Best Group II 5W30 ?

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: userfriendly
Mac Joe;
I was looking at engine oils for CNG & LPG. You can pick TBN & SA levels in both single and multi grades.
Some products are specifically blended for engines converted from gasoline or diesel to gas fuelled.
Could these engine oils be used as a platform for other applications?


My gut feel is to say yes but if you've got a link to what you're looking at, I could comment in more detail.

Just one word of advice. Be careful in interpreting the wonderfully clean pictures of engine parts that are often used in adverts for LPG/CNG engine oils. It's not the oil that's great, it's that the fuel is so clean burning & the engine environment so benign relative to a typical petrol or diesel engine.

 

[userfriendly]

www.lubricants.petro-canada.ca >> natural gas engine oils>> sentron>>VTP

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: userfriendly
www.lubricants.petro-canada.ca >> natural gas engine oils>> sentron>>VTP


I had a quick look and I'm going to change my mind and say no...

First, a lot of these oils are low ash (5 - 6 TBN). TBN is a cheap, Noack friendly, effective acid-mopper-upper additive in gasoline engines. Ideally I'd want around 10 TBN.

Second, my guess is that a lot of these oils are Group II based. Yes they may be mono grades but Group II isn't ideal for Noack in a way that PAO is. I did see there is a synthetic option there but there's no way to tell what it is exactly.

Finally, my admittedly very limited experience with LPG/CNG engines is with running them on standard PCMO. Even the lowliest of PCMO's will perform brilliantly because of all the usual stuff standard PCMO contains. I may well be wrong but these LPG/CNG oils look like they have been specifically formulated for LPG/CNG service and therefore may lack some of the goodies that make for a good PCMO.

 

[userfriendly]

Correct me if I'm wrong on this;

The Petro-Can Lube plant, the 2nd of its kind (modeled on the Chevron process), group II & III in NA built in the late 90s with Canadian tax dollars.

If true, the Sentron CNGs would be IIs & IIIs.

 

[SonofJoe]

Originally Posted By: userfriendly
Correct me if I'm wrong on this;

The Petro-Can Lube plant, the 2nd of its kind (modeled on the Chevron process), group II & III in NA built in the late 90s with Canadian tax dollars.

If true, the Sentron CNGs would be IIs & IIIs.



You could well be right. Petro-Canada Group II was certainly the first Group II I ever played around with in the late '90s. There was a time when it was 'received wisdom' that if you had a difficult Group I Cat 1MPC engine test to pass, the way to do things was to run the test with Petro-Canada Group II and use the Read-across Tables to read to the Group I position. Unfortunately, like a lot of received wisdom, doled out by people who don't truly understand things or actually have to pay for stuff, the advice turned out to be entirely bogus!