quote:Someone posted this in another forum well over a year ago. It's kind of similar to what has been said by a few people. I wanted to see what some of you felt about this comment.
Browsing thru I found this old post and I wanted to add my comments. Although Red Line Oil is touted as a top-notch synthetic oil, oil analysis results show that, at least in passenger vehicle applications, it may not be formulated properly. Red Line oils are for TRUE racing applications. On passenger vehicles (cars and trucks)it has been determined thru testing that when using Red Line there is excessive wear metal content, low tbn value, excessive oxidation percentage and Molybdenum levels which are "over range". These results would seem to indicate that after a fairly short oil drain interval the Red Line Oil used was showing unacceptable levels of oil degradation, and the Polyolester base stock seems to be reacting negatively with the aluminum and lead materials in the engine. In addition, the "over range" Molybdenum levels indicated that Red Line may be using a solid extreme pressure additive in its oils. Although this may be useful (but is not necessary with top-quality basestocks) in RACING applications where metal components of an engine may be more likely to come in contact with each other, it is not necessary in a passenger vehicle engine and can actually be harmful to the engine. This would make sense, otherwise there would be no reason to indicate the levels of Molybdenum to be "over range".
Redline Chemistry
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Buster,
I don't know how to explain it, but this meshes perfectly with an instinctive aversion I have to this oil. Without having seen many UOAs or having used it myself, I can't get past a concern I have that, while this oil may be great for racing, it is not so great for the street. I welcome responses from those who do know it well and can demonstrate my concern is not warranted; however, until I see/hear something different, I would not use it.
MolaKule
Staff member
"On passenger vehicles (cars and trucks)it has been determined thru testing that when using Red Line there is excessive wear metal content, low tbn value, excessive oxidation percentage and Molybdenum levels which are "over range". These results would seem to indicate that after a fairly short oil drain interval the Red Line Oil used was showing unacceptable levels of oil degradation, and the Polyolester base stock seems to be reacting negatively with the aluminum and lead materials in the engine.
In addition, the "over range" Molybdenum levels indicated that Red Line may be using a solid extreme pressure additive in its oils. Although this may be useful (but is not necessary with top-qualityto come in contact with each other, it is not necessary in a passenger vehicle engine and can actually be harmful to the engine. This would make sense, otherwise there would be no reason to indicate the levels of Molybdenum to be "over range". "
OK, not defending just explaining some inaccuracies:
"excessive oxidation percentage and Molybdenum levels which are "over range"."
Most labs have problems calibrating equipment for oils with high polyol ester content which results in a high oxidation count. Many esters are scavengers and will act as solvents picking up any crud left over by previous oils.
Moly is a.) an antioxidant b.) a Friction Modifier c.) an AW additive. They use a lot of moly to reduce friction, wear, and long-term oxidation inhibition. What the writer meant by "over range" I do not know. The amount of moly dosage is commensurate with the rest of the formulation.
Boron and Potassium Triborates and Calcium are solid AW agents, yes and used in most oils. Calcium as calcium carbonate is also used as part of the dispersant package, along with magnesium, to set the inital TBN levels.
Multifunctional additives yes, connnections to extreme wear, no.
![[I dont know]](/forums/graemlins/dunno.gif)
Yes the way MK slices through the bs like a razor is what makes this forum special. Of the three 30W oils I've tried RL was the quietest running, gave the best economy and didn't use a drop and I'd bet RL 5W40 would be even better again.
I spoke with Dave over at Red line, and they're as tight lipped as can be about their formulations. And, yes he said that labs have a hard time calibrating their equipment for analysis.
The high wear numbers could hypothetically just be the detergents doiong an exceptional job at cleaning out all the junk in your engine.
I've used the stuff in a noisy 4.6L Ford engine, and after I switched to Red Line, all you could hear was the clutch fan.
quote:Thats exaclty right. Terry has seen more reports then all of us combined and he knows what he is talking about. He basically has said the same thing.
The high wear numbers could hypothetically just be the detergents doiong an exceptional job at cleaning out all the junk in your engine.
quote:In that case, wouldn't Delo, Delvac, Rotella, and Long-Life be subject to the same thing?
Originally posted by buster:quote:Thats exaclty right. Terry has seen more reports then all of us combined and he knows what he is talking about. He basically has said the same thing.
The high wear numbers could hypothetically just be the detergents doiong an exceptional job at cleaning out all the junk in your engine.
buster look at this way. We all know how well the nautral esters in Auto-Rx clean! Well the synthetic esters in Redline and Motul have a simalar effect as a positive side effect. THe solvency of esters is very very strong. THe strong cleaning action means that they are going to break down sludge and varnish and the wear metals trapped within them. The difference is that auto-rx takes something like 500-1500 miles and Redline takes 2-3 oil changes at 5000-12,000 miles per OCI.
Because PAO based synthetic have horable solvency they leave alot ofthemself behind in long drain intervals. Dino oils have solvency but lack thermal stability and shear resistance and also leave alot of themselfs behind.IF you add fuel dilution and frequent short trips you have a recipe for sludge!
I was at a British Chemical House the other day reading PDF file. For some reason my PC was haveing a hard time with some of the files. One file that stood out was about TMP esters if I remember right. It actualy listed detergent/solvent action within internal combustion engines as one of the uses for the chemical. It went on to talk about useing it to flush industrail engines of byproducts while in use...........From that point it got too technical for me. I think it was telling Tribologist how to use it to sweeten reclaimed oil to clean up the internal without useing traditional solvents.
I wish I would have bookmaked the site. It had a UK in the address so I figured it must be british.
P.S. My email to Redline spelled out that I was not a competiotor. I explained that if I was a competitor that I would not be asking formula questions about the percentage of esters etc... I figured it was a safe bet that anyone that really wanted to know what is in the product could simply pay someone like Terry to tear it apart and reverse engineer it! I also made it clear that Motul and Mobile do not mind shareing the percentage of esters in their product. I was very polite. I
MolaKule
Staff member
quote:Not sure which of the points you're referring to, but Delvac 1 is closest in formulation (in terms of esters) to Redline, so Delvac 1 would show similar detergency, and it does.
In that case, wouldn't Delo, Delvac, Rotella, and Long-Life be subject to the same thing?
Patman
Staff member
So in reverse, if you run an oil that <b>doesn't</b> clean very well, some of the wear metals it's generating will stick in the engine? So if you see a stellar UOA from a cheap oil, it could be misleading then. (I believe someone mentioned this before but we never elaborated on it)
quote:See, thats exactly why I dont believe any of this. If the report shows a higher ppm count, the wear went up, unless the virgin oil had it to begin with. An emulsifier or cleaner is not going to change the iron ppm count in an engine oil.
Originally posted by Patman: So in reverse, if you run an oil that doesn't clean very well, some of the wear metals it's generating will stick in the engine? So if you see a stellar UOA from a cheap oil, it could be misleading then. (I believe someone mentioned this before but we never elaborated on it)
Sorry, guys, I am just getting tired of excuses as to why wear is up, labs can't measure this oil etc. etc. etc.
Let's see a string a of good UOA please instead of why it is not performing as expected!
Before you all drive yourself crazy over this consider.......
The HDD oils mentioned above do clean to a certain level. The solvency of a lube like Redline with a high load of adds and TMP polyol esters as a base clean much differently and more thoroughly than the HDD oils. There is not another automotive motor oil that can be procured with as much of this base currently that I am aware of, including Amsoil and Delvac 1. Well maybe Synlube but they add a heck of alot of other things to it too.
Problem with Redline is that like any primary lubricant it will sacrifice its lube capability cleaning if the engine is "dirty" internally.
The dispersants in Redline are unable to get 100% of the junk to the filter like say Auto-RX and thus you'll see higher elemental levels than a oil in a cleaning phase using a bottle of Auto-RX.
LC doesn't have much of a dispersant capability but since it is high flash its solvency lasts long enough to literally eat a large majority of the carbon and oxidizers.
Dominic you are incorrect in assuming that elemental elevation is all wear. A common misconception of most on this board and in the analysis community. It all depends.
If you effectively encapsulate ( non organo mettallic) a 5-20 um "iron" particle and carry it to a oil filter and it stays there; insulated from the oil flow past it, well that micel and its contaminatd cargo is blind to a spectrograph thats looking at 10 ppm or less in the host oil. Exactly how Auto-RX does it . That affectation stress's the host oil less so the iron particles contribute less to oxidation and depletion of the traditional adds.
Redline builds its oil correctly using the formulation that they have developed. Mola said it more technically succinct I think.
Terry,
I'll play right into your hands (when do I get the nice fat check?). Your response above clearly points to a larger issue, that being, until most of us have the analysis experience you have and can build a database like you use, we are playing "Let's Make A Guess" when we comment on the UOAs posted on this board. Most of us don't know sufficient detail regarding the way various oils are formulated and how they react in a particular engine. I believe, the longer we observe and listen, the more educated guesses we can make, but we aren't necessarily doing the poster a service when we make our comments...ouch...me too!
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