I haven't attempted to argue that dinos can last as long as syns.
I have simply asked someone to effectively refute my contention that dinos protect against wear metal generation as well as syns do.
So far, no one has been able to do that.
Dan
UOA comparisons, syn versus dino...
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quote:So far, you've ignored the fact that in my application, a quality dino shears down and lead wear starts to increase vs. a previously run synthetic. IOW, the dino didn't protect the bearings of my 5.0L as well as M1. What was your point again? [ October 12, 2005, 10:23 PM: Message edited by: jsharp ]
Originally posted by fuel tanker man: I haven't attempted to argue that dinos can last as long as syns. I have simply asked someone to effectively refute my contention that dinos protect against wear metal generation as well as syns do. So far, no one has been able to do that. Dan
quote:It does take true statistical analysis to even approach the truth. If you are going to ignore that fact, and not read (listen) to other's posts, then you will be having a lonely discussion.
We're still evading the issue. It doesn't take a rocket scientist (or statistical analyst) to realize that if there was in fact a wear advantage to synthetic we'd have at least some farthing of evidence here to build that assertion on. So where is it
quote:Again - your contention - prove it.
my contention that dinos protect against wear metal generation as well as syns do.
quote:J, I'm sorry I didn't address your UOA. While it does show that lead went up a tad with the longer Pennzoil dino drain, the brevity of the Mobil 1 UOA (less than 2000 miles) makes it hard to draw any firm conclusions. Regarding the Mobil 1, if you had run it to the 3200 mile point (to equal the Pennzoil's OCI) lead would likely have continued to accumulate at about 4ppm per thousand miles, and you'd have been somewhere between 12 and 13 ppm of lead--not significantly below the dino's number of 15 ppm. I do agree with you, however, that the thinning of the dino was probably not helpful. A good dino recommendation for a high mileage 302 such as this one would be a 10W40--I would think. This would typically shear early on to a 30, and hold that viscosity for the duration of a reasonable (around 4000 mile) OCI. Iron, on the other hand, was markedly higher with the Mobil 1 (about 12ppm per thousand miles as opposed to the Pennzoil dino's 5 ppm). You have, however, done something that no one else here seems to want to touch with a ten foot pole. You've offered some evidence which appears to counter my idea. For the sake of the syn advocates, let us hope there will be more such data on its way. Dan
Originally posted by jsharp: So far, you've ignored the fact that in my application, a quality dino shears down and lead wear starts to increase vs. a previously run synthetic...
quote:Hmmmm, then why have you been silent on this issue so far? And why do you continue to lump together the total metal readouts in the UOA as if they are completely a result of wear? I completely reject your single-minded focus on UOA metals as an oil quality indicator. There's so much more involved that you're failing to account for. In the thread you linked to, above, you also made the blanket, unqualified claim that Mobil-1 causes high iron levels. Really now? This is a UOA of our Sequoia, Mobil-1 and very low iron. No iron problems in this M1 fed G35. And here's an LS1 on M1 with low iron. Same story for this V-6 Accord. And here's a bunch of low-iron M1 UOAs done on a Civic. But I digress. As Pablo so clearly pointed out, this is your thread, your assertions, your responsibility to prove them. You seem to think that all you have to do is toss out a claim or two, and then its someone else's responsibility to step forward and disprove your conclusory claims. You claim that there's no evidence at all here about syn's superior performance??? Oh, how about this one: The 1999 Porche that still had its factory fill M1 in 2004 -- TBN still 5.9 and wear, incl break-in, fine! OK, smartypants, find me a dino UOA like that one -- I won't be holding my breath. You won't find one, because the dino would be goop at this point. You also make much of what is or is not to be found in our motley collection of entertaining, but hopelessly non-standardized, uncontrolled UOAs, as if that's the only source we may look to regarding the comparative quality of dinos and syns. Wrong again! I suppose that those Corvette engineers at Chevrolet, and all those at Mercedes-Benz, and VW-Audi, and Porsche, etc. who require the use of synthetics in their engines were all just smoking crack when they decided to require synthetic oils. But I'm sure you'll come up with a sporting attempt to explain that away. Look, dinos and syns are different answers to different problems. As I've clearly said before, if you're a 3/3 guy, current dinos are fine. If you want to go into the longer-range OCIs, the deeper you go, the better an option the syns become. But again, your thread, still waiting for you to prove your claims.
Originally posted by fuel tanker man: I forgot to mention... I'm familiar with the effects of gasoline and oil additives on UOAs. It's normally easy enough to spot such anomalies on one's own, as I did here: http://theoildrop.server101.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=52;t=000050;p=1#000014 Dan
quote:Dan, I trust you now know where to find that 10-foot pole! I didn't mean for it to hurt too much. . .
Originally posted by fuel tanker man: {snip}You have, however, done something that no one else here seems to want to touch with a ten foot pole. You've offered some evidence which appears to counter my idea. For the sake of the syn advocates, let us hope there will be more such data on its way. Dan
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quote:Correct me if I am wrong, but this car went 1935 miles in 23 months, then 3266 miles in 6 months, lead is up but copper is down in the 6 month run compared to the 23 month low mile run, I don't understand what you can infer from this? And if lead is up, and copper down, why are you so quick to blame the oil shear? Is a Ford 302 so on the edge that 20WT will kill the bearings? Did you pump the oil pan dry doing a 5K shift from 1-2 and 2-3 at any time in the 6 month run? Was the lead left over inside the engine from the Mobil 1 period? Not trying to nitpick, but there is alot of information missing to be able to call the oil itself the problem here.
http://home.illicom.net/users/jsharp/personalphotos/OA/Mustang_oil_anaylsis_2.jpg Notice the top end metals are bit higher with the M1? Check the silicon. It had a K&N filter in it at the time the M1 was run. Also, the M1 was in the car for 23 months and it sat through 2 Illinois winters. Think that might have been a factor in the iron numbers?
quote:That the bearings in a 302 Ford are made from more than lead? Copper, copper, wheres the copper.............
So far, you've ignored the fact that in my application, a quality dino shears down and lead wear starts to increase vs. a previously run synthetic. OW, the dino didn't protect the bearings of my 5.0L as well as M1. What was your point again?
Ooops, I forgot this, one of my all-time favorite BITOG UOAs:
Factory Fill Mobil-1 0w-40 Run From 0 to over 19,000 miles!!!
Again show me a dino result like this. Sure, the iron's high, but this oil includes the break-in wear metals. If the Porsche engineers are comfortable with M1 being run like this, then why shouldn't I be as well???
quote:You know - it appears that this debate will continue with every good synthetic UOA from 10K and higher being pulled for comparision like its a trump card. If I was planning to go beyond 10K I would use synthetic also. But - What I think the true reason for this thread, given the same conditions below say 10K, which most people do, is there a meaningful difference, because I am not seeing one other than some of the green GC stuff which is about as rare as a honest politician around here. Synthetic used to advertise lower wear, higher heat capability, and longer life. I used alot of it road racing myself and still do in some applications. Now heat margin is closing with dinos getting better, the longer life is closing too, and the lower wear is being questioned, for obvious reasons. Basically in the first 5K, is there a measureable wear difference for typical passenger car use?
Originally posted by ekpolk: Ooops, I forgot this, one of my all-time favorite BITOG UOAs: Factory Fill Mobil-1 0w-40 Run From 0 to over 19,000 miles!!! Again show me a dino result like this. Sure, the iron's high, but this oil includes the break-in wear metals. If the Porsche engineers are comfortable with M1 being run like this, then why shouldn't I be as well???
I'm not sure if my case suits the criteria posed here - the Honda dino 7.5K run was between 6K and 13.5 K while the follow up 7.5K run on M1 went from 13.5K to 21K. At what point is break-in officially over? My UOA does show better viscosity, flash and TBN performance with syn which would lead one to expect better wear metal performance with M1 vice Honda dino, however.
darryl, I don't know when that Honda V6 is considered to be broken in. The numbers are all very close anyway. Copper took a dip with the first M1 change, then went back up a bit. (Which is not commensurate with the idea that the M1 was cleaning the engine--or it would have been lower on the second go-round). I would say the engine was probably still breaking in.
Ekpolk wrote: "You claim that there's no evidence at all here about syn's superior performance??? Oh, how about this one: The 1999 Porche that still had its factory fill M1 in 2004 -- TBN still 5.9 and wear, incl break-in, fine! OK, smartypants, find me a dino UOA like that one -- I won't be holding my breath. You won't find one, because the dino would be goop at this point."
Smartypants... ![[Smile]](images/icons/smile.gif)
Hadn't heard that one in a while. But your assertion is a safe bet. Occurrences such as the one you cite are fortunately rare. But even so, you're steering the discussion off course. I don't maintain that dinos can last as long as syns for extended drains. That's not the topic.
Re: "I suppose that those Corvette engineers at Chevrolet, and all those at Mercedes-Benz, and VW-Audi, and Porsche, etc. who require the use of synthetics in their engines were all just smoking crack when they decided to require synthetic oils. But I'm sure you'll come up with a sporting attempt to explain that away."
I don't have to come up with the explanation--a GM engineer who was once a member here told us the reasoning behind the syn requirement in some GM engines. He said it was more feasible to spec syn oil rather than installing an oil cooler on these models. The syn can take the heat better in these special designs, hence its recommendation. But this once again has nothing to do with the original premise that dinos show wear metal counts favorably comparable to syns.
Dan
Hadn't heard that one in a while. But your assertion is a safe bet. Occurrences such as the one you cite are fortunately rare. But even so, you're steering the discussion off course. I don't maintain that dinos can last as long as syns for extended drains. That's not the topic.
Re: "I suppose that those Corvette engineers at Chevrolet, and all those at Mercedes-Benz, and VW-Audi, and Porsche, etc. who require the use of synthetics in their engines were all just smoking crack when they decided to require synthetic oils. But I'm sure you'll come up with a sporting attempt to explain that away."
I don't have to come up with the explanation--a GM engineer who was once a member here told us the reasoning behind the syn requirement in some GM engines. He said it was more feasible to spec syn oil rather than installing an oil cooler on these models. The syn can take the heat better in these special designs, hence its recommendation. But this once again has nothing to do with the original premise that dinos show wear metal counts favorably comparable to syns.
DanI'm not trying to steer the thread off topic. I'm trying to show that as you've narrowly and artificially constrained the issue, the answers you give are quite meaningless.
First, you continue to characterize the values we get in our $20-50 UOAs as "wear metals". Not valid at all. You simply have no way to separate what's truly a result of wear and what's generated by the other processes, which at least you've finally acknowledged exist. Still waiting for you to explain this. The topic, as you've defined it, is meaningless until you do.
Second, Pablo is dead right about statistical significance. You pluck a number of similar (but not controlled) samples from our melange of UOAs, and declare the you can draw hard conclusions therefrom. Then, when playing your game, I do the same, you declare that a "rare occurence". Dan, that's simple english for "not statistically significant". If you're going to hold me to that standard, you'd better live up to it yourself.
Third, you miss the point of WHY the subject auto makers really spec the syns. It's because if the oil, syn or dino, can't hold up to the temps involved, then it isn't going to be long before the metal parts find one another, and then your holy grail wear metals are going to suddenly be in the stratosphere. So in fact, even as you've artificially limited the topic, this is still very relevant.
Fourth, as another poster correctly pointed out, the dinos are certainly getting far better than they used to be. But as the oil envelope is being pushed, so is the engine design envelope. And as a result, we see certain designs pushing past the capability of the oil used, resulting in some well known disaster cases, such as the Toyota 1MZ V-6, the Chrysler 2.7, etc. When I owned a sludgemaker era 1MZ, my dealer's recommendation -- use M1. Another crack smoker, I suppose. Actually, another reason I like syns -- added margin of protection when things get out of hand. Again, if and when oil fails then we're back to metal meeting metal, and then your wear metals will certainly be rising.
Finally, as purely as a matter of style, I enjoyed your comment, "Smartypants... Hadn't heard that one in a while." I guess you have not been listening to yourself. You certainly enjoy putting the blade into those with whom you disagree -- you should be prepared to get like you give. Hey, if you can't take the heat, get out of the crankcase. . .
Buster,
You're a fair guy. We've gotten along well in the past...
Had I made the claim that dinos can equal synthetics in extreme heat applications, and in very extended drains, or in totally neglected engines such as the Porsche engine Ekpolk linked to--such points would be valid--and deserving of being addressed.
However--
The topic is wear metals, and whether or not syns can reduce those wear metals in typical passenger car applications.
I sensed that this discourse would be steered into issues of extended drains, severe overheating, and such, and I typed in my opening post:
Important Preface: The theme of this post concerns wear metal counts, and rebuttals should remain on point. We can discuss long term engine cleanliness issues, or matters related to high temperature oil breakdown in other threads.
To which Ekpolk replied: "It's not really fair to selectively frame the issue so as to channel the answers into the pattern you hope to see emerge."
Then Pablo quipped:
"ekpolk- yikes....he thought he could control what we post - I thought that's why we have moderators."
Again, extended drain potential and engine cleanliness issues have nothing to do with wear metal counts in 5K and under OCIs. (In the case of engine cleanliness, if an engine sludges early on and oil passageways get blocked, the wear metals will increase considerably, so in that regard engine cleanliness would be an issue--but such cases are far from the norm, and we would see at least three or four UOAs reflecting the sludging, clogging, and commensurate wear numbers in the archives here if this were a real issue).
If some of you choose to believe that high iron in a Mobil 1 sample, or high copper in a Redline sample are not indications that some part of the engine has given up those metals--that's your prerogative. I don't share that point of view, and likely will never--unless someone offers up a better explanation for the phenominon than I've seen here so far.
Dan
quote:This is the problem with your hypothesis. From the many UOA's we have seen. 1. Wear metal concentration does not increase linearly with mileage. This could mean two things. A. The initial spike in wear metals is not actually "wear". or B. Old oil produces less wear than new oil. If it is "A" then the inital spike will mask any benefit from synthetic with less than 5k OCI's. If it is "B" then longer OCI's reduce wear and we should all use synthetic so we can have longer OCI's. Why did you dismiss my pretty chart in my previous post? Am I on you "blocked user" list? This whole oil analysis thing is clearly very complicated. You need to consider ALL factors to make any conclusion. You also need a lot of data for any conclusions to be statistically valid. My chart was based on 70 UOA's for the same type of engine. My data is better than your data Naa Naa Naa.
Again, extended drain potential and engine cleanliness issues have nothing to do with wear metal counts in 5K and under OCIs.
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I wish there was a form in the UOA section for posting data. Then it would be nice to be able to easily download and analize the data.
One more thing, it bothers me that when the mods move a topic, because then it gets removed from your "recent posts" list.
[ October 13, 2005, 12:10 PM: Message edited by: Winston ]jsharp, that Pathfinder UOA is incredible. Look at the wear numbers!
You couldn't ask for an oil to do a better job than the Pennzoil did for you here.
Winston,
I didn't dismiss the chart, and I do think it would be good to discuss why (or perhaps if) iron actually trends down as the oil drain is extended. That would be a good topic for another thread. (Just put it here in Auto and Lube General Hospital so as to save the mods the trouble of having to move it! )...
For 5K OCIs I don't believe you will see any difference between dinos and syns. Your claim is that one must extend the drain considerably--likley past 10,000 miles--in order for the syn to show that its wear numbers will trend down.
But many of us don't want to run a synthetic oil that far to see how things would look. And the only reasonable way to be certain that things weren't coming apart on you during that, say, 15K OCI would be with sample oil analysis. And as other members here would seem quick to tell you, you cannot draw any firm conclusions on the data from that UOA anyway--so why bother?
Therefore, the best way to know that your oil is okay at 5000 miles is to change it. Since syns have no wear prevention advantages over dinos in this mileage range (which reminds me that I think I'd have no fear of pitting jsharp's Pathfinder/Pennzoil UOA against any syn on the market for wear metal mitigation in the same drain interval), I think the dino is the more reasonable choice.
Dan
Winston,
I didn't dismiss the chart, and I do think it would be good to discuss why (or perhaps if) iron actually trends down as the oil drain is extended. That would be a good topic for another thread. (Just put it here in Auto and Lube General Hospital so as to save the mods the trouble of having to move it! )...
For 5K OCIs I don't believe you will see any difference between dinos and syns. Your claim is that one must extend the drain considerably--likley past 10,000 miles--in order for the syn to show that its wear numbers will trend down.
But many of us don't want to run a synthetic oil that far to see how things would look. And the only reasonable way to be certain that things weren't coming apart on you during that, say, 15K OCI would be with sample oil analysis. And as other members here would seem quick to tell you, you cannot draw any firm conclusions on the data from that UOA anyway--so why bother?
Therefore, the best way to know that your oil is okay at 5000 miles is to change it. Since syns have no wear prevention advantages over dinos in this mileage range (which reminds me that I think I'd have no fear of pitting jsharp's Pathfinder/Pennzoil UOA against any syn on the market for wear metal mitigation in the same drain interval), I think the dino is the more reasonable choice.
Danquote:Not quite. Maybe, but not necessarilly. If you change your oil and drive it around the block a few times and sample your oil you will find some iron in the analysis. I like to call that the new oil "spike". That spike might not be wear, it could be stuff washed of the engine surfaces by the new oil. That spike will be different depending on the type of oil. Syn, dino, PAO, POE, additives, etc. Because of that spike you cant compare wear metal rates between dino and syn and say that lower wear metal counts with dino means that it is producing less wear. Dino may just be causing a smaller initial spike.
For 5K OCIs I don't believe you will see any difference between dinos and syns. Your claim is that one must extend the drain considerably--likley past 10,000 miles--in order for the syn to show that its wear numbers will trend down.
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quote:For once, Winston ..we're on the same page :^) There is a considerable variable in terms of "seating" between dinos and synths. You can see this when a "switch hitter" gets like numbers when switching between a more common dino to a more common dino ..same or very similar numbers. This tends to get upset when switching between dinos and synths ..or synths of one chemistry to a synth of another persuasion. The main debate here is somewhat flawed due to the incompatability of the comparisons. You've got a boxer (dino) and a wrestler (synths). Those that are critical of synths are continually having it compete in the dino arena and saying "look ..it isn't a better boxer" ..yet they don't place the dino in the synth realm and say "See? It's still better". It just doesn't happen. When you see 10-20k dino UOAs (pick an appreciable number above the redundantly used "5k") then you will have completed the analysis to the point where it has "filled in the blanks". If you are insistant of "5k is the world's standard and if you don't follow it ..you'll grow hair on your palms and you'll be placed on a buffoons list of OCI abusers"...then the "fix" is already in. Anyone who would use a synth for that duration (conditions and restrictions apply to this assignment) is pretty much pouring money down the drain.
quote: For 5K OCIs I don't believe you will see any difference between dinos and syns. Your claim is that one must extend the drain considerably--likley past 10,000 miles--in order for the syn to show that its wear numbers will trend down. Not quite. Maybe, but not necessarilly. If you change your oil and drive it around the block a few times and sample your oil you will find some iron in the analysis. I like to call that the new oil "spike". That spike might not be wear, it could be stuff washed of the engine surfaces by the new oil. That spike will be different depending on the type of oil. Syn, dino, PAO, POE, additives, etc. Because of that spike you cant compare wear metal rates between dino and syn and say that lower wear metal counts with dino means that it is producing less wear. Dino may just be causing a smaller initial spike.
quote:From looking at your UOA I would imagine the lead is not related to the oil or the bearings, but possibly to the fuel or other additive. If both lead and copper went up, you could look for bearing issues, but in your case they went in opposite directions.
We can discuss where the lead came from but we can't argue about which oil gave lower lead numbers can we? The dino, with the benefit of 20% makeup oil, was still higher.
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