Redline 0w40, 5w40 and 10w40: What is the difference?
- Thread starter altaylar
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Regarding cleaning power of RL HPMO
This was a preowned 2000 BMW I acquired, with the infamous red gunk from BMW oil.
Ran RL 5w40 for a couple years and had to replace VC gasket. When my mechanic did the service, he was astonished and took pics:…
This was a preowned 2000 BMW I acquired, with the infamous red gunk from BMW oil.
Ran RL 5w40 for a couple years and had to replace VC gasket. When my mechanic did the service, he was astonished and took pics:…
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Any photos from before through the fill cap?
Is that representative? (Obviously an extreme case.)
This is absolutely remarkable!
Do you happen to remember the milage?
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Not even with bypass filtration would I do it on a gaser! Maybe with twice the sump capacity or more, bypass filtration on vechile, bypass cart and sweetening the sump contents over time! LOL I doubt todays engines could benifit from it due all of the extreme compromises in internal engine design!
Too easy to get a $25 5 quart jug from Walmart and change oil every 5000 to 10,000 miles depending on the engines design! Rinse and repeat just like cheap Creme Rinse! LOL
And yet, it’s been done, with success, and great UOAs, without all that.
Just running HPL.
Nothing more.
LOL indeed.
You know what, this is a very strong data point, yet I would not feel comfortable using the same oil even for 10K miles.And yet, it’s been done, with success, and great UOAs, without all that.
Just running HPL.
Nothing more.
LOL indeed.
I will rationalize that to myself saying because I have a Subaru, and its timing chain is long etc. even though I know very well HPL would not sheer a bit over 10K miles.
Shear. And yes they are using high quality VII that does resist shear better.
What do you mean by that?
I bet all Group 4 and 5 oils clean by default.
Second half of the page, 4th bullet below the video:
https://www.redlineoil.com/5w30-motor-oil
The same info is written under each grade.
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I believe not all esters/G5s have the cleaning effect, but I would definitely consider RL to be a well cleaning oil, even though not HPL level
PAO doesn’t really clean.
I think they usually come with high solvency group 5 to better dissolve the ad pack, and I guess that is why we often think PAO cleans. It may not, but what it is bundled with does.
Esters, no?
Maybe not all esters clean, but all boutique oils clean very well. They don't emphasize that like Valvoline Restore and Protect does, because they are not Group III oil like the Valvoline, so the cleaning ability is remarkable in that case.
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I do not think Red Line has said their oils do not clean. I think what they say is "We purposefully design our oils not to clean!" put another way they do not design them to clean. That is not the same as saying their oils do not clean. I am sure when the original Mobil 1 0W40 came to market and ExxonMobil claimed it had the ability to clean an engine that was a happy side effect from other design criteria and marketing ran with it.
All esters do not have the same polarity, solvency, temp. resistance etc.....Just like not all of them play nice with the same seal materials etc....I am probably eating my hat here but they chose esters in combination and ratios that do not lend themselves to aggressive cleaning. Likewise not all PAO's are the same in properties and characteristics. Aniline point and the length of carbon chains have a HUGE say in how these all behave. Most PAO's have almost zero polarity or solvency but some do.
In the old days group 1 GI had a lot of solvency part of that was impurities that remained after refining and part of it was solvents that where added during extraction left over. Each leap up in saturation from G1 to GII to GII+ to GIII to PAO left us with a lot of incredible improvements in the base stock and allowed us to make exactly what we wanted and often from less expensive starting materials. Natural polarity and solvency all but vanished. There is a reason Mobil 1 PAO+Mineral for additive addition was a thing. Amsoil avoided this by using Diesters from Hatco. In my life time I do not think there has been an oil with the polarity and solvency and cleaning power of original Amsoil. Remember Mobil 1 Tri Syn that was when EM started playing around with AN's and we had PAO+Ester+AN's and I thought those where some of the best if not the best Mobil 1 formulations we ever got from Mobil! The formula changed often at first and the additive packages changed often. Not everyone was a fan boy of Tri-Syn like me though. AN has largely replaced ester usage in most motor oils. For the most part ester's seldom make up more than 2% of an OTC fully formulated ICE motor oil not counting boutique oils today.
In fact it was once common practice to use some sort of engine flush before switching to synthetic. I think that Amsoil was the main force behind this. It made sense with their original Diester formula. Today not as much. Most synthetics just lack the solvency and polarity to clean aggressively like that!
I think plenty of brands including boutique oil brand that have proven themselves to put out at the very least a product that will do no harm! Amsoil long ago proved that and I think Redline has too. Obviously I trust EM, SOUPUS and the rest to in large part do the same. So TRUST is part of the game as well.
It is funny back when ester content was high in a lot of different formulations no one focused very hard on the oils ability to keep an engine clean. Today we want what we once had but can not have. Would love to have old Amsoil formula back at current prices even. I am sure it would be 2X or 3X as much as today’s current price though. Any formulation saving's never result in lower price to consumer at best price remains static usually though the price goes up even when cost goes down! Castrol Syntec never lowered price when they switched from PAO to GIII!
What we all want to know is what is the chemical that is not an ester that is responsible for cleaning in the Valvoline Restore and Protect. I am taking a swag and thinking it is likely an amine. I am likely wrong but if I had to rule out esters and wanted to clean gently in an engine I would likely use that as a starting point.
Nicely written, but I would think todays oil is superior to what we had back then. I was just reading @wwillson 's post on using the same oil for 30K miles and having steller cleaning results. It is HPL, so hardly representative of what a regular off the shelf product can do, but I don't think anyone could even dare to imagine running an oil for 30K miles and still have such good outcome
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I did forensic engine tear down well not just engines as part of quality control for a major automotive firm. I would have to see the engine especially the pistons, valve train and timing chains after multiple 30,000 mile oil change interval weight each part, measure each part and sample the deposits myself to put any stock in 30,000 mile oil change intervals!And yet, it’s been done, with success, and great UOAs, without all that.
Just running HPL.
Nothing more.
LOL indeed.
I am sure we all know talk is cheap on the internet and plentiful myself included! Between working on cars for 47 years being a professional mechanic for 4 not counting the 4 years of apprenticeship leading up to that it violates everything I have experinced. I got certified in Tribology mostly for industrial plant use paid for by one of the full line domestic automotive manufactures around 2001. I was developing my own cleaning oil and then Valvoline beat me to it not once but twice with 2 different pattened products. I have worked with everything from daily drivers, diesel, salvage, minning and aviation before walking away from that and going back to school for unrelated fields. Done the engineering thing in corperate America to death!
Technology changes all the time sometimes in leaps but normaly more like a trickle. UOA especialy when you have a captured fleet combined with forensic teardowns and huge sample size is a fantastic tool! It is though without the other two at best a tool for trending data and if used every single OCI a tool to predict a looming failure or a past failure. It is not though a great tool when used alone. It is better than nothing but as used on this site it more for fun and entertainment with out. I do not expect people to go digging into their engine if it is not needed and few mechanics will stop what they are doing take photo's and email it to you.
Just like you can not take an area and hold it with air power alone you need boots on the ground for that you can not truly know what is going on in an engine with UOA alone! We have all seen 10,000 mile oil change disasters and 10,000 mile oil change sucess.
Like wise we all know 1 or 2 people that would drive a small block Chevy 5.7 for 3-5 years putting 120K miles on it with 1 or 2 oil changes the rest of the time they just topped up. Sludge City but that was the next guys problem they would sell it or trade it in. Often the engine sounded fine and did not smoke. That does not mean the oil they used was in some way supior or that their neglect was proof of best practice! America prior to Covid-19 was the land of 3 year buy/sell/trade in automotive world many sins can go unseen in that model and leasing made that worse!
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Yes! In almost every way they are better today. The problem is that engine design changed and the lubricants now are not even close to being up to scratch for the terrible compromises that have been made to engines from the consumer stand point.
What is not leaps and orders of magnitude better are the "premium" synthetics and boutique oils. Additive packages have gotten more complex as our understanding has increased. The base stocks used are of higher quality on over the counter conventional oils but with the "Synthetics" they have basicly improved their ability to make a product that is almost as good as the older stuff but at a fraction of the price. So conventional oils are the best they have ever been but they did introduce some new problems as well. Remeber every company that is publicly traded has it's first duty to the share holders to maximize profits. There is a limit to what you can charge retail and still have high enough volume of sales to consistently turn a profit! You can only put so much magic in a bottle before people wont pay for it!
My wife and I have been married 28 year and when she was just my girlfriend in college about 30 years ago Amsoil was $12.99 to $14.95 I think it was as a prefered customer so after paying for the right to buy their oil! If they had not switched to a PAO/Ester blend and likely other things and also put out a GIII product what do you think a quart would cost today? In the 1990's I think Mobil 1 and Castrol Syntec where about $12.95 a gallon.
Unless Valvoline is a bunch of liars and I do not think they are they are not using base stocks to clean. This is a different technology altogether I think than we have seen before. I am guessing amines or amides but that is just a guess though on my part. So things do change over time.
I can not wait for all these guys using HPL at 30,000 mile OCI after they have 100K or more to pull a piston for us and measure timing chain and valve train parts. That is going to be awesome if they do like the brilliance of Valvolines video with Oilgeek and other's! That 500K mile tear down comparison between their conventional and synthetic was just magic!
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Oh and I do use Red Line products in fact I use almost every product they make except their oils. I hve used them in the past and liked them. Their gear oils, ATF's, shock fluids, power steering fluids and fuel injector cleaner are the benchmark by which I judge all other products of their type. I likewise like Amsoil products but long ago fell into Red Line for the products I needed since I could often get them at the same price with cheaper shipping and no need to purchase a "Prefered Customer" plan. It is now mostly a matter of prefference. Just the other day I recomended a guy take a look at Amsoil products since they seemed like a good fit for what he was wanting to do and cost was not an issue.
I have only used HPL's Engine Cleaner so I have no first hand experince with them outside of that one product. I have done some formulation work myself in the past as part of my own research and development for a product I never brought to market! This is why I do not discount them but rather take the stance of "Trust but verify." Nothing I drive though would benifit from what they manufacture at the price point plus shipping they demand. Last I checked they were not making anything for Lycoming or Coninental engines!
I have only used HPL's Engine Cleaner so I have no first hand experince with them outside of that one product. I have done some formulation work myself in the past as part of my own research and development for a product I never brought to market! This is why I do not discount them but rather take the stance of "Trust but verify." Nothing I drive though would benifit from what they manufacture at the price point plus shipping they demand. Last I checked they were not making anything for Lycoming or Coninental engines!
MolaKule
Staff member
So what compound of amine or a amide would result in cleaning?
HPL does not produce oils for aviation so I don't see why that comment is relative.
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