The question was raised in an earlier post (since closed...???) about dyno and endurance testing with specific types of oils. The discussion was evolving around all the differnt oils on the market and the possibility of there being a "better" oil on the market that might never get tested by the OEM and thus would not be recommended.
Specific to the discussion was GM's factory fill of Mobil 1 synthetic several engines and the recommendation to use Mobil 1 in the field. The thought being that there might be "better" oils out there that GM might not be aware of or could take advantage of since all the testing and validation was done with the Mobil product.
I thought about this and the answers given and realized that a piece of logic was missing from the discussion.
There is no doubt that "better" lubricants and oils could be found or developed but the real concern with the OEM is WILL THE CUSTOMER USE THEM...??? It would make no sense to design and develop an engine that was dependent on a super-oil to live if the customer put the cheapest house brand from the discount store in his engine. That is basically the premise of the GFx specifications ... to standardize the gasoline engine oils for the mass market so that there is some assurance as to what the customer will be buying and then the development/testing/validation of the engine is then done with the same oils that the customer is using. There is no desire on the OEM's part to test with a superior product as there is no guarantee whatsoever that the customer would use that. If the engine were to be totally dependent on that super-oil then it would have a high chance of failure when the customer used the discount oil.
There are a number of OEM tests on engines that actually are run with substandard oils to confirm that the engine will still live even if the oil purchased is on the low end of the specs or below.
While it is impossible to test all the oils on the market in any given application the "high" and "low" limits of the spec are validated to work in the product and then the bulk of the development/validation testing is done with the factory fill lube to make sure the engine performs satisfactorily with that product and, in the case of the Mobil 1 applications, that specific product is mentioned as a recommendation since that is the product that the engine was validated with.
Hopefully this sheds more light on the engine OEM's position...just from my opinion, of course.
Specific to the discussion was GM's factory fill of Mobil 1 synthetic several engines and the recommendation to use Mobil 1 in the field. The thought being that there might be "better" oils out there that GM might not be aware of or could take advantage of since all the testing and validation was done with the Mobil product.
I thought about this and the answers given and realized that a piece of logic was missing from the discussion.
There is no doubt that "better" lubricants and oils could be found or developed but the real concern with the OEM is WILL THE CUSTOMER USE THEM...??? It would make no sense to design and develop an engine that was dependent on a super-oil to live if the customer put the cheapest house brand from the discount store in his engine. That is basically the premise of the GFx specifications ... to standardize the gasoline engine oils for the mass market so that there is some assurance as to what the customer will be buying and then the development/testing/validation of the engine is then done with the same oils that the customer is using. There is no desire on the OEM's part to test with a superior product as there is no guarantee whatsoever that the customer would use that. If the engine were to be totally dependent on that super-oil then it would have a high chance of failure when the customer used the discount oil.
There are a number of OEM tests on engines that actually are run with substandard oils to confirm that the engine will still live even if the oil purchased is on the low end of the specs or below.
While it is impossible to test all the oils on the market in any given application the "high" and "low" limits of the spec are validated to work in the product and then the bulk of the development/validation testing is done with the factory fill lube to make sure the engine performs satisfactorily with that product and, in the case of the Mobil 1 applications, that specific product is mentioned as a recommendation since that is the product that the engine was validated with.
Hopefully this sheds more light on the engine OEM's position...just from my opinion, of course.
