Little experiment with Light bodied Solvents!

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We are always talking about light bodied flush's and other solvent products burning off! I decided to test this. The car is known to not burn oil. It is running a conventional 15W40 oil. I put a solid 1000 miles on the fresh oil prior to adding the solvent. The oil level based on dip-stick was perfectly at the top of the full mark! I added exactly 8 ozs. of MMO to the cold oil. I then started the engine up and let it run for 10 mintes and shut it down. I went inside and made a kettle of tea. I came back out side and rechecked. The oil was over full now by 8 ozs. I marked the dipstick to keep track of this. To date it now has close to 3000 miles on the oil and 2000 on the oil MMO experiment. The oil level still reads 8 ozs. high on the dipstick. It would appear that adding a solvent to the oil changes the charistics of the solvent drasticly.

In an engine that does not burn oil it is unlikely that solvents added to the oil are going to burn off any more then the base oil will. Surely their is a limit to how dilluted you make the oil prior to the base stocks charistics changeing so much as to allow for increased volitility due to solevent dilution. MMO was used because it was available. 8 once dosage was chosen due to concerns for acelerated wear due to solvent dilluteing the base oil.

I did this to try to figure out how long a solvent type of chemistry could be expected to work in an engine. Some say that they boil of quickly while other insist that their chartristics change once introduced to the base oil. Terry Frank and Bob had this discussion once when discussing the charteristics of Auto-Rx as compared to Nuetra 131. Bob insisted that Nuetra 131 would not burn off quickly and I am now inclined to belive him!

Driveing is now a composite of 90% City 10% HWY. Usualy I drive 90% HWY and 10% city. They are doing construction on the HWY I take to work so I am going 20 miles through the city instead of 20 miles on the HWY to and from work!
 
Let us know how it turns out, since I have a 32oz bottle sitting around.

I'd like to add it to my accord and see what happens.
 
I am not going to do a UOA on it. My only point was to see if it would burn off relatively quickly. So far it has not. I want to point out that the MMO was not added in the hopes of gaining anything positive. It was simply a cheap solvent that was easily attainable and in common usage.

I would never advocate useing MMO for anything other then a lifter tick or something like that. I feel that MMO and any plain solvent can only cause increased wear. I doubt that 8 ozs. did any harm that I would need to worry about. I am sure running 5W20 in it would cause more wear then adding 8 ozs. to 4 quarts of 15W40.

MMO in the gas seems to work well!
 
Exactly. With the exception of cogeners forming (a real possibility in the brews we call oil), this simply shows that whatever is in MMO (dunno, never drank a drop in my life), whatever is in MMO obviously has a higher vap point than your crankcase temp.
 
This explains one comment when I worked at the brake shop. They sold MMO. When the one known drunk bought a can, the owner asked him if he was going to drink it there or take it home. I always thought it was for the oil. The brake shop did not have a liquor license.

Even if MMO has enough naphtha in it to have a high vapor pressure and a low flash point, once you add 8 ounces to 5 quarts? of oil, the amount of naphtha would be relatively small. It is hard to boil out the last bit of high vapor pressure material. With changes of temperature, drainback, etc. I am not sure you could read the loss of an ounce or 2 of volatiles.

This is interesting.
 
Isn't SeaFoam mostly naptha?

I have an 88 Camaro with the 305 LB9 engine. I'm the original owner, and I ran dino oil in it up until about 4 years ago. I changed regularly, and the thing has never overheated. For the last 4 years or so I've been running M1 in it. Regardless, the insides of the engine are pretty well varnished and brown from about 100k miles with of dino. I'd like to clean it up.
 
Well my point was that even if the begining solvent is a low vapor pressure solvent once you add it to the oils base stock it's charteristics change. THe only way to get it to burn off would be to add so much as to change the oils base stock charteristics drasticly!

It would appear that with the amount of material that Schaffers recomends of 131 be added to your crankcase that it would be in for the long hual! Even if one added the whole bottle to a 4 quart system I do not think that it would boil off very quickly. You could very well have the greater precentage of what ever you add to your bas oil still in their 2000+ miles down the road!
 
quote:

Originally posted by JohnBrowning:
Well my point was that even if the begining solvent is a low vapor pressure solvent once you add it to the oils base stock it's charteristics change.

Well, it's been almost 2 decades since I took chemistry classses, so I'm way out of my league here, but I think what your describing is then by definition not a solvent if there's a chemical reaction with the base oil versus just mixing in with the oil.

Where's the resident chemists when you need one?
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I've wondered about this,If you could get some aniline you could test the oil's aniline point then after adding whatever amount of "solvent" check it again to see what changes occured. Aniline point is usually speced on hydraulic fluid to check for reaction with seal material, but would also predict somewhat how a mix would act on sludge or varnish, or at least I think it would
 
From a website lecture on important crude oil properties:

True Boiling Point Distillation Data

Butanes and lighter 55-175 F
Light Gasoline 175-300 F
Light naphtha 300-400 F
Heavy naptha 400-500 F
Kerosene 500-650 F
 
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Man!! Wow I didn't know MMO had chlorinated hydrocarbons!! Another reason not to drink it or use it. Motorbike - TLV doesn't mean that there is 25-50ppm.... less than 150 PPM dichlorobenzene is declared for ROC. (TLV = Threshold Lethal Value)

BP is 172°C FWIW.....so it may stay around even if cogeners aren't formed, as I stated earlier.
 
I actually paid little attention to it .
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I just opened to make certain it was the correct MSDS before posting

But now , how much total CH does it appear to have in it ?

[ May 15, 2004, 08:24 AM: Message edited by: Motorbike ]
 
It is difficult to tell how much CH's by reading a MSDS. I used to write MSDS's years ago.....the trick is to give zero formulation info. out.

The bigger point is: I don't put CH's in MY cars!! JB may be advised to end his little experiment.
 
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