RLI Biosyn 5W40, Audi RS4 update

Status
Not open for further replies.
I don't have any UOA's to speak of to show viscosity drop on the M1, PP, or RedLine, but, if I'd drain a little and add some fresh oil, the noisey HLA's would go away...for a little while, but not very long. But that way, I'm having to add more oil when the RLI can make it in one OCI. It's INCREDIBLY annoying to pay that much for OTC syns and have to change them at dino intervals, or drain and add to replenish the add pack and regain vis, plus, it's more work that I have to do. This is a VERY common problem with Miatas. Like I said, one of those things that is talked about A LOT and is the one annoying thing about the car. Mazda even wrote bulletins about the noisey HLA's. The easy fix? Change the oil. Miatas tend to generate a lot of engine heat and they KILL oil vis. On the other hand, I've heard that SOME people can go 7k miles without a hitch. The "typical" Miata driver that I've seen changes the oil at 3-5k, syn or dino, due to vis breakdown and the resulting noisely HLA's. I can't remember what the 5w40HD vis ended up at (I will have to look a Terry's email to get the numbers exact) at just over 5k miles turbo'd with HARD racing and some fuel dilution. I will let you know what the numbers were.
 
Crew 219 I am biased in that I like my daily drivers to be built to run on rather mundane oil. I like them to be built so as not to worry about them self destructing when driven hard. So yes I am biased toward dull lack luster durable as a crafttsman wrench Toyotas for my daily drivers. I used to race and play around a lot with high performance vechiles. In fact I owned my own shop for a while doing tuneing work on imports long before that was cool or trendy! I never expected my performance vechiles to be as durable and reliable as my daily drivers! I have never worried about breaking a toy or wearing one out since rebuilding an engine is not a big deal to me. In my mind engine are built to be rebuilt once you have worn them out buy haveing way to much fun with them! In fact normaly when I get tired of my daily drivers I will normaly rebuild them for raceing of some sort. It might be SCCA AutoCross or drifting or road raceing or ice raceing. If it is a truck I might build it to rock crawl or I might rig it to hit the san dunes. I am an enthusist but I am not afraid or wearing an engine out any more then I fear wearing my brakes out! They wear that is just a function of useing them! That is why their are some that keep their Corvettes on a trailer and other that take them out and drive them daily and take them to the track! I am the latter not the former. In fact if money was no onject I would have a collection much like Jay Leno's and just like Jay I would be driveing them as often as I could! If I wore one out no problem just rebuild it and start all over again! I can tell you this much I know I do not want an Audi now not if they can not controll their fuel enough to ensure long life with reasonable oil change interval with OTC oils. In fact I avoid most European cars right now since so many of them need a special oil inorder to not self destruct or maintain their warranty. In my mind if an engine needs extra ordinary oil that is not easy to find in order to function the manufacture has failed me as a customer buy shortchangeing me in one of three area's 1)materials,2)Surface finish,3)design! So either the fuel dilotion is not a durability issue in Audi's eyes or they just do not care wich is it? Either way it is not the mark of excellences I expect for a vechile costing over $40,000 to strive for.

Here is the real kicker. The reason my $17,900 Camry kicks most other vechiles arse in UOA is because it use's the same materials,production methods and surface finish's that a $200,000 dollar exoctic does in it's engine even though it makes something lowly like 145HP. In fact the Z06 just recently caught up with my elcheapo Camry's engine material! That my friend is why I can run any SM 5W30 and get great UOA or M1 for 10,000 miles on my 3.9 quart sump and get single digit wear numbers!
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's not just a problem with one manufacturer getting fuel dilution, for whatever reason that may be. Most of the vehicles I've seen that are geared toward performance tend to have more fuel dilution than those geared toward being gas sipping DD's, the case between the RS4 and your Yota. And while Audi's are great DD's, just like Yota's, they are also geared toward performance, especially the "S" and "RS" models, the latter being the one that was teseted. So if you take a high performance car and drive it under somewhat harsh conditions, yes, I would fully expect fuel dilution and would be incredibly astounded if you found none. Heck, take the cap off the dry sump of my brother in law's C6 Z06 and you can smell fuel. And no, it's not just his, they're all that way. So does it fuel dilute? Yes. Is it a bad vehicle? No. You get what you pay for, and for that amount of money, you get awesome performance, luxury, and a beautiful car. When you're throwing down that much money on a car, I don't think anyone that's an enthusiast is going to pour in OTC SM dino. They're going to use something like RLI. Using a premium synthetic like RLI then takes care of any fuel dilution you may get. The bottom line is, either you want to spend $18k on a car and get a 145HP gas sipping DD, or you want to spend $60k+ on a luxury performance car and get a little fuel dilution for the performance aspect, but just spend an extra $20 every 8-10k miles (a small price to pay for the mileage. I spend more on beer in a month) for a premium synthetic. BTW, I do plan to buy an Audi in the somewhat near future.
 
John

You make total sense and I respect your opinion John. It's definitely well thought out.

It's not a matter of whether Audi can control the richness of the engine appropriately. With wideband O2 sensors, precise control of the high pressure fuel rail and injectors, all under ECU direction, they have extremely good mixture control. It's the direct injection itself that seems to be causing increased dilution. This is no different than what happened with diesel engines, requiring new oils and fuel formulations to be developed. Unfortunately, since all manufacturers are striving for better fuel economy and emissions, and direct injection improves fuel economy by 5-10% over manifold injection, all will eventually be forced to go to direct injection, and will most likely experience higher fuel levels in the oil, unless some new direct injection design tricks are developed.

My reason for going with an Audi is simple. Quattro is far and away the best overall performing AWD package out there. My RS4 performed as well as most high performance sport cars on the track in the dry, but in the wet, absolutely nothing even comes close. There is nothing like driving the track at Watkins Glen in the rain. On the street, this translates into increased driving confidence and a huge safety factor.

We really do not know what life to expect out of these FSI engines, since they've not been out long enough. It may very well be that Audi has done their engineering right and have accommodated fuel dilution in their engine bearing and material design. It is certainly what they claim in my correspondence with them when they say that fuel dilution is not an issue. All I know is that in an all aluminum engine design, I see Fe wear that is correlated with fuel dilution, and that it can be controlled with RLI oil at no additional cost over approved oils. That is enough for me to stay with RLI. I've done so in the RS4, and am doing so in my A6 3.2L V6 FSI engine, too.
 
Originally Posted By: RI_RS4
............Unfortunately, since all manufacturers are striving for better fuel economy and emissions, and direct injection improves fuel economy by 5-10% over manifold injection, all will eventually be forced to go to direct injection, and will most likely experience higher fuel levels in the oil, unless some new direct injection design tricks are developed. ...........


Surprisingly, the upcoming GF-5 specs, from what I have seen, do not address the challenges of fuel dilution. Given the number of manufacturers who have announced their intention to use direct injection on their engines, you would think ILSAC would be addressing this issue. Maybe we have to wait for GF-6.
 
Originally Posted By: RI_RS4
...........My reason for going with an Audi is simple. Quattro is far and away the best overall performing AWD package out there. My RS4 performed as well as most high performance sport cars on the track in the dry, but in the wet, absolutely nothing even comes close. There is nothing like driving the track at Watkins Glen in the rain. On the street, this translates into increased driving confidence and a huge safety factor......................That is enough for me to stay with RLI. I've done so in the RS4, and am doing so in my A6 3.2L V6 FSI engine, too.


RI RS4, do you still own the RS4, and still go to the track with it?
 
RI_RS4,Truthfully I have always considered Audi myself. I almost bought a Quatro instead of my Dodge Dakota but at the last minute the wife told me she was haveing twins and I figured the truck would be cheaper to insure and have easier access to the car seats since I was now looking at three total car seats. I really like AUdi's so do not think I am an Audi hater. I have noticed that a lot of direct injection engines have this same problem but not all of them! I have yet to see a problem in the Lexus lineup or Toyota line up in reguards to their direct injection.

It is true that when you drive a vechile hard espeicaly raceing it at the track you do expect to see fuel issues. We do not though unuvesaly see fuel issues with though with exotics that are not useing direct injection.

I think though represents a huge issue though if we are to see an increase in direct injection engines and I hope we do. So if the oil's that sitting on the shelf from Amsoil,Redline,M1,Motul,Penrite are not up to the job then something needs to be done. When you look at what a quart of synthetic oil cost's their is no reason why fuel should be an issue for them! You can not expect the motoring public as a whole to use something as low volume and costly as RLI's product line.

I do not see where the fac this is an sports car really makes that much difference. A Z06 wich is not direct injection I know can use OTC M1. The AMG line up gets buy with M1 0W40.If we belive the advertiseing QTorque is the fill for Ferria now. So it is not that I am being too demanding I just expect a lot more from AUdi then most do obviously. I am think that their has to be a design,material,sureface finish solution to this problem.

I am glad RLI is solveing the problem for you but again I think this is a much bigger issue and needs to be fixed! It will not be long before more and more cars and trucks are direct injection. In fact Ford is talking about phaseing out most of their V8's in most of their cars and 1/2-3/4 ton pickup trucks in favor of forced induction direct injection V6's includeing in the Mustang!
 
The last response hits the problem on the head. The problem is with the RS4 NOT the oil. By the way, the next gen RS4 will use a supercharged 3.0 direct injection V6.
 
Originally Posted By: JohnBrowning
I have yet to see a problem in the Lexus lineup or Toyota line up in reguards to their direct injection.


John,

I'm not sure how you can make the above statement. Here's an example of the Toyota/Lexus twin injection system with port and direct injection. UOA signature is representative of fuel dilution. If you can point me to another toyota/lexus DI engine UOA, I'd appreciate it. I do not know of any Toyota engines with DI currently in the US market, and only a few Lexus models.

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubb...true#Post982590
 
Originally Posted By: BGK
The last response hits the problem on the head. The problem is with the RS4 NOT the oil. By the way, the next gen RS4 will use a supercharged 3.0 direct injection V6.


BGK

Several comments.

Similar problems occured with the introduction of DI in diesel engines. It was solved with fuel lubricity enhancement and modifications to oil formulations.

All DI engines that I am aware of have issues with fuel dilution. It is a much researched topic in the engine design community and subject to numerous papers. There are also several papers on oil formulations that specifically combat fuel dilution, one of which by Lubrizol. It is an engine design issue that may very well have implications for oil and fuel design. I am also aware that some fuels, such as Shell V-Power, have already begun adding lubricity enhancing additives to the formulas, to compensate for the reduced sulfur content and impact in newer DI engines.

You are thinking of the engine that is slated to go into the next generation S4. It will be a supercharged 3.0L V6 putting out around 350 HP. The next generation RS4 engine has not been announced, and it's not slated for production until around 2012. However, the next generation RS5 engine has been rumored to be a mild twin turbo 4.2L V8 putting out around 450 HP. However, this has not yet been confirmed. Here are the current rumor mill on the RS5

http://www.fourtitude.com/news/publish/Audi_News/article_3770.shtml
 
Quote:


BGK

Several comments.

Similar problems occured with the introduction of DI in diesel engines. It was solved with fuel lubricity enhancement and modifications to oil formulations.

All DI engines that I am aware of have issues with fuel dilution.


I agree that this problem is not unique at all to the RS4. I don't even see the fuel dilution as totally alarming in the RS4 or any different then what goes on in my non direct injected S4 or my 1.8t turbo audi's I have owned that are non direct injected. I dont doubt DI adds to this issue but it doesnt appear such an odd one. IMO, even if folks don't go out and switch to the RLI this is a great database of information collected and it's intersted to see. I'd love to see a breakdown of different tables such as miles on oil compared to iron wear. It was interesting that miles on oil didnt appear to have any relationship with amount of fuel dilution if I read that graph correctly. Anyhow, great data. Have you considered running it through SPSS to see if it has any statistical significance at this point? I know it was done before but I am no good with that stuff and cant help you there.

cheers! Mike
 
Last edited:
Doc

You do need to understand that when we sample fuel dilution, we only see a snapshot that was taken of a variable that is rapidly changing, due to operating conditions and burn off. This is different than measurement for wear metals, which have an extremely slow rate of change. Worst case dilution is almost always higher.

From the measurements I've seen on other Audi V8 engines, the RS4 fuel dilution is higher, but there does seem to also be some sort of correlation with the Al/Si cylinder wall/ring pack design. The fact that Fe always shows significantly lower in the Audi MFI V8 tells me that it's average dilution is much lower than the FSI V8's. (By the way, all Audi FSI V6 and V8 engines have the same signature.) Since quite a bit of the metallurgy and design was carried over from the MFI engines, it is reasonable to pin the problem on DI.

Mike, I'd be happy to plot Miles on Oil vs. Iron Wear, but it would not be interesting, since as the Miles on engine vs normalized iron wear plot shows that we're not out of early infancy wear in until 20-25K miles. So, in order to provide some significant comparisons, I'd have to either filter out all samples below 20K miles, or plot within a range. I guess the 2nd option would be reasonable. I'll see if I can do that.

Statistics are interesting things. The person who ran statistics previously really did not know what he was doing, since he did not understand the system or measurements. As you know, blindly performing a statistical analysis without having an understanding of how the physical system and measurements work is extremely error prone. I guess the FE wear vs. Mileage plot has enough data points to be analyzed statistically now. I'll be happy to provide the data (or it can be taken from the plot) for someone to perform. However, when you see as many data points as we now have, with significant separation in the clusters, it's pretty easy to see the significance.
 
Here is a list of the main Direct Injections engies I am aware of from Toyota.

[edit] 2GR-FSE
The 2GR-FSE engine used in the Lexus IS 350 incorporates Toyota's D4-S twin injection system. This system combines gasoline direct injection with traditional port injection. Using direct injection and port injection simultaneously facilitates more precise mixing of air and fuel under low and medium load conditions for greater efficiency, while high load conditions dictate the use of direct injection alone for maximum power. The 2GR-FSE engine is rated at 315 PS (311 hp/232 kW) at 6,400 RPM and 38.4 kg·m (377 N·m/278 ft·lbf) at 4,800 RPM.

The 2GR-FSE was on the Ward's 10 Best Engines list for 2006, 2007 and 2008.[citation needed]

Applications:

2006 Toyota Crown Athlete (Japan)
2006 Lexus GS 350 (Japan)
2006 Lexus GS 450h
2006 Lexus IS 350 (Japan and United States)
2007 Lexus GS 350 (United States)

[[edit] 3GR-FSE
The 3GR-FSE adds gasoline direct injection, referred to by Toyota as "D-4". The 3GR-FSE engine is rated at 256 PS (252 hp/188 kW) at 6,200 RPM and 32 kg·m (314 N·m/231 ft·lbf) at 3,600 RPM.




Applications:

2005 Toyota Mark X (Japan)
2005 Toyota Crown Royal (Japan)
2006 Lexus GS 300 (US and Europe)

[edit] 4GR-FSE
The 4GR-FSE is a 2.5 L (2499 cc) version. Bore is 83.1 mm while stroke is reduced to 76.9 mm. Output is 215 PS (212 hp/158 kW) at 6,400 RPM and 26.5 kg·m (260 N·m/192 ft·lbf) at 3,800 RPM. This version also features "dual-VVT-i", variable valve timing on both the intake and exhaust cams and gasoline direct injection.

Applications:

2006 Lexus IS 250
2006 Toyota Crown Royal (Japan)


I am going buy the lack of any real chatter on various web sites I visit. In passing I see one or two people talking about it but nothing major. No I do not have a body of work like what you have put together on your particular Audi to share with you. Normaly though just like the sludge issue these things quickly rise to the top on the internet due to all the chatter they stir up! Even in your case if I did not know their was an exhisting problem with Audi's with direct injection I would not take your single case as anyting more then a blip. A sample sive of one or any other low number number is really only significant to that person.

No matter how you slice it thisis going to be an issue that must be addressed by all oils since it is not going to be that long before we see direct injectionin economy vechiles! You can not even think of selling someone a $12k car with an engine that requires $10 a quart oil changes. On that same note your wear metals high as they might be do not seem like anything to really worry about. I mean seriously I doubt that this engine is going to wear out or self destruct in less then 300,000 miles. Sure you might need to replace the chain and tensioners but those are considered normal wear items.Tensioners always need replaceing sooner or later in all designs. If you are lucky the egineers designed them to replaceable without haveing to remove the timeing cover.

I have seen timeing chains even single roller designs last past 285,000 miles on detroit iron with nothing but 3000 mile oil changes running on dino. I have also seen timeing chains fail even double true roller designs in less then 100,000 miles due to poor maintence since sludge does not lubricate well and the carbon in sludge is rather abrasive!

We are a picky bunch on this site when it comes to UOA. Truth be told if any of your major metals Iron,ALuminum are below 30 lead is below at or 15 and the other metals stay in the single digits for 10K OCI's that engine should live a long and healthy life.
 
Originally Posted By: RI_RS4
Similar problems occured with the introduction of DI in diesel engines. It was solved with fuel lubricity enhancement and modifications to oil formulations.


Huh? I don't buy that at all. First, "direct" injection has always been the way fuel is delivered in a diesel (with or without a pre-chamber). Second, unlike with a gas DI engine, on a diesel, the injectors fire BTDC at the end of the compression stroke, so virtually none of the cylinder wall is exposed to the spray. On a gas DI engine, the injectors fire ATDC on the intake stroke, so the potential for cylinder wash-down is great. Also, on a diesel, combustion propagates outward from the injector, so that also lessens the potential for cylinder wall wash-down vs a gas DI engine.
 
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Was Delvac 1 5w40 tested?


No, earlier in the thread I posted the list of oils that owners have tried.
 
One of the great things about the signficicant amount of bio esters in the RLI oils is the ability for the oils to keep an engine very clean.
 
I have a Subaru Outback with the H6 3.0 liter engine which has a fuel dilution problem. I've experimented with Redline, GC and RLI oils and the RLI is providing the best results.
Based on what Terry tells me, fuel dilution is not uncommon in todays engines and is not limited to DI engines.
 
Originally Posted By: RI_RS4
Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL
Was Delvac 1 5w40 tested?


No, earlier in the thread I posted the list of oils that owners have tried.


Would you consider trying it? I know it fairs very well in the VW PD engines.......
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top