I recently performed a UOA on my fairly new F150 5.0. This was 2900 miles on the oil (Motul 5w-40 X-Cess Gen 2), 4700 - 7600 miles on the engine. I do understand the truck is still breaking-in and it takes some time for wear metals to flush out, I'm mostly interested in seeing is if some of my metals are actually coming from the additive. Often tin is in moly additive packages. I'm trying to find a VOA for Ceratec, but all I have found Is some vague Russian pic and a Spanish Youtube video. Either way, it is interesting to look at.
Motul 5w-40 2.9k mi; new F150 vehicle
- Thread starter Truck-Guy
- Start date
You can buy the Ceratec and do a VOA, it will show you what it shows you. I see no need for this product, but, if you want to use it, go ahead.
I would not get hung up on UOA's for your vehicle.
You are using a good oil, just stick with reasonable OCI's.
I would not get hung up on UOA's for your vehicle.
You are using a good oil, just stick with reasonable OCI's.
No, that’s a VOA for Motul, mine is the far right.
Look here:
IIRC Ceratec is nothing but powdered white graphite in solution. VOA won't show much of anything useful.
Did you look at the post I linked?
That's highly contaminated graphite if that's what it is.
Thank you, this is exactly what I’m looking for regarding the metals. It confirms my suspicion about my elevated tin, aluminum, and copper levels. The tin is part of the Moly package. Ceratec contains a lot of molybdenum as well, at least what from what I understand. Motul euro has no moly in it. This leads me to believe that most of my metals, outside of iron, are actually not wear metals. Interesting to see the silicon as well. It also contains a healthy dose of boron.
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I didn't but I will later.
Post 9. I also saw the document he's talking about.
You’re dropping serious coin already on Motul. You can obviously do whatever you want, but the wise folks who have way more experience in actual oil blending highly recommend that if you think you need to “fortify” the already fully-formulated motor oil with uncontrolled and uncertified additives, your engine is likely much better off by simply buying the correct oil that is already proven to be expertly crafted & balanced.
Aftermarket additives have zero “official” controls or certifications, and there’s no guarantee it will do anything beneficial. Additives (like most Lucas products) will essentially “water down” your oil except for what’s in their specific mixture, since you’re replacing a portion of the fully-formulated motor oil with something that’s not suitable to run in the engine on its own. Also, some additives (like Lucas Oil HD Oil Stabilizer or Lubegard Biotech) will significantly alter the operating temperature viscosity of the original oil. Also, because the additive has different viscosity characteristics, you can no longer have anything but a wild guess as to the final mixture’s cold weather properties.
Buy the correct oil for your application, and use it at 100% strength. Skip the additives; your engine and wallet will thank you!!
I see consistent results with LM Ceretek. I have experience building a few engines over the years and I’m not easily fooled. What I consistently see is a smoother running engine, less vibrations and smoother idle, less cold start valve clatter, and improved MPG. I’ve seen this in multiple applications over the years, but the interest in doing the UOA is to see what’s going on with the metals primarily, and if the product is actually making any changes to the chemistry for the negative. So far, I’ve yet to actually see this. The next UOA of course will be without any additives. I generally run it every 15k - 20k miles.
Lake Speed Jr does a good video where he pretty much trashes most oil additives and I agree with what he’s saying, but it’s interesting when he gets to the two different LM products he pretty much skips those. My iron is a little elevated, but as I mentioned this is pretty early in the break-in / flushing out period. I’m actually impressed the oil did not drop to a 30 grade over the 2900 miles. Right on the edge but it held up. This truck sees a lot of short trips / city environment, miles don’t tend to come too quickly. Larger view of the UOA, you can see after 3k miles the additive packs are very strong. The truck is also tuned and running e40 - e50 fuel, another reason why I wanted to do this OC a little early as fuel dilution was a concern and it turns out I don’t have any. I just started to use an upper cylinder lubricant in my fuel and a good amount of research, TCW3. It will be interesting to see the next UOA.
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https://www.motor-talk.de/forum/aktion/Attachment.html?attachmentId=679359
Use Google to Translate. The TUV found it did test better compared to a 10w40 from circa 2004. That's a far cry from oils used today.
Here's what I found regarding the "ceramic".
"..Hexagonal BN (h-BN) is the most widely used polymorph. It is a good lubricant at both low and high temperatures (up to 900 °C, even in an oxidizing atmosphere). h-BN lubricant is particularly useful when the electrical conductivity or chemical reactivity of graphite (alternative lubricant) would be problematic. In internal combustion engines, where graphite could be oxidized and turn into carbon sludge, h-BN with its superior thermal stability can be added to engine lubricant, however, with all nano-particles suspension, Brownian-motion settlement is a key problem and settlement can clog engine oil filters, which limits solid lubricants application in a combustion engine to only automotive race settings, where engine re-building is a common practice..."
My guess is that most of the stuff settles out at the bottom of the pan and it takes a couple of coil changes to get it all out.
I'll still maintain that any proper statistical analysis will be unable to yield a mathematically significant difference. For one thing a spectrographic analysis is influenced my multiple and significant outside factors that make it impossible to isolate the one variable of the additive. Same goes doubly for fuel economy measurements. No one can make such a determination in real-life driving, there are a myriad of variables, all of which are uncontrolled. You are deep in the noise on this one.
There are standardized tests for all of this which would yield statistically significant results, but a $35 UOA and an ad-hoc fuel economy measurement are not adequate.
The problem with your logic is that overwhelmingly users review the product quite positively. If the product was a fluke it would not receive the raving reviews. This is data, one may not necessarily agree with it, but it’s still data. This is where the arguments fall apart, in my opinion. Claiming 23k+ reviews are either fake or placebo is not rational. Searching on google and various forums the statistics are the same. Overwhelming positive reviews. I don’t claim it’s some miracle product, but it’s definitely not “snake oil”.
https://a.co/d/2ZJJxc7
That's cool. All I can say is add your testimonial to them if you believe Amazon is the place for data.
Absolutely it is, particularly when you are talking huge amounts of people reviewing the product. I’m 100% sure you, just like 99%of us, pick products based on user reviews.
I've never picked a motor oil based on a website review or testimonial. I've also never picked an additive that way since I've never used one. I pick motor oils based on approvals and licenses since those are based on actual performance tests. Somebody's subjective observations such as an Amazon review have never had any influence whatsoever. You can be 100% sure but you're also 100% incorrect.
All those technically relevant ISO and ASTM tests that have been developed over decades could be discarded in favor of the plurality of Amazon reviews. Who knew?
Anecdotes are notoriously unreliable.
Can you find one single oil blender that says in writing that they approve mixing in uncontrolled additives to their product? Several of the majors offer 300-500k engine warranties if you use their oil, but none of them will cover a failure if they discover you’ve been running an additive.
And there’s no way I’d ever add 2-stroke oil to a turbocharged vehicle. You’re just asking for detonation and/or deposits by doing this IMO. There are several threads about this with input from actual chemists & oil blenders that this is not beneficial in any way in the long run.
I run a 5 Star Tuning E30 in my EcoBoost but the only thing I’ve ever added on the fuel side is Redline SI-1 or HPL Fuel System Cleaner. Let us know how it works out.
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