Snake oil for cars engine

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Conversation moved towards performance......i voiced my opinion from a pure performance standpoint.
Cat converters are a hindrance.. if you know how to properly tune a engine for optimum fuel burn it will run cleaner producing more power than it's smog controlled equivalent......problem is not too many people know,want to know,or care.
 
Conversation moved towards performance......i voiced my opinion from a pure performance standpoint.
Cat converters are a hindrance.. if you know how to properly tune a engine for optimum fuel burn it will run cleaner producing more power than it's smog controlled equivalent......problem is not too many people know,want to know,or care.

That's just ridiculous. You can't meet emissions standards without a cat. And AFAIK you can't tune a gasoline engine to be "clean". You can tune it to minimize COx or you can tune it to minimize NOx, but these would be very different tunes; opposed in fact.
 
Yes, there are more myths floating around in the field of automotive technology than any other, with the exception of audio. In the nearly forty years of my career as an engineer working on emissions at GM light duty vehicle pollutant emissions levels were reduced by about 3 orders of magnitude for HC and NOx. Of that perhaps 1/2 of the first order of magnitude reduction came with engine tuning prior to catalysts and all of the rest was accomplished with refinement of catalyst technology. There were huge improvements to engine controls focused on precise management of air:fuel ratio, but that was all about feeding the catalyst a gas mixture that it could best digest.
 
That's just ridiculous. You can't meet emissions standards without a cat. And AFAIK you can't tune a gasoline engine to be "clean". You can tune it to minimize COx or you can tune it to minimize NOx, but these would be very different tunes; opposed in fact.

You can and I have, passed emissions test with stripped vehicles in fact I had to go roundy round with the inspection station but it boiled down to passing requirements.....this was in the nineties in CT.

Things are probably more strict nowadays but where i'm at now is inspection free.....things run so much better desmogged.

I'm sure there will be some uproar from the huggers but hey
 
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More strict indeed... oil must meet many needs that are hardly compatibles: engine cooling, proofness, right viscosity for external parts like turbo chargers and chain distribution (revival!), engine longevity...without compression loss !



I finally read API & european ACEA about oils and post treatment exhaust devices !


My car needs 5W40 and as usual the oil brand label. With ACEA my model is B.4 (diesel) rated equivalent to c.h ( & s.m gazoline) from API (no particules filter, just catalyst, oil for diesel with the accurate compression items...).
There are no retro compatibility with ACEA C 1 to 5 which is the evolution for posttreatment devices and low emission with xW30 and less SAE grade ! My car will be less protected from motor egging with xW30 than the asked 5W40; indeed the xW30 when hot will be too thin and especially when the motor becomes old. Oil cooling will be less good and not sure the oil pump and the turbo doesn't need more viscosity to protect their moving parts between two starts.



I could putt 0W40, but what about oil pump & turbo longevity ??? There are few 0w40 that are not ACEA C grade (so ACEA B4 proof that is better for my engine protection) but which are thinner in the API system : for instance API s.n / c.i instead the s.l/c.h that meets the oils approved by the brand of the car.


I will follow the good advices given here (many thanks) and glue to the manual of my car and labeled oil spec by the brandl ! And after 150 000 km I will not putt a 0w50 for example... Hoping electrical will have soon a low price enough and increased autonomy... or better will give up cars that are too much fragile, full of cpators and still pollute!
 
That tv show was likely referring to tooling and automation enabling tighter gaps in body panels etc. not internal engine clearances.

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Look up recommendations for oil on North American Toyota’s vs those in Ireland and Australia, can choose a vehicle that is sold with the same engine in all those areas and then check the specs from the manufacturer; one says to use 0W-XX, while the other says 5W-XX.

No, these were specifically about engine assembly. Tighter ring end gap tolerences, tighter tolerances on cylinder to piston fit, etc.

Oil specification differences from country to country are most likely country specific requirements (EPA in the USA).
 
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I assume EPA is choosing gaz emission targett dictated by technologies able to be mass produced by car companies and their suppliers ? Or targetts will not be reached by industries.

Techs being the same in US, CE, Japan as their health requirement (more or less), oils should be very near.

I saw whatever the SAE and the country, main brands have oil products that are approved by the whole cars manufacters. an Oil in its SAE range can be approved in the same time by european, japan and american cars ! For instance a 5w40 labelled on the same bottle for: Chrysler + Porsche + Fiat+ Mazda o....(each having letters or numbers for their label according to the requirement of their engines, post treatment devices needed to targett health gov. agencies requirement).

Norms should be close in these countries as gazoline and diesel have not sulfur in it anymore, so same fuels? At least for cars as I don't know for trucks and others Massey-Ferguson toys.

I don't know for South-America and russia, just read China, Maleysia and India are less restrictive about polution (think China will soon cop the main western norms). Chemistry is the same everywhere in the World and I imagine oil industries are not so many as their additives suppliers.

You may find more BS in most moderns oils cause additives and formulation for gaz post-treatment devices ? Maybe what you winn with these oils and NOX, CO2 reduction, you loose it on the other side with different bad emissions from additives growing numbers, as blue-aqua tanks in cars ? While I'm not sure old castor oils were good to breath !
 
Stated differently, can anybody point to trustworthy evidence that it makes any difference between the better and the worser oils for longevity? Or performance?

B.

When big oil started sneaking the zddp out we noticed cam wear (solid lifter) on the circle track cars that never happened before (somewhere around mid 1990’s early 2000’s?)took awhile to figure it out but finally did through oil analysis then research. As long as the oil we used had 1400-1500 ppm zddp starting out it was ok.
 
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Well, so much to say, hard to know what to emphasize.

AFAIK changing oil more frequently does pay rewards, but you get into diminishing returns where you are wasting time and money. If you change your oil yourself I would recommend doing more frequently than 20kkm/2yrs.

Don't follow dated recommendations, modern high additive diesel oils are different enough to change old guidelines.

Oil is aged by shear-thinning, condensation, fuel contamination to name a few. That's why it's not just a marketing ploy to recommend frequent changes.

You can access a tremendous amount of information by Googling, there are hobbyists who pay for their own oil lab tests so you would only find that type of information in a forum or blog.

Years ago I worked at a farm equipment shop that sent out oil samples on everything whenever it was serviced, including their fleet of pickups. I was into all the oil additives and talked the boss into trying a bunch in the trucks. All the oil sample reports stayed stayed in the same basic range no matter what additive we had in with the oil. The old trucks showed no reduction in wear and the new stuff stayed just as clean. I called the place we used for the samples and his advice was to save our money on that stuff and even cut back on oil samplings from the pickups and just change the oil frequently in them. Basically just what you said.

In the bigger equipment we needed to know if bearings were wearing or if there was an issue that was letting dust get into the air intake so they were still crucial on them. Because one of those failing in the middle of the busy season would be very bad.
 
Years ago I worked at a farm equipment shop that sent out oil samples on everything whenever it was serviced, including their fleet of pickups. I was into all the oil additives and talked the boss into trying a bunch in the trucks. All the oil sample reports stayed stayed in the same basic range no matter what additive we had in with the oil. The old trucks showed no reduction in wear and the new stuff stayed just as clean. I called the place we used for the samples and his advice was to save our money on that stuff and even cut back on oil samplings from the pickups and just change the oil frequently in them. Basically just what you said.

In the bigger equipment we needed to know if bearings were wearing or if there was an issue that was letting dust get into the air intake so they were still crucial on them. Because one of those failing in the middle of the busy season would be very bad.

Did you guys use Blackstone for testing? I've done it a few times, but sometimes I wonder how good of a test it is. I never questioned it until I saw one or two examples on forums of BMW S65 engines that spun rod bearings yet had pristine Blackstone report histories. You would have expected elevated lead in the cars with early non-RoHS bearings, or finally copper once that got worn away. I know it's even harder to pick up now that the bearings in many cars are made of some tin / aluminum alloy.

To condense what Chris said in post 54, and something I was taught when multi grades were introduced...
10W-30:
Cranks like a 10
Protects like a 30

Yep, an elegant way to put it.
 
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When big oil started sneaking the zddp out we noticed...

ZDDP was not "snuck out". As more capable catalysts emerged ZDDP was found to act as what is termed a catalyst "poison" by having its combustion products physically trapped in the catalyst washcoat (the microscopically thin layer containing precious metals and rare earth promoters) reducing catalyst effectiveness. So while not as gross a catalyst poison as tetra ethyl lead gasoline additives, which were phased down dramatically in the early 1970s to allow catalysts to be introduced and then fully eliminated in subsequent decades, ZDDP followed the same exit path.
 
It was snuck out as in it was there and then it was not, no explanations no warnings.

Trying to get adpack info from the bigger oil companies was like pulling teeth.

Whatever ‘comparable’ additive was used (titanium?) paled in comparison.

As usual smoke blown where there’s no sunshine.
 
So I suppose you expected banner headlines in the mainstream press on this arcane change to oil formulations? For those of us then working the problem what you describe as an overnight coup took years of cooperative testing and analysis which was very much out in the open, albeit not of much interest to the general public. Of course it was a terrible decision as we now see how car engines are just not as durable as they used to be. Back in the '60s I'd help Dad change oil every 1,000 miles and a car making it to 100K without the heads coming off was noteworthy. Now we all have friends and relatives chugging around in vehicles past 200K with only routine maintenance. As the wicked witch proclaimed, "Oh, what a world, what a world!"
 
When they took lead out of gas it was certainly shouted from the mountaintops as it could possibly damage vehicles that depended on it.

Zddp had been in oil with great sucesss since the 1930’s. All of a sudden it goes away causes many people mechanical failure, money, time, stress, etc.

I for one would have appreciated a heads up....BUT, that would have involved conceding that the new adpack was not as good in some situations......go figure!
 
The whole lead as a lubricant for valves is very suspect as Amaco was selling lead free gasoline from the 40s on. There wold have been law suits against Amaco if it really was detrimental to engines.

I hear this this same mantra on the Harley Davidson forums for older motorcycles (I own a 1975 XLCH). the loss of tetra ethyl lead does not cause engine damage.

The tetra ethyl lead was in gasoline to prevent detonation, nothing else.
 
TheGimp is correct that TEL was there strictly as a cheap octane improver. While it did boost octane cheaply TEL had many, many downsides including shortened sparkplug life, exhaust system corrosion, and worst of all spreading a poison widely throughout the environment. Regular grade gasoline was widely dosed at 3g/gallon so with gasoline consumption then at about 8 million barrels per day we were injecting hundreds of tons of lead per day into the environment. It is conjectured that average IQs should have increased by 5 or 6 points by eliminating this central nervous system poison.
 
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