Mobil 1 0w40, 5000mi, '99 Saab 9³

[buster]

Ted, how do you know it is valve train wear? Did you read Molekule's post? BTW, Delvac 1 and M1 have very different chemistry. Take a look at the additive levels Mobil 1 uses in comparison to other oils. ZDDP is on par and more with Mobil 1 Extended Performance. BUT,they are using much more boron.

 

[TooSlick]

The high iron occurs even if you use Mobil 1 continually, so it's not an initial reaction like you get with Redline and some other ester based synthetics. Chemical wear of the ferrous substrates is still wear and iron in solution is still being removed from these wearing surfaces ....

Amsoil has been using boron since at least 1995 - it's hardly a new development....I've never seen a strong correlation of high iron levels and the use of borates in PCMO's or HDEO's....

Some of this iron is from the timing chain and sprockets. I consider those to be part of the valve train components.

Ted

 

[buster]

Here is my issue, even in many cases with RL, we see sustained high wear metals, that don't subside and only drop when switching to a conventional oil. Go figure?

However, these are not wear metals IMO. When all of us on here were trashing RL, I called and spoke with Roy. He laughed about the small ppm differences in wear from used oil analysis. So what makes you think a 10-15ppm difference in any wear metal is really a problem? I've seen reports on here when Fe was 91ppm and OAI said oil is good for continued use. I guess I'm loosing faith in determining an oils wear performance using a $20 used oil analysis. I'm sure all those using Redline that race professionally would have some nasty looking used oil analysis that most BITOG'ers would tell them to quit using the oil and switch to another, yet when these guys perform tear downs, things look perfect. I believing focusing on viscosity and oxidation are two of the more important issues. I'm not ruling out that it is valve train wear, but I highly doubt Mobil's top synthetic oil would be outperformed by $.99 conventional Mobil clean. Makes no sense.
Only difference I see with Mobil 1 is the higher levels of Boron they use. Much more then any other oil. It's also a different Boron then the Amsoil Boron.

[ June 05, 2005, 12:30 PM: Message edited by: buster ]