Usefulness of 4 Ball Wear Test ?........

[Idrinkmotoroil]

Can anyone explain the usefulness of this test ?, or should we not judge an oil based on results of that test ?.

Firstly, I respect Amsoil as a good quality fluid. But, there are two things that irritate me about Amsoil. Firstly is they have so many freakin distributors that any time you do a web search on ATF or other fluids, 25,000 out of 26,000 search results turn out to be Amsoil dstributors advertising and you have to weed through to get to the 1000 non-amsoil results.

Secondly, is the 4 ball wear test they plaster all over the place. It gives you so little information that I am reluctant to believe in any of that information. Plus you see crap products like Prolong abuse that test all the time claiming no measurable scar wear - that's when you get into all the cheater additives like bleach , coke , or whatever it is that gives false results.

We now see a post on Redline compared to Amsoil in the 4 ball wear test, what do we make of that test. I am surprised Redline spent the time to engage in that test. Any info would be cool.

J.

 

[buster]

http://theoildrop.server101.com/cgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000269

I'm personally sick and tired of Amsoil's dealer webpages all over the internet. It's the most anoying thing other then spam.

Bottom line is that NO, it's not usefull. Only a UOA will tell you how well an oil is doing.

[ December 27, 2003, 11:27 PM: Message edited by: buster ]

 

[TallPaul]

quote:

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Originally posted by buster:
I'm personally sick and tired of Amsoil's dealer webpages all over the internet.

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I have noticed about every other page I get when researching motor oil is an Amsoil page.

Hey Idrinkmotoroil! Great username!

 

[Bob Woods]

One of the things that bothers me about Amsoil is the implied propaganda that their oil doesn't come out of the ground. They don't own a refinery so they buy their PAO's from someone that produces POA's from ethylene, a petrochemical, a hydrocarbon, the esters they use may be man made, but 95% of what they sell starts out as dino crude in the ground.

 

[Idrinkmotoroil]

thanks for the info buster !.

I'm glad I'm not the only guy experiencing the wrath of Amsoil web pages. I've been trying to research some atf's recently and I just give up due to all the amsoil stuff that comes up. aaaargh !.

thanks for the compliment TallPaul, I thought it would give some insight into my addiction to motor oil info !, Patman should really have that name though.

 

[cryptokid]

i also dislike the thousands of amsoil dealer websites.

a little trick i learned when searching using google i will share with you.

say you want to google search "aynthetic atf" , ok fine but most of the links are to dealer pages. so what do you do? change your search to "synthetic atf -amsoil" this blocks out any websites that have the word amsoil on their page.
kind of a neat little trick to get past all of the dealer garbage out there.

 

[Bio-T]

crypto,
Thanks for the info. I do the same thing when I do a search. The nice thing is that when I have an Amsoil question, I ask it on the board here and we have 3 of the most knowledgeable Amsoil Site Sponsors and I have always received a professional reply.

 

[blano]

One of Amsoil's main problems is that they have too many idiototic, uneducated dealers that spew all kinds of BS. There are some good ones out there, but they are few and far between. And Yes, the four ball test is pure marketing BS.

 

[Patman]

quote:

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Originally posted by blano:
One of Amsoil's main problems is that they have too many idiototic, uneducated dealers that spew all kinds of BS. There are some good ones out there, but they are few and far between.

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I think that it's getting better in this regard though. Not only are our three Amsoil sponsors all very knowledgable guys, but there are also a few other Amsoil dealers who post here who aren't our sponsors and still offer up excellent advice and often recommend other oils too. To me, that's the mark of a good salesman, one who can readily admit that other competing products are good too. It gets tiresome when a salesman tries to tell you that his product is the only good one out there, this holds true for all walks of life.

 

[Robbie Alexander]

quote:

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Originally posted by blano:
-*-*-* Yes, the four ball test is pure marketing BS.

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Well, maybe purely maybe not.
Are you saying the test has no VALID results if you compare APPLES to APPLES instead of ApPlEs to AppLEs or Oranges>?

What if the Test you were shown listed, say for instance three additives.
With these three additives there were say, 10 (ten) oils. These oils made the base for the test.
Test 1 Run all the BASE oils on this test.
Test 2 Run additive A on each oil base...
And so on, and so on,
Comparing ALL Base oils with the respective additive in the oil....
Would that in anyones opinion, be a valid test?

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by blano:
One of Amsoil's main problems is that they have too many idiototic, uneducated dealers that spew all kinds of BS. There are some good ones out there, but they are few and far between. And Yes, the four ball test is pure marketing BS.

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That pretty well sums up my feelings towards Amsoil.