My Ongoing Wear Minimization Experiment

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Originally Posted By: kohnen
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Just think, instead of lasting 300-500k miles or more, it might last 1 or 2 million miles. Keep it up, let us know how it goes.

Unless you get rid of it before then.

I'm hoping that the wear is minimized to the point that it never consumes a significant amount of oil.

Of course, that might end up being the case anyway if I only use the engine 10% of the time or so.


I'm of the thought that all these extreme lengths to minimize wear will never make any difference in a normal car. The timeline required to see any benefit essentially isn't plausible in a normal life of a car. The car will likely be retired far before an oil related failure. I believe that any vehicle maintained in a reasonable fashion will likely outlive the body or the car will be wrecked or retired for other reasons. In the case of this Volt, perhaps when it's 20-30 years old and it needs it's third battery replacement the car will no longer be worth fixing or perhaps some other complex electrical or computer component will spell the financially driven end of its life before that.

My counter argument. My 1987 4Runner has 322,650 ish miles as of this evening. Original never rebuilt engine. Consumes no oil (out to about 5,500 miles on an oil change, never taken it further) and still drives down the road with 75-85 psi of oil pressure. It's never had fancy filters or magnets or a bypass system. Just reasonable maintenance by myself and the previous (1) owner. Cars and trucks in the light duty segment have a planned obsolescence at some point they just don't make sense to fix anymore or the parts aren't available anymore. Medium and Heavy duty trucks are an exception here. I can still buy brand new service parts from Detroit Diesel for the 71 series two cycle Diesel designed in the 1940's, they were made to work and be overhauled and put back to work. I recognize that it's a hobby and I enjoy tinkering too, heck I do with my 4Runner. If I wanted to be boring I would just bring my 4Runner to the dealership every 3,000 miles to get the oil changes done like the previous owner did for the first 255,000 miles of its life.
 
Originally Posted By: FlyNavyP3
Originally Posted By: kohnen
Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Just think, instead of lasting 300-500k miles or more, it might last 1 or 2 million miles. Keep it up, let us know how it goes.

Unless you get rid of it before then.

I'm hoping that the wear is minimized to the point that it never consumes a significant amount of oil.

Of course, that might end up being the case anyway if I only use the engine 10% of the time or so.


I'm of the thought that all these extreme lengths to minimize wear will never make any difference in a normal car. The timeline required to see any benefit essentially isn't plausible in a normal life of a car. The car will likely be retired far before an oil related failure. I believe that any vehicle maintained in a reasonable fashion will likely outlive the body or the car will be wrecked or retired for other reasons. In the case of this Volt, perhaps when it's 20-30 years old and it needs it's third battery replacement the car will no longer be worth fixing or perhaps some other complex electrical or computer component will spell the financially driven end of its life before that.


I've had the following cars (and their oil burning)
'97 Saturn SL2. That sucker started burning oil around 30,000 miles. The engines were wildly known to burn oil.
'03 Saturn Ion. At about 50,000 miles, it was burning oil. (I had 2 of them - both burned oil).
'07 Toyota Prius. Above 100k (iirc), it started burning oil.

Except for the Saturn SL2, none of these burned oil at a high rate - 1/4 to 1/3 of a quart every 1,000 miles. However, the all ended up burning oil. The idea behind oil is that there's always a film between any two surfaces, and they never touch, so they should never wear. I'm pretty simple-minded. I figure if I keep the oil as close to surgically clean as possible, there will be zero grit in the oil, and therefore nothing to cause wear.

As for the Chevy Volt? I'm well aware that I bought a car that is more on the cell-phone price depreciation curve than the typical car curve. However, GM really did overdesign the battery charging system and the thermal control system. As a result, they haven't seen any significant (traction) battery degradation in the first generation Volts. So, I don't think I'll be changing (traction) batteries any time soon. (However, the 12V battery is just as vulnerable as any other 12V battery). Since I drive on electric 90% of the time, I suspect the wear item for me will be the transmission. It has some clutches, but the computer controls the motors so that the clutches never slip. So, the clutches should last forever.

As I've said, this is an experiment.
 
Wear reduction payback has a lot to do with the starting platform - as Navy said medium and HD trucks are prime candidates.

I wouldn't doubt the Toyo 4 runner engine lasts a long time with standard maintenance. These engines are terribly weak from a HP/ CC standard.
The 87 4 runner had multiple engine choices, but later 3Ze only made 150 HP from a 3 liter V6 engine - astoundingly weak.

Comparatively the Volt power plant makes 149 HP from a 1.5L (when it runs).

I would expect the smaller high revving engine to wear more per mile driven than its slower turning less power dense counterparts.
For the menial cost of the strategy I typically employ the same bag of tricks.

With variable valve timing, cam phasers, DI high pressure pumps, and the current bag of tricks enhancing power density and torque curves, to my mind the cleaner the oil the better.

...but thats my opinion.

UD
 
A few particles aren't going to cause much if any engine wear. A hard single particle makes a scratch. It may just displace the metal not remove it to make the scratch. A soft particle does nothing. Sometimes scratches are good to retain oil like on a cylinder wall. It seems to me it is mainly the metal to metal contact like could happen on start up that causes wear in a well maintained engine. Before oil pressure builds. Of course a load of hard particles start to make a grinding paste out of the oil but I don't think that is happening much for maintained engines. This is just conjecture BTW.
One of those start up oil circulators might be a good way to reduce engine wear. I used to see them for sale, like for when a car sits a long time between starts.
 
Blackstone did some kind of study of UOA results that showed that magnets made no real difference, although I don't remember if they looked at filter or sump plug magnets.
If a cheap simple idea like fitting magnets to a filter or sump plug worked, I suspect most OEM's would fit them. They are widely used in gearboxes, but I can't think of any normal car engines that have them as standard fit.
If an Iron particle is large enough to get picked up by a magnet, I suspect it is large enough to be caught by the oil filter.
 
Some time ago I read that the reason engine manufacturers don't use magnets in engine lubrication systems is that the magnet can magnetize wear debris. If this debris is dislodged from the magnet, it can then preferentially accumulate where iron is present within the engine, such as the crankshaft, camshaft and camshaft lobes, wrist pins, oil pump, etc.

I have no scientific evidence to back this theory, but there's plenty if anecdotal evidence. For example, my vintage BMW motorcycles have factory magnetic drain plugs in the transmission and rear drive sumps, but none in the engine sump.

Lubricant movement is much slower in those sumps that have magnets, and therefore there's far less likelihood that magnetized particles will be dislodged and to find themselves where they don't belong.
 
Originally Posted By: Le_bow_ski
I have no scientific evidence to back this theory, but there's plenty if anecdotal evidence. For example, my vintage BMW motorcycles have factory magnetic drain plugs in the transmission and rear drive sumps, but none in the engine sump.


Suzuki uses a magnetic drain plug (from the factory) in many of their motorcycles.
 
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
Originally Posted By: Le_bow_ski
I have no scientific evidence to back this theory, but there's plenty if anecdotal evidence. For example, my vintage BMW motorcycles have factory magnetic drain plugs in the transmission and rear drive sumps, but none in the engine sump.


Suzuki uses a magnetic drain plug (from the factory) in many of their motorcycles.
That puts a ding in the theory, but they also share a common engine/transmission sump, and so perhaps the benefit of catching transmission debris outweighs the down side of rogue magnetized particles hanging around the cam lobes.
 
Originally Posted By: kohnen
Thoughts, comments, questions, nags, harassments, etc., etc.?

Data below. Remember that some top-tier, full-flow filters on the market are >99% @ 15 microns.
MuUi9V0.png


Here are some old PureOne numbers:

Micron 5 = B4.8
Micron 10 = B50
Micron 15 = B1000
Micron 20 = B1000
---------------------------------------------------------
Standard
You would typically see
Beta Ratio Efficiency
2....................50%
10....................90%
20....................95%
75....................98.7%
100....................99%
200....................99.5%
1000....................99.9%
----------------------------------------------------------
Using the standard ratio numbers here is our PureONE.
(> = greater than; µm = microns)

B2 = below 5 µm
B10 = 6.69 µm
B20 = >8 µm
B75 = >11 µm
B100 = 11.42 µm
B200 = >13 µm
B1000 = >15 µm
 
High efficiency filters are the greatest invention of mankind. That said, in the GM test they accelerated wear by adding 50 g per hour test dust. Over the 8 hours that's 400 g of dust. One pound is 453 g. Say the 8 hours is at 60 mph, so it's like about 500 miles. Almost one pound of test dust added in 500 miles. That isn't what is happening in the real world unless you are driving in the desert in a dust storm with no air filter.
 
^^^ Right, but that 400 grams of dirt might represent what an engine might produce over 100-150K miles. The test was just "accelerated" the determine the relationship between particle size of debris in the oil and the wear rate on the engine.
 
Originally Posted By: ZeeOSix
^^^ Right, but that 400 grams of dirt might represent what an engine might produce over 100-150K miles. The test was just "accelerated" the determine the relationship between particle size of debris in the oil and the wear rate on the engine.


But you have no idea what it really is. That's just baseless speculation with no data to back up such a claim.
 
"might" ... that was the key word. Didn't say it was gospel. The point is, the test was accelerated to determine the relationship between engine wear and particle size, and showing that a more efficient oil filter has the potential to decrease engine wear.
 
Originally Posted By: spasm3
I can't remember who said it here;

" you'll have the nicest engine in the junkyard"


That would be me-----it was the 'cleanest engine in the junkyard' in the context of, there's no prize for it
Steve
 
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