Redline Response To RL's UOA's

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I know many of us have been a bit confused by this oil. The last few weeks I've been trying to understand why RL's UOA's are not always the greatest or most consistant. So, I sent Dave from Redline, an email about what people have been finding with the use of RL and UOA on BITOG. Here is the response he gave me which is what Terry has been saying all along about continued use with the product. However, I'm not so sure about the statement that UOA's are not good to compare wear of various oils. My conclusion based on everything I've read and heard would be to use an oil like RL in a performance car or vehicle that sees high temps. from racing etc. For 99.9% of of us, an oil like Amsoil or Mobil 1 is a more appropriate choice.



quote:

Oil analyses is primarily used by fleet operators to help determine change intervals and to watch for developing trends. As such it isn't really designed to compare wear between oils. We find with our oil when it is initially installed the reaction of the additives shows higher wear metals, with further use these numbers will tend to decrease, this is just due to an initial reaction and protection of the surface. I wouldn't be concerned with slightly higher test results between one product an another. These levels are very-very small, the accuracy is generally +-20%, determining a better product as a result is problematic.


Regards, Dave
Red Line Oil



[ October 30, 2003, 09:36 PM: Message edited by: buster ]
 
Doesnt really convince me very much, as you can compare every other oil out there with one another, but Redline you cant.

" As such it [UOAs] isn't really designed to compare wear between oils"

Whatever!!

ANd this 'protection' chemistry, the guy doesnt explain why it produces more metal in the oil. Doesnt make sense.

Oh well, what can you expect emailing any oil company really...
 
I can understand why Redline or any polyolester based/containing oil has more detectable metal the first few OCI's.

I can fathom that many people/companies use UOA to spot trends.

He does have a point about inaccuracies in any given analysis....

But you will NOT be able to convince me that we shouldn't use UOA's to compare oils. I mean, there must be other tools for the average joe/jane bumpass to see how their oil is doing....but I can't think of any right now.
 
Pablo, I agree. There are some that have run Redline for about 4 runs and wear values never did come down. Maybe more time was needed or maybe the chemistry reacts differently to certain engines. Who knows.
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the accuracy is generally +-20%

I think Dave is on to something here. It seems that some/most of the UOA labs are set up to analyze conventional motor oils but send them some new synthetic formulations and they fall on their face.

Look at the Calcium readings (for just one example) given in VOAs and UOAs. Some formulations peg the Calcium meters at 3000 and so we don't really know the true numbers.

Are we getting accurate analysis?

What do you think?

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I have been of the opinion for some time that many have been using UOA results to come to conclusions that may not be based in reality. They look a UOA's on a oil over a group of various vehicles and make a determination that the oil is not good or vice versa. I don't think that is a logical assumption to make. UOA should be done over a period time and many miles in the same vehicle to determine trends. Miles of 5-10,000 mile is not long enough, you need a lot more that that.

Some are changing oil brands and then testing. They form opinions from this that are most likely way off base. I agree with the response from RL, it make sense to me.
 
This was from Terry awhile back but I'm posting it here in case anyone is concerned about RL's wear values.

quote:

Good point, our data shows 2 to 32 ppm silicon on fresh Redline, depending on formula. The 5w-30 seems to have less of the soft metals showing spectrographically clean.

To answer your question, Redline seems to clean up residual softe metals that have bonded to the surfaces and crannies of a engine that has used other brands. In the past many (myself included) were concerned that RL was causing increased wear.
I am convinced after 3 years of testing that it is not a problem but cleaning.

A treatment of Auto-RX prior to using RL seems to limit this effect. Other more traditional solvents don't seem to clean down this deep before volatizing off leaving the imbedded residuals.

Search this site for more data.

Terry

 
quote:

Originally posted by buster:

quote:

Oil analyses is primarily used by fleet operators to help determine change intervals and to watch for developing trends. As such it isn't really designed to compare wear between oils.

Regards, Dave
Red Line Oil


I've been trying to say this all along, this micro analysis of oils between brands, cars, and drain interval is a bunch of BULLHOCKEY and doesn't really mean squat.

I tend to agree with Dave@redline. Choose your oil, do your analysis on your vehile for your intended drain interval. Now to compared I would be most interested in an analysis that showed high amounts of Oxidation or nitration, where you would have a likely buidup of Sludge and Varnish, which I don't see as a problem with most Syn-lubes anyway.

Just want to thank Dave for reiterizing what I've been saying.
 
quote:

Originally posted by Mike:

Some are changing oil brands and then testing. They form opinions from this that are most likely way off base. I agree with the response from RL, it make sense to me.


Agreed, some folks change brands, viscosities more than I change underware(I change sometimes twice a day)

Pick your oil, run it for at least 30,000-50,000 in your vehicle over several years then determine if that is the right oil for you, then after spending $100's of dollars on analysis and oils you will know, it that was a good choice.

For me it's easy!
 
I'm guilty of changing oils a lot in my Firebird but look at how far I've come. My very first UOA on here was with Maxlife 10w30 and I saw 15ppm of iron and 19ppm of lead in just 2400 miles! Then I discovered Auto-rx and the next interval of 3300 miles showed me just 5ppm of iron and 14ppm of lead.

Then I switched to Schaeffer Oil, and on my first 4400 mile run, saw only 7ppm of lead.

Then I switched to GC 0w30 and am now seeing my lowest numbers of all, just 3.6ppm of lead in 3100 miles for instance.

So in my case, I kept switching because I was not happy with the results. I ran the oils long enough to see that the wear numbers were simply too far off where I wanted to be.

Now that I've gotten good results, I will be sticking with GC 0w30 for as long as I can still buy it. (which hopefully will be a long time!)
 
Funny thing is, I used to stay with one oil until I discovered this website!! I ran Mobil 1 trisynthetic for 7k mile drains for the first 70K miles of my car. This website is addicting! Ever since I've been a member I've been obsessed with it. I wonder if most of us are Type A personalities or have OCD?
grin.gif
I believe msparks is correct though and staying with one brand, something I havn't been able to achieve, is what you should do.
 
quote:

Originally posted by Mike:
-*-* UOA should be done over a period time and many miles in the same vehicle to determine trends. Miles of 5-10,000 mile is not long enough, you need a lot more that that.
-
Some are changing oil brands and then testing. They form opinions from this that are most likely way off base.-*-*


Yes over time, and recorded over what happened and what was replaced, and so on... The miles I agree too... but I would say around 13-20K is IMO getting close to have a good guage if there are several samples, or better if you have three or four oil changes with each OCI being 10-15K, then you know. Well at least three or four OCI's that's a good start, I wouldn't say you NEED a whole lot to have some kind of trend going, but you are right about people drawing too much conclusion way way way way too soon... Yes I'll agree too that for the most part people here for certain, change their oil-make-ups way too often.

I guess that is a small sample how most truckers have been branded, and loyal too, although I feer that may be changing, nevertheless it has afforded them IMO to know what to predict and when to predict based on their knowledge.

The problem here is that there may be only a handfull of people that understand for the most part about UOA, and several groups of thought that sorta almost understand it, and the rest are either with no real clue or are grasping with blinders on. I probably fall in the last, but I do know that I'm in my own home....
 
quote:

Originally posted by buster:
Funny thing is, I used to stay with one oil until I discovered this website!! I ran Mobil 1 trisynthetic for 7k mile drains for the first 70K miles of my car. This website is addicting! Ever since I've been a member I've been obsessed with it. I wonder if most of us are Type A personalities or have OCD?
grin.gif
I believe msparks is correct though and staying with one brand, something I havn't been able to achieve, is what you should do.


Ditto! (except replace the M1 with mostly QS dino and GTX)

Mikep
 
Ran RL since 5K in 2 vehicles. First one, over 100K with OCIs at 5K and had mediocre results. Second one, 85K with OCIs at 5K and 1 @ 10K, pretty good results. Suffice it to say in my case, its a matter of vehicle/oil compatibility. I would have never have found this out had it not been for this site and doing some UOAs though. I'm giving the RL a break for now and running a couple of cycles of Schaeffer's.
 
quote:

Originally posted by shortyb:
Ran RL since 5K in 2 vehicles. First one, over 100K with OCIs at 5K and had mediocre results. Second one, 85K with OCIs at 5K and 1 @ 10K, pretty good results.

Can you define Mediocre and pretty good. Do you mean the engine died, poor UOA etc. Mediocre compared to expectations ??????
 
quote:

Originally posted by Spector:

quote:

Originally posted by shortyb:
Ran RL since 5K in 2 vehicles. First one, over 100K with OCIs at 5K and had mediocre results. Second one, 85K with OCIs at 5K and 1 @ 10K, pretty good results.

Can you define Mediocre and pretty good. Do you mean the engine died, poor UOA etc. Mediocre compared to expectations ??????


http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=000657#000000

http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=000867#000000

http://theoildrop.server101.com/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=000811

These are the ones I'm talking about. Both still running
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. "Mediocre" and "good" are my opinions compared to similar UOAs. Yes, based some opinion on expectation, especially in light of how good this oil is supposed to be and it's relatively high cost.
 
You must be kidding shorty. It's ALL opinion based on expectation actually. Opinions compared to similar UOA's, but of UOA's that are not of your vehicle(you forgot that part). Until you have a trend of more RL along with more of another oil, I beleive you are wrong.
That second UOA clearly shows that BG jacked things up big time. What makes you think it won't get even better? May not get much better because you have dirt issue on both cars. Along with the possible other issues Terry mentioned.
Hope you do UOA on whatever else you try...
rolleyes.gif
 
quote:

Originally posted by Jason Troxell:
You must be kidding shorty. It's ALL opinion based on expectation actually. Opinions compared to similar UOA's, but of UOA's that are not of your vehicle(you forgot that part). Until you have a trend of more RL along with more of another oil, I beleive you are wrong.
That second UOA clearly shows that BG jacked things up big time. What makes you think it won't get even better? May not get much better because you have dirt issue on both cars. Along with the possible other issues Terry mentioned.
Hope you do UOA on whatever else you try...
rolleyes.gif


Yep, obviously gonna do UOA on the Schaeffer's
rolleyes.gif
.

My point was to address the question of using RL after only a couple OCIs (read: not enough time given for RL to "work"). Where some folks were drawing conclusions after only 2 changes or low mile OCIs, I have used the RL for quite some time and got these results. Yes these are my opinions (offered at no charge
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) and yes they are based on expectations like I said. While they may not be the same set-up as I have, others are getting mixed results from RL. I agree that there are other factors with the Xterra/RL and Terry has helped me out greatly with these. I've used the RL for quite some time, and while it might get better, I'm trying something different to see what it does. Bottom line is if it does better, then I can't justify the RL and its cost over the Schaeffer's. If it doesn't and I get similar or worse results then I will give the RL another chance.

Thats my opinion, and be it "right" or "wrong", I'm going to stick with it.
 
Found a more detailed explanation from Dave at RL on another forum.

quote:

Posted by: TomG

A member posted a comparison between Mobil 1 and Redline oil. I asked Redline about this. Below is my letter to them and Redline's response:

>I read an analysis in Nutz n Bolts newsletter about synthetic oils. it said
>that Redline was clearly the best. Then I was on www.F150online.com in the
>Lightning message board. They were talking about a group purchase of
>Redline. Someone else referred us to a comparison of Redline and Mobil 1 at
>http://cjsupra.kendra.com/oil-spec.html
>This analysis seemed to show that Mobil 1 was better, especially for the
>price difference of the 2 oils. Any opinions on this analysis?
>
>Tom


We don't feel that spectrum analysis is a good comparative indicator of an
oils quality or protection, I am sure that Mobil would agree. We don't use
spectrum analysis comparisons in our publications as they can be flaky and
unrepeatable, the results vary widely. If these tests actually measured
engine wear, actual engine analysis could be discontinued and an oil would
be designed for good spectrum numbers. We use it as a monitoring device of
an oil over a long drain interval, this is typically what it is designed
for, fleet operators looking for coolant leaks, fuel injector problems and
catastrophic failures. We look for the oil maintaining good viscosity,
sufficient TBN level and reasonable wear levels. The levels seen in the
test are very small and of very small particles, a better indicator is to
actually count particle size and amount. Large wear particles that could
actually be considered harmful or indicate a failing component are not
seen. The initial higher level of metals seen with the Red Line are typical
of what we see and drop over time, these are a factor of the additives
used.

The Mobil 1 is a good product in a low to moderate stress application with
a frequent drain interval it will probably perform well.

It is interesting that the "virgin sample" showed 4 ppm lead, there is
actually 0, the aluminum shows 12ppm, it is actually 0, the silicon
(anti-foam) shows 32ppm is actually 15, the sodium 10ppm is 0, the
magnesium shows 420ppm is 0. These tests can confuse one component with
another and are not entirely accurate. The oxidation, nitration and sulfur
percentages are clearly wrong for the Red Line as we have found the test
confuses the esters in the oil with oxidation, they are looking for esters
in a petroleum oil that would indicate oxidation.

I don't think that based on these tests the Mobil 1 is a better product, a
good product but certainly not better.

Regards, Dave
Red Line Oil

 
Well now, that DOES make sense. Best explanation I've read so far. Maybe I'll switch the Maxima to RL after all...
dunno.gif
 
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