QuadDriver]

quote:

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Originally posted by Terry:
QuadDriver said; "Then the 'bet' is on!

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huh uh, the challenge is as I stated, since I bill out at over $250 per hour, Id say the burden is already on me. If your professional rep is on the line as you claim, so be it, make your guess as to how much wear occured and I will measure it. I already put my rep on the line, Ill even put a sealed envelope on the table before screw number 1 is turned predicting what Ill find and I promise not to look at any UOAs or sniff any dipsticks. ;-) At "quaddriver labs", whose business it is to measure and repair wear.

Setting up operational fallacies (changing conditions so it is unlikely no one will challenge you) is really really intellectually dishonest and you know it. Shall we dispense with the testosterone?

ps - texas? comm pilot? lemme guess? something that rhymes with 'wontinental'? Know a 'Bill Cannon' there? (left seat in 737s last I heard) Old friend from CT used to occasionally ride and boat with. say hi if so

 

[TooManyWheels]

Just what, exactly, does Top Fuel racing, where the engine is rebuilt and the oil changed after every run (because of fuel dilution) have to do with extended oil changes in a street vehicle?

 

[Mystic]

Dang! This is one of the best postings I have seen in a while! I can hardly wait to see the results of the testing. Let us see how the conventional holds up versus the synthetic in an extended drain.

And I can hardly wait to see how accurate QuadDriver can really be!

 

[cryptokid]

hey terry you dont charge patman $100 an hour and he takes up your time by an extrodinary ammount as you have stated before. so why do this to quad? you should charge him the same thing you would charge anyone else, $10 for your little reading.

try to be fair. he seems to be.

 

[mph]

quote:

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Originally posted by QuadDriver:

Oh good, it sounds like you have and compared....can you please post the data?

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If I buy you a dictionary, will you look up the word "might"? Did I claim to know this for sure? Can you have a discussion without coming across as a patronizing a-hole?

I am pointing out to you that there are factors which you have not considered. I'm not acting like I know everything. Your arguments are not as strong as you want to pretend they are, but you expect everyone else's to be bulletproof. That is an unreasonable double standard.

quote:

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lets see if the 10% rule has held....

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This is an example of a weak argument. The "10% rule" is nonsense. Who are you to decide that a 10% difference is unimportant? To say that a difference in flashpoint doesn't matter requires knowledge of the distribution of temperatures within the engine. I don't have that specific knowledge, and neither do you. Why do you demand that the rest of us have conducted research programs to back up our statements, but you don't have to meet that burden?

quote:

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so far NO ONE on any BBS in the last 10 years, be it prodigy, AOL, here, cartalk, blue oval etc etc, has EVER shown this type of data. I *****REALLLY****** wanna see it.

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Whoa, people who hang out on car message boards don't have extensive automotive testing laboratories! You should be disapointed!

quote:

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See the problem? your arguments get reduced to wishful thinking when presented with real world data. Dont despair, the same reaction has occured on every BBS where this debate has ever taken place.

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Hint: Just because, in your arrogance, you think you've convinced everyone that you know everything about the subject doesn't mean that you have. It just means that we get sick of arguing with someone who treats others like crap, believes in his own infallibility, and holds his opponents' arguments to a much higher standard than his own.

 

[Mystic]

You know, think back to those Consumer Reports taxi car motor oil tests. All of the oils, conventional and synthetic, were tested to 6000 miles. They all held up about the same. Only thing they noticed was that synthetic would flow at a lower temperature, which surely can have some importance in the wintertime. The wear, conventional and synthetic, was about the same.

Of course, the engines were in constant use and not used the same way ordinary people drive their own cars and trucks. But the synthetic oils really did not seem to reduce wear as compared to the conventional motor oils.

 

[Terry]

Quaddriver and Quaddriver labs, now that somehow limits my confidence.

You know who I am and where I can be found and what I do, Mr. Whoever.

Testosterone and ?wontinental? are not the issues time, money, and accuracy is.



To recap heres what I have gleaned from the ramble ( based on your logic), you say oil analysis is of no use in determining wear rates or predictive maintenance regardless of oil used.

You incorrectly group all oil analysis in the spectrographic catagory and ignore the current realities of in depth non invasive testing that costs a lot more than a kit from Blackstone.

Your micrometer and eye are the gold standard for oil drain and oil selection because the testing protocals are mostly flawed or ineffective.

You can't bear the idea that a skilled analyst might be able to repeat accurately a educated interpretation of an oil analysis, hyper accurate or $10 variety over the eyes of the wrench and micrometer.

You come off like a very skilled online, well read mechanic that is out of your tribological league. No offense, just calling it the way I read it.

Layman can't answer or challenge you because you frame the argument to convince your point not to be honest about the possible alternatives.

You are wrong about analysis in the proper hands and with the right tools.

You are right that many layman ( most like yourself ,incognito ) on internet boards say alot of things that are wrong and build on those assumptions to even larger incorrect assumptions.

Don't reject a technique or tool just because you know a older tool that works.

PS you are overcharging your quadlabs customers.

 

[RussellA]

quote:

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ps - texas? comm pilot? lemme guess? something that rhymes with 'wontinental'?

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Texas is big. Greenville is just East of Dallas not in the Houston area. "AA" is more likely if it's one of the majors. I think Terry probably tests "black box" planes for E-Systems if he's in Greenville.

I shouldn't have said that, now he's going to have to shoot me

 

[joee12]

Guys, let's quit with the name calling and get back to business. I am closing this topic for a few hours and will reopen it later this evening.

-Joe

[ July 11, 2003, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: joee12 ]

 

[joee12]

Guys, I have reopened this topic in hopes that everyone has eaten a nice dinner and cooled off. Let's focus on the topic and not get personal. If the name-calling and getting personal continues, I will lock the topic for good.


BTW - To you guys who question Terry:

[ July 11, 2003, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: joee12 ]

 

[buster]

UOA's work for me. I think they are away of telling what is going on inside the engine. I think they do pick up on wear. I also think Terry is the man and knows his stuff.

 

[Rexman]

EVERYTHING WE’VE LEARNED SO FAR

Sorry . . .couldn’t resist.

As a public service to those just now joining us who don’t have the time or patience to read through 176 posts (entertaining and action-packed though they may be), the short answer to MinnesotaNole’s original question is . . .

YES!! You CAN run Mobil 1 for 6k drain intervals . . . (I called Mobil myself and they said that you can.)

. . . except if you have a turbo where you better change it every 4K.

—oops, sorry, added that last part myself—nobody even really talked about turbos, just thought I’d put in my 2 cents.

[ July 11, 2003, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: Rexman ]

 

[Greaser]

Take a look at the UOA section...3MP are going 15,000 miles with the Mobil and it still looks pretty good...case closed in my books

 

[FowVay]

Since the synthetics and mineral oils are all the same (within 10%) I'm going to spend my weekend looking for a mineral oil that meets my car manufacturers requirement of ACEA A3 and MB229.3. I'm sure I can find these mineral oils for $.79 per quart at wally world.

I might hop on a plane and fly to Europe and teach those pagan heathens about chemistry so maybe they can formulate one of these ineffective man-made fluids to lubricate their stoneage equipment that they use over there. I'm sure I read someplace that they don't have very many synthetic fluids because the people can't afford them. I guess these super exotic Lamborghini, Ferrari, BMW, Mercedes, McLaren, etc, were designed and built in gooberville, USA, so the highly educated engineer/chemist/bearing changers could test their theories of fluid dynamics.

The credibilty of this thread was lost a few days ago. It's now getting embarassing.

 

[Patman]

With my sister doing so many miles per week, there is no way I could keep up with her oil change schedule if I changed her oil every 3k. In the last few weeks she has been doing 500 to 600 miles per week! It's hard enough as it is to get her to come over for an oil change (which is why it took me so long to get the UOA on the Castrol 0w30!)

 

[MolaKule]

Quad said:

quote:

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I beleive PAO blends are far superior to polyol esters in car engines, simply because as people I have talked to from mobil or texaco have succinctly pointed out, jet engine oil is not exposed to combustion byproducts, air or moisture due to the construction of the jet engine itself...and jet engine oils are not compatible with car engine seals without a ton of extra additives*(1). Why handicap yourselves? In short, my faith for things technical is placed more on the engineers and less on the entrepaneurs with big vats and mixing spoons.

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Most full synthetics are combinations of PAO's and some type of ester, usually a polyol ester.

The newer esters are molecularly structured to have less seal swell than the older di-esters, which are no longer used. So your information is somewhat dated. A balanced mix of PAO and esters will produce about the same seal swell as a group I, II base oil.

Jet engine oils have additives a well.

I think you are confusing trending and UOA's with catstrophic failures. A hairline fracture in a rod causes localized stresses that are not going to show a potential future failure, and will not show up in a UOA. But that is a manufacturing/QA problem and not the oil's or UOA's failure. What a UOA will show is how much bearing, ring, and other surface wear is occuring in the engine by the elemental analysis listed in the UOA.

Radioactive ferrographic analysis is often done by engine manufactures to determine wear under specified conditions, so most engine manufacturers know the amount of wear ocurring in their engines per hour or per X amount of miles/km, and more often than not, it is not a simple linear relationship as you seem to imply.

Mobil 1's SS formulation could be better, but then again, they are not selling a boutique oil from an entrepeneur. They are selling an OTC oil at a price the market can bear.

I will put my faith in the UOA for the engine/oil combination I am using to tell me, in a relative manner, how oil A compares with Oil B.

What good is a well engineered engine without a well engineered oil? It takes both the oil formulator and the engineer to work out an aceptable solution for the lubrication problem at hand.

[ July 12, 2003, 01:00 AM: Message edited by: MolaKule ]

 

[QuadDriver]

quote:

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Originally posted by VeeDubb:
QuadDriver,

Your points make sense to me. I don't understand all the tech talk but your last post was quite helpful. I have a couple questions for you.

1. Do you think syns have other advantages over dinos beyond the "10%" you mention? For instance, turbo protection, sludge prevention, etc. (sorry if you addressed this already, but I simply didn't have the time to go through 4 pages of threads this morning).

2. Your point about not being able to predict wear with UOAs is interesting and I won't disagree. But does this mean UOA's can't tell us *something* about wear? .

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ok, answers for you...

1) peace of mind? warm fuzzies? The specs are the specs...if pour point is the only one we care about because we live in north siberia, then say a difference from -39 dino to -42 syn is all you get. If we start to put too much faith in perceived or imaginary effects, why stop there? fresher breath, whiter teeth, brighter colors and a cure for impotency might as well be on the bottle.... Consider if you will, buick pretty much started and ended the turbo run without benefit of syn oil. Too many 1987 GNX owners were replacing downtubes, adjusting wastegates and running 12's on basically stock cars, with stock oils. The cars that have not been wrecked run well to this day and sell for beau coup money. Sometimes that little extra film strength is what saves a rod from grabbing a bearing on that hot sultry day....but then again, oil related failures are pretty rare no?

2) with respect to wear and not contaminants, I am not convinced. apparently others on this board are, but no one has shown me proof that UOAs show anything quatifiable in terms of wear (most labs will say if you see fe ppm spike to the 1000 range, something bad is going on and I agree - but as I mentioned in another post, when something bad does happen, it happens quickly and you would have to be a lucky sob to do the UOA while it was occuring.) If someone would ask me 'is wear occuring in my motor' I would ask them in return 'has it been started?'. Until a few days ago, I venture that some people reading this thread were --><-- this close to declaring that NO wear occurs with syn oil...which would be incorrect.