Oil Specs & Testing Approved Lubricants
- Thread starter buster
- Start date
Or is it exploitation? Most cars with that milage are on the go most of the day with very few stops etc.
When I was doing a field test for oil that was later approved for the first version of VW504.00/507.00, we did one test of 10,000km without turning off the engine. The analysis was exceptional. When we started doing city tests, tests where we did not allow oil to reach operating temperature etc. it was another story.
Finland usually lags after US, Last time it took about 1.5 years to get the FS version. Also M1 0w-40 are same formulation world wide. 5w-50 X2 api sp is same what we have here and in Asia. Before M1 had two different M1 5w-50, but was labeling as X1 and X2. Mobil is master when its come to standardize manufacturing
Last edited:
Yes i know i just thought those were different formulas since the PDS specs are different from the us FS 0w40
D
Deleted member 89374
Would you please expand on this? Which statements are dated?
Like what?
ILMA’s often work with additive manufacturers to produce new products. They also are typically among the first to be introduced into new base stocks. ILMA’s also do a lot of testing. I was personally involved with the PC-11 development for example.
You also have the fact that the majors often utilize ILMA’s for regional blending and packaging purposes, as it’s not cost effective to have blend plants everywhere, or packaging lines everywhere. Trucking it across the country and warehousing large quantities is also expensive. So it’s just easier to contract with a toll blender.
So no, ILMA’s are not “3-4 generations behind.” Their buyers are price sensitive, mass production is the key to economies of scale. So they’re going to be buying the most produced additive packages, which is going to be… the latest technology.
Afton / Lubrizol / Infineum all compete with each other for ILMA volume, let alone major player volume as well.
I know ILMA’s whose 15w40 is literally an exact clone of Rotella T4. Same shearing problem and all. I know another ILMA whose Dexos products happened to be identical to a major brand’s… because the major did blending there.
Deals are done all the time. If a major contracts with a blender to package 5 million gallons of XYZ products, the blender might contract with the major for an extra 5 million gallons of additives and base oils, to resell under their own brand/house brands/etc. This allows the major to move more base oil, buy additives better, etc. and the blender will probably give a discount to the major on blending and packaging. Because they’ll be able to sell the excess product. It’s a win-win for everyone. Including the cost concerned consumer.
D
Deleted member 89374
@Foxtrot08 thank you for that excellent post. Please keep 'em coming! 
ILMA - Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association
ILMA - Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association
@Foxtrot08 thank you for that excellent post. Please keep 'em coming!
ILMA - Independent Lubricant Manufacturers Association
Don’t get me wrong. ILMA’s won’t have the latest blend of Mobil 1 0w40 or Pennzoil ultra platinum whatever. As those are probably under proprietary contract with whatever additive company for a while. But your synthetic blends? Your regular Dexos products? The non “ultra premium” product lines the majors offer? Let alone everything else they offer? Hydraulic oils, gear oils, Tractor hydraulic fluids, transmission fluids?
Yup… I would actually say, you can get better hydraulic and industrial products from ILMA’s than you can majors.
Edit:
I would put my industrial EP gear oils up against Mobil’s, shell’s, p66’s, etc. any day of the week. And I know it would come out equal, if not better. Simply because of our ability to tweak it with better base stocks from other suppliers. Then tweak the additive packages.
Hydraulic oils are the same. The ability to use higher VI base stocks from re-refiners and such. Vs the majors being locked into essentially their own group II’s or Motiva’s.
Thanks for the post. Makes a lot of sense as well.
It's my understanding that all of the brands, whether big or small, rely on the additive companies to do the majority of the testing and formula development. The only differentiator is that the very large companies, like Mobil or Castrol, can afford to work with the additive companies to create custom tweaks to the market ready packages specifically for them and also develop on their own internally.Their volumes enable that level of development, but it is typically done on the additive company side, and not on the oil brand’s side.
Someone recent posted a patent by XOM, and not the additive companies on a new formulation using high AN's. So I guess it works both ways? Per this video the lubricant industry is usually playing catch up with the OEMs except in the racing industry where they're working in tandem with OEMs.
11:15
Last edited:
D
Deleted member 89374
I think that @buster had the consumer facing boutique blenders in mind like Red Line and AMSOIL, to name some of the widely known ones, when he created this thread.
To give you an example, last year I had a conversation with Mr. David Granquist from Red Line (you most likely know him). When I asked him when the motor oils in the High Performance lineup of the 2021 product catalog will materialize, his reply was, verbatim:
We are still waiting for the additive to become available and get off allocation, unfortunately don’t have a timetable.
Up to that point, and according to many here, including @OVERKILL, Red Line was using an SL-era additive package in their High Performance motor oils.
I believe that's one of the things @buster was referring to, and I'd be curious to know what your thoughts on the above are.
So where to start on this... Yes, the lubricant industry is normally playing catch up to the OEM's in some ways. However, Tribologists and Lubricant engineers are employed by the OEM's as well. So the R&D street works sort of both ways. So base oil producers (XOM, RDS, P66, Motiva, etc.) Will come up with what we'll call a new base oil. (See the thread on MPAO's here.) This new base oil starts as a idea before actually going into production. Will probably have a small scale test built. This will then be used by additive companies and automotive OEM's to test on next generation products, what's possible. Now, as always the OEM's want the sun and the moon. Technical limitations in what is actually possible, hold them back. This could be from scale of manufacturing, to cost, etc.
On a small scale, you can see this with HPL's product for example. Are better products possible? Absolutely. But there are limitations on why everyone doesn't use a product like HPL's - mostly cost. But also just shear product availability.
Now as for additive companies / proprietary additive development / etc.
Infineum is a joint venture between Mobil and Shell. Oronite is of coursed owned by Chevron. Chevron and P66 hae Chevron-Phillips. Lubrizol and Afton are independent. Etc. Infineum being the big one in question... Here's the kicker: Just because Mobil and Shell own Infineum, doesn't meant they use their products.
As for XOM developing it's own products - yes. Because they develop base oils, they have to license these base oils for usage, develop product formulations for these base oils, test these base oils, etc. Chevron, P66, Shell all have to do the same thing, to some extent. Just Mobil is more up front with it and honestly, more the 'leader' so to speak. Also, no one makes 'everything' in house. A lubrizol additive package, be sourced with Afton cold flow additives, Infineum VII, for use in Mobil base oils. (Just a random example.)
For the more 'proprietary' additive packages, we'll say... They're takes on other formulations, of course. So it's more who pays for the testing. P66 paid for the 'liquid tek' additive package testing, to get it approved for Dexos. They did this because they consolidated their GT-1 synthetic line up. Instead of having GT-1 Max with Liquid Titanium and a separate GT-1 Max Dexos 1 Gen 2 product, they worked with an additive company, had their 'proprietary' additive package tested and approved by GM.
Full development like what Mobil might have to do is more expensive... But as I said previously, they're going to start with a 'base' product - they know that ABC formulation is approved for all these specs. They will then take that product, sell it in mass to cover the real R&D costs. In turn, they will tweak it to be 'different' (better, or not is debatable, as we've seen on this forum) - and that will be their proprietary formulation. But all the really expensive testing is already done. They don't have to do hundreds of engine sequence tests, they don't have to do blind fleet testing, fuel testing, etc. on it. Because the foundation is already built.
The expensive testing comes when you're re-doing the foundation of a spec. So PC-11 was a bit jump - CJ4 to CK4. Several oils, major brands, did ground up re-designs from CJ4 to CK4. This involved large amounts of real world fleet testing. Large amounts of test stand engine tear downs. This all costs millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. It was mostly fronted by 1 additive company. Which is now the base additive used in A LOT of major brand HDEO's. Whom are all tweaked in their own ways, for marketing. But that foundational testing laid the basics down for several major brands and ILMA brands.
If you can imagine a tree. This foundational testing is the roots of the tree. The trunk is the 'commercial' oils that ILMA's make and will probably be major producer's factory fill oils / quick lube oils / sold to distributors as house brand / big volume, low margin stuff. The branches from the truck will be your 'known brands' oil on the shelves, in quart bottles. Formulations may be shared between brands, or be very, very similar. Then the small branches off that will be your 'top tier' oils that we think about and pay a premium for.
Is there a major formulation change between the branch and small branches? Maybe. Might also just be marketing. Depends.
I feel like I'm rambling a bit. Might be the pain killers. Hope this makes sense.
Additive allocation is hurting a lot of people right now, still. Including some majors. It has gotten *a lot* better since the shortages of 2021/2022. But it's not perfect. It doesn't shock me in the slightest bit that Redline is still on allocation.
After all, I got about... 1/3rd of my last package good orders from P66. We get 1-2 package loads a week normally. We're always shorted between 50-70% of what we order.
Great post @Foxtrot08 , that was helpful and interesting.
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2021
- Messages
- 828
@Foxtrot08 question specifically about Valvoline if you're able to answer. Since they aren't a major, but they're such a large player in the PCMO and HDEO markets, do they have the level of custom adpaks that the majors would have, or are they basically just throwing purchased base oils together with an off-the-shelf adpak based on a spec sheet? I guess my question is really, how detailed and quality focused are they? Like I said, seems like they're in a strange middle-ground position.
Irony, I was about to make a follow up post...
Does anyone think that Warren Highline (Supertech / Amazon basics / etc.) is 3-4 generations behind?
Does anyone think that Valvoline is 3-4 generations behind?
I know a lot about Valvoline... So I'm not going to say tooo much. But, they're really good at marketing.
You are right on the money.
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2021
- Messages
- 828
Is this in reply to Valvoline?
I don’t think they’re that far behind if at all. This was from mid 2000’s. However I’m not sure what he is referring to exactly because oils have to meet specifications and there are levels.
“Once they develop the next generation, you'll frequently find these now-out-of-fashion adpaks in the compounder-blenders' products.)”
I have seen this over the years.
ILMA’s used up all their Dexos 1 Gen 2 additives 6-8 months before Dexos 1 Gen 3 became “standard.” Rolling change overs are the normal now.
Given, the GF3 to GF4 transition was a complete and utter **** show. So I’ll give him that benefit. But that’s history. The GF5 to GF6 transition was very smooth. The GF4 to GF5 transition was a little rocky, but not bad.
ILMA’s have changed a lot in ~30 years. The industry has changed a lot in that time period. There’s now a heavy reliance on ILMA’s by majors. There’s also a huge emphasis on just selling base oils.
Edit:
You will see some more “slimy” blenders pulling that crap. Yeah, I’m looking at you Smitty’s. Anyone who blends off spec crap never deserves to be trusted.
Last edited:
