I do feel it's a bit disingenuous to claim "fully synthetic ester formula", but hey it's marketing.
I got tired of wondering so I picked up the phone and spoke to Dave directly. I told him I understand you can't divulge formulation secrets, but a lot of Redline users are under the impression that your products are majority ester based. Is there any chance you can give a rough estimate on how much you guys use. He said in the 40% range. Do I believe that? No.
I also don't believe the oxidation figure tells you much, however I was persistent about it due to a few reasons. Valvoline Premium Restor shows an oxidation figure of 110 and is stated to be 50% ester.
Redline is the only other oil I've ever seen that shows a virigion oxidation figure of 90 to as high as 130 (5w40). This corroborates to what we see with Valvoline Restore. Amsoil is around 50-60 for the oxidation reading and M1 0w40 around 36.
This doesn't mean that RL is using 40% ester, but it is interesting and questionable.
I'm on the fence actually to how much POE is in RL. It could be substantial, or it could be in line with Amsoil etc. which is suspected to be in the 10-15% range.
It's all speculation at this point.
*Even if Redline was using 20-30% group V, that's more than probably most oils on the market and would still be considered majority PAO. So saying it's majority PAO doesn't negate that they use substantial ester.
The virgin figure for RL 5w40 is 129, higher than any other oil I've ever seen. Not even close.
This guy has speculated that they use esters from Croda. No idea how he would know that. He also said Amsoil uses esters from Croda as well.
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