I'm pursuing the issue of cold start wear and gather that moly, boron, zinc, magnesium, and phosphorus are the additives that prevent that. I looked at the VOA's of 9 oils on the site, and if you add the numbers for those elements you get a total PPM they represent in each oil.
6 of the oils have numbers between 2000 and 3000, the outliers being Castrol GTX 5W30 at 1550, Redline 5-40 at 3700, and Havoline Synthetic 5W40 at 4850 (!).
Does this number have any validity as a reflection of how much cold start wear the oil will prevent?
Thanks for all your excellent responses!