Rotella for our fleet

Joined
Apr 7, 2022
Messages
7
Location
Central Texas
Howdy guys. I just joined after lurking for years. We live in Texas and have all diesels except for one E350 v10. We have 7.3/6.9 IDIs, 7.3 PSDs, a Cummins 855 Big Cam and a 4BT. I settled on Rotella for all, wondering if you have a similar plan. I will use any oil that has sufficient specs, but decided to keep my own stock of Rotella due to supply difficulties recently.

For any diesel that consumes no oil and is not an IDI, I use Rotella T6 5w-40
If a diesel uses/leaks too much, or is an IDI, I use Rotella T4 10w-40

Both Rotellas have become hard to find due to cooties etc. So now I have about 30 gallons of TSC 10w-40 diesel on hand too. I did look closely at its API specs first, and I called the supplier to find out who actually makes it.

My 855 Big Cam has a bypass oil filter. We run coolant filters on pickups (Rotella ELC). Some day we'll do bypass oil filters on all pickups too.

FYI
 
Howdy guys. I just joined after lurking for years. We live in Texas and have all diesels except for one E350 v10. We have 7.3/6.9 IDIs, 7.3 PSDs, a Cummins 855 Big Cam and a 4BT. I settled on Rotella for all, wondering if you have a similar plan. I will use any oil that has sufficient specs, but decided to keep my own stock of Rotella due to supply difficulties recently.
What makes an oil have sufficient specs as opposed to the correct license or specification?
 
What do you run the 2valve v10? They don't really care what oil is in them.
I don't really agree with that. The V10 has the same oil pump as the smaller "modular" Furds, down to the 4.6L as found in CVPI. Not all cylinders are fully oiled in the V10, cylinder wall damage is common over 120k miles. So I never cheap out on its oil. No leaks, no consumption, so I run 10w40 full synth with SL spec.
 
Use 15W-40 if the starting temps are not too low.
Texas is hot as heck most of the time. But we do get hard freezes. We have many vehicles for my company, and not all get driven weekly, so I choose one oil for all year. Suboptimal, yes. But we are our own mechanics and only have so much time available.
 
What makes an oil have sufficient specs as opposed to the correct license or specification?
Take a look here ( https://bobistheoilguy.com/motor-oil-106/ ) where there's a good discussion of API specs although I didn't spot the diesel shear issue in there (I probably just missed it, there is a general shearing section here https://bobistheoilguy.com/effects-of-shearing/).

In fact that whole Motor Oil University looks jammed packed with good facts. Will read it all tonight.

I don't worry about specific manuf specs any more because we no longer own any DEF/DPF vehicles. Sold my 2018 6.7 when it started sweating at the crank girdle seal with only 30k miles on it. 2003 is now our newest, a 7.3 PSD (with $25 GPR, not spendy GPC - whew!). I do still have one 6.0 F350 but it's for sale.

Sorry, I get talking about diesel trucks and get carried away ... When we lived in Yurrup we did worry about manuf specific specs for our oil, btw. All newer diesels over there have cat/dpf/def even tiny 3cyl cars. The stop/start mania is taking over too.
 
Howdy guys. I just joined after lurking for years. We live in Texas and have all diesels except for one E350 v10. We have 7.3/6.9 IDIs, 7.3 PSDs, a Cummins 855 Big Cam and a 4BT. I settled on Rotella for all, wondering if you have a similar plan. I will use any oil that has sufficient specs, but decided to keep my own stock of Rotella due to supply difficulties recently.

For any diesel that consumes no oil and is not an IDI, I use Rotella T6 5w-40
If a diesel uses/leaks too much, or is an IDI, I use Rotella T4 10w-40

Both Rotellas have become hard to find due to cooties etc. So now I have about 30 gallons of TSC 10w-40 diesel on hand too. I did look closely at its API specs first, and I called the supplier to find out who actually makes it.

My 855 Big Cam has a bypass oil filter. We run coolant filters on pickups (Rotella ELC). Some day we'll do bypass oil filters on all pickups too.

FYI

Rotella is good oil don't get me wrong, but they also command a good price for it. I have used a mix of Mobil Delvac ESP 5W40 and more recently Mobil Delvac 1300 15W40 in my Cummins Ram. I have had good success with Mobil products and have UOA's to show it. Mobil offered rebates that got me to about $6 per gallon for 15W40 oil. I recently stocked up on Mystik JT-8 15W40 at $2.00/gallon. It meets the spec of the engine and for $6/oil change I couldn't argue...

just my $0.02
 
Despite Texas hard freezes, I would still move to more readily available (IMHO) 15W-40 oil. Several brands in this viscosity work fine well below freezing. As a shell user yourself, T4 15W-40 has provided superlative performance over the years.

15W-40 would serve you better 80 to 90% of each and every Texas year! The other 10 or 20% can be dealt with modestly more difficult start, or a simple 1/2-hour plug-in.
 
For 25 years our mixed Fleet got 15w40 Valvoline All Fleet. Patrol cars to dump trucks. Never an oil related problem. Also used NAPA/Wix filters. Followed manufacturers severe service intervals.
 
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