Shell or Castrol... what's in the BMW bottle now?

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Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
Originally Posted By: SLO_Town
Tell you what, I will buy a quart of this new 0W-40 and get a Blackstone analysis.

Appreciate your willingness to contribute another VOA to our repository. Although I'm not sure how getting it analyzed is going to prove anything, unless you have a sample of PP Euro 0w-40 to compare it to, and as of yet, this oil is nowhere to be found.



Pete, yeah, I hear you but this will at least give us an idea what BMW is selling. I have to drive down to San Luis Obispo later this week. I'll stop by Coast BMW and pick up a liter, assuming they have it.

I'm just a working guy like the rest of you folks (though early retired in 2009). I am on a budget like most of you but I've always said about myself "I have more money than I do common sense", and that's not saying much!

Haha,

Scott
 
I see many overfills on the horizon. The dealers, most anyway, put in 7 bottles of oil in a typical oil service. No problem when the bottles of BMW Syn oil are in 1 qt bottles (most late model BMW's take 7 qts). The new bottles are 1 liter. So 7 bottles will fill 7.4 qts
 
I'm not sure if they use bulk dispensers. I know from my own experience with the e46 and e92 M3, every dealer I used for the "free"service inevitably overfilled the car. There the problem was a little different. The car needed 6 liters, but the oil changers always put in 7 liters. The Castrol TWS 10w60 came in liter bottles and it seemed the oil changers put in 7 bottles - so got a full liter overfill. The robots seem to be programmed to just put in 7 bottles no matter what.
 
If BMW has chosen to use Shell engine oil, does that mean Mini also gets Shell engine oil?

The other thing I wonder is if Shell is making transmission fluid, power steering fluid, and gear oil, or if BMW is using something else.
 
Originally Posted By: artificialist
If BMW has chosen to use Shell engine oil, does that mean Mini also gets Shell engine oil?

The other thing I wonder is if Shell is making transmission fluid, power steering fluid, and gear oil, or if BMW is using something else.


I'm not trying to pile on but it seems like this is a question that Gena (Shell) should be able to answer. Wouldn't you think?

Scott
 
Originally Posted By: m6pwr
I see many overfills on the horizon. The dealers, most anyway, put in 7 bottles of oil in a typical oil service...


AND they took away the dipstick, which was the easiest, fastest way to check the oil level. When I do my DIY changes, I have to put it 6 qts and then start the engine and measure the oil level (takes several minutes) to determine how much to add to avoid overfilling.

I'm not sure how the dealer service techs do it. I'm sure they don't have time to under fill, start the engine, warm up a bit and measure the oil level. However I've never had them overfill.
 
Originally Posted By: NoTempoLimit
I got a dealer oil change on my car in late January and I saw someone at the parts counter buying a few oil bottles. They appeared to be the new blue bottles. Makes me wonder which one (Castrol or Shell) they put in my car..?

I have one of the N54 "real" twin-turbo engines in my 335i. My car has the oil cooler and manual transmission (MT 335i's run cooler). My oil temps run from about 220º to 245º F, fully warmed up, in ambient temps 60º-100ºF. Hottest I've seen is 255ºF after a 50 second autocross run. On the track these cars will push 300ºF+ oil temps before going into "limp mode" (the DME begins to cut engine power at 299ºF oil temp).

I think 5W-30 is just barely adequate for these engines. Having had my last dealer oil change, I will most likely be going with 0W-40 or 5W-40. I'm of the opinion that the 5W-30 oil is for fuel economy (CAFE) purposes (although its a heavy 30 weight). For a track day I wouldn't run anything other than 10W-60.

IMHO, the reason that the 10W-60 is only specced for the naturally aspirated M cars, is that the late model ones all got hit with the gas-guzzler tax anyway, so it's no loss to reduce the MPG a tiny bit more with the thicker oil.


I bet the cooling capacity of your car is the limiting factor and not the oil weight. The new M engines run on a 30W but the cooling capacity is significantly greater.
 
Originally Posted By: Hessam
Are any of these. The new shell produced bmw oil or the PP euro better than goood old M1 0W-40?

No way to tell as of now.
 
Originally Posted By: NoTempoLimit
I got a dealer oil change on my car in late January and I saw someone at the parts counter buying a few oil bottles. They appeared to be the new blue bottles. Makes me wonder which one (Castrol or Shell) they put in my car..?

I have one of the N54 "real" twin-turbo engines in my 335i. My car has the oil cooler and manual transmission (MT 335i's run cooler). My oil temps run from about 220º to 245º F, fully warmed up, in ambient temps 60º-100ºF. Hottest I've seen is 255ºF after a 50 second autocross run. On the track these cars will push 300ºF+ oil temps before going into "limp mode" (the DME begins to cut engine power at 299ºF oil temp).

I think 5W-30 is just barely adequate for these engines. Having had my last dealer oil change, I will most likely be going with 0W-40 or 5W-40. I'm of the opinion that the 5W-30 oil is for fuel economy (CAFE) purposes (although its a heavy 30 weight). For a track day I wouldn't run anything other than 10W-60.

IMHO, the reason that the 10W-60 is only specced for the naturally aspirated M cars, is that the late model ones all got hit with the gas-guzzler tax anyway, so it's no loss to reduce the MPG a tiny bit more with the thicker oil.

Run Redline. What I heard they are much better in heat exchange.
 
I emailed blackstone to see if they have a VOA for this new oil. They don't and they've only seen two samples. (I guess SLO_Town never got around to getting it done.
smirk.gif
)

Here is the response from blackstone:
Quote:
So far we've not seen any virgin samlpes of this oil. In fact, we've only seen two used samples of it! From what I can tell comparing those samples to known samples of the TWS oil, it looks like the new M oil has pretty similar additive levels. The only exceptions that stand out to me are that the new M oil is a little lighter on some of the additives, specifically Molybdenum, Boron and Titanium. Despite this, I would expect them both to perform exactly the same--the two results we have so far seem to support this. The physical results are what we would expect for a 10W60 on both.

I just did an oil change using edge professional so I won't be trying the new oil any time soon, however, it would be interesting to see a voa.
 
Originally Posted By: SilverC6
If Castrol would just bring the Euro 5W-30 and TWS to discounters at competitive prices, everyone would benefit.

TWS is available now at O'Reilly but it's $12.99/liter.

I would enjoy a future where a 5.1 quart jug of TWS and a Wix filter could be had for $32.95 with a $10 rebate to boot.


I would much enjoy buying 5 litters (5,1 quarts) jugs of TWS for 32$ also, but unfortunately such pricing is to good even for a dream. Here it costs 45 eur (49,57$) for 5 litters in the cheepest places. Oils in USA have much better prises.
 
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Originally Posted By: artificialist
If BMW has chosen to use Shell engine oil, does that mean Mini also gets Shell engine oil?

The other thing I wonder is if Shell is making transmission fluid, power steering fluid, and gear oil, or if BMW is using something else.


Mini uses Shell oil.

Transmission fluid is ZF (Automatics) which was a Shell base oil since 2000 or so via the introduction of the ZF 6HP.
PS fluid was usually some generic ATF or Pentosin (ex, CHF).
IIRC the dealers still use Castrol for the "M" Limited Slip Differentials.
 
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Originally Posted By: BMWTurboDzl
Originally Posted By: artificialist
If BMW has chosen to use Shell engine oil, does that mean Mini also gets Shell engine oil?

The other thing I wonder is if Shell is making transmission fluid, power steering fluid, and gear oil, or if BMW is using something else.


Mini uses Shell oil.

Transmission fluid is ZF (Automatics) which was a Shell base oil since 2000 or so via the introduction of the ZF 6HP.
PS fluid was usually some generic ATF or Pentosin (ex, CHF).
IIRC the dealers still use Castrol for the "M" Limited Slip Differentials.

Okay, thanks for answering my question.
 
Any updates on this? From what I have heard, BMW won't allow their same oil to be sold to the retail public under a different brand (i.e. Twin Power Turbo 0W-40 isn't rebadged PP Euro 0W-40... at least in the U.S.) (I believe Castrol was also like this as well when they supplied to BMW). Therefore, I'm not sure if the BMW and Pennzoil 0W-40s are the same.

What is curious, though, is that Pennzoil lists their platinum euro 5W-30 on their website, but it is only available in 55 gallon drum (verified by Pennzoil employee). This leads me to believe that the Twin Power Turbo LL-01 5W-30 is the same as the 5W-30 listed on Pennzoil's website.

Thoughts?

Also, any VOAs of any Twin Power Turbo oils yet?
 
Whenever this topic comes up, I'm always amazed by how easily people assume the OE oil and the off-the-shelf product are the same in the first place.

If there were a statement from the company that the two oils were the same, or if a LOT of very expensive VOAs came out demonstrating identical characteristics and properties between the two, then I'd feel like there was something to it.

Just sharing a manufacturer, a grade, and an approval is... interesting maybe, but far from enough evidence to assume they're the same. If that's all we've got to go on, I'd just assume they were different oils until there was a reason to think otherwise.

Of course, if they both have the approval you need, any difference probably doesn't matter for your application. So there's that.
 
Originally Posted By: d00df00d
Whenever this topic comes up, I'm always amazed by how easily people assume the OE oil and the off-the-shelf product are the same in the first place.

If there were a statement from the company that the two oils were the same, or if a LOT of very expensive VOAs came out demonstrating identical characteristics and properties between the two, then I'd feel like there was something to it.

Just sharing a manufacturer, a grade, and an approval is... interesting maybe, but far from enough evidence to assume they're the same. If that's all we've got to go on, I'd just assume they were different oils until there was a reason to think otherwise.

Of course, if they both have the approval you need, any difference probably doesn't matter for your application. So there's that.


I would agree. The PP Euro 0W-40 also does not have LL-01 certification.
 
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