101: “
It is said that 90 percent of engine wear occurs at startup. If we are interested in engine longevity then we should concentrate our attention at reducing engine wear at startup.” Many engines in this world do not shut off, but they still wear. The response that follows this statement starts right in on cold-flow as the answer.
But start-up by its very nature has
no cold-flow – None. Anyone who has cold started a motor with an oil pressure gauge has seen it takes a few seconds to come up, and that signal is usually fed off the main gallery feed at the back of the motor, so it represents the time delay to start feeding the oil galleries. In that time the engines has turned a 20~100 times. The real facts are that most folks cold start at idle, so there is momentarily no feed
and there is no sling oil off the crank or other rotating assemblies due to low RPM.
Start-up protection
always comes from residual oil film and previously deposited AW compounds on the surfaces. Flow has nothing to do with it!
Over a hundred million traditional OHV V-8 and V-6 engines have had their cams lubed by sling oil off the crank. That is why new-rebuilt engines have to be run at 2,000+ RPM for 15 minutes to provide these surfaces enough oil to stay wet while they are seating-in. They are
never lubricated by the “flow” of pumped oil, and have not been for over 100 years. They are the most vulnerable components and they last 100,000’s of miles w/o “flow” of pumped oil. So the most basic premise of Oil U is flawed.
102: “
Most of the thick oil at startup actually goes through the bypass valve back to the engine oil sump and not into your engine oil ways. This is especially true when you really step on that gas pedal. You really need more lubrication and you actually get less.”
Oil flow has nothing to do with the position of the gas pedal. If the author means increased RPM (acceleration), there is some correlation. If the author means higher load/same RPM like climbing a hill - there is no correlation. Flow is related to oil pump displacement and engine RPM – period. It knows nothing about the position of the gas pedal.
And since we know that there are more than one by-pass systems in any modern automotive lubrication scheme, which one is the author talking about (Pump relief, oil filter-mount relief, or filter media by-pass relief...)?
The lubrication engineers have calculated the cold-flow resistance and specified the filter media area accordingly to allow the minimum necessary volume for the specified oil required for that engine. This can of course be improved by adding filter area at the owner’s discretion.
Anyone with an externally mounted spin-on oil filter can reduce pump and filter-mount by-pass by installing a larger filter which will offer more media area for cold oil to flow through easier as an option when running "thicker" oils.
Further down the author states “
that Porsche wants 10W-30 oil” I have no idea where this came from? There are no 10W-30's on the Porsche A40 list ->
http://eni-agip.ru/upload/docs/PORSCHE 2012_A40.pdf
The author states that he wants to remain general and not footnote or quote, then don't set up a condition where this would be required. But if the author names names and cites references, it needs to be accurate and verifiable. Because this is one error that is right there, and is wrong! Take Porsche's name out of 102.
Then the author goes into VII's and being “used up.” They are not used up, they are sheared down. That is a different process. Explain it correctly.
Then we get into a real bug-a-boo -
synthetics. The author fails to describe a synthetic, or define what it is… Then claims they do not shear down because they have no VII's. Maybe Motul 300V Ester and a few Redline lubes will meet this conditional statement, but the vast majority of "synthetics" out in the USA are blends and highly hydro-cracked dino oils – all legally called synthetic.
For the North American market, it is a continuum from basic dino oils to pure manufactured synthetics (as required on Euro labeling) with rising price points. There are no Harry Homeowner affordable pure synthetics as the article tries to imply. I have never found any for less than about $18/l, yet the article implies they are readily available and have different properties.
Then we have this: “
The reality is that motor oils do not need to be changed because they thin with use. It is the eventual thickening that limits the time you may keep oil in your engine. The limit is both time itself (with no motor use) and/or mileage use.” Wrong - it is additive package depletion that is the ticking clock (reduction in TBN and increase in TAN). Oxidation thickening can also occur, but so can fuel dilution (like in the new DI engines or in the old carb'd engines). And why would an oil need to be changed with no engine operation (time only)... So again, it's grossly misleading.
103: Then we get into preaching about synthetics. “
There are some properties of synthetic oils that actually result is less wear than with mineral oils. These help increase your gas mileage as well. Due to a reduction of internal friction of the synthetic oil your engine will run a bit cooler."
There are no prof3ssional papers that I can find that support this claim - none. Delo400LE is Iso-Syn (legally a synthetic) - do you think these comments apply?. It was the first HDEO to log a million mile engine, followed shortly by Delvac 1300. Neither are legally a synthetic under Eruo labeling requirements, so that flies in the face of the “sermon” about reduction in wear and lower operating temps. And, the author states that operating temps are controlled, so how can synthetics reduce them...
“
At temperatures below zero you will not be able to start your car with mineral oils while the synthetic oils may be used to -40° or -50°F.” So there are millions of skiers stranded from the 1960's onward in parking lots because they starved to death waiting for their cars to start on mineral oils… Or bush pilots in Alaska and Canada that couldn’t start their planes… Hog wash of the worst sort...
10W-30 Chevron Supreme (as an example) has been working in cold climates below zero for decades. It was the contract lube for Cal-Trans maintenance trucks and equipment on Donnor Summit (US 80) for decades, and those vehicles always started. Stop this fantasy and misleading fear mongering. It is provably not true by just looking at history.
This is followed by a Mobil1 fan-boy statement w/o indicating the brands he compares to – unfair, and probably untrue…
And then this is followed by: “
Motor oil becomes permanently thicker with exposure to northerly winter type weather. This is more of a problem to mineral based oils. Waxes form. This is why it is a bad idea to even store a bottle of oil in a cold garage. It goes bad on the garage shelf just because it is exposed to the cold.” I suppose this does not count in South America or Antarctica... And there has not been a separation issue since maybe the late 1940's for even cheap oils. Any good dino oil will remain stable if stored at any temp you care to drive in...
The proof is that oil distributors store cases of motor oils in un-heated warehouse all over the Mid-West and Canada, and users do too, by the millions. No-one goes out one day to add oil and finds it solid and lumpy. Please stop lying…
104: And this is where I really come unglued -> “
Some people have said they use thicker oils because they only use their cars every 2, 3 or 4 weeks. They are afraid that thin oils will fall off the engine parts and result in a lack of lubrication at startup. Think about your lawn mower over the winter. I gets gummed up solid. The oil and fuel thicken over time resulting in engine failure. Anyway, oil on the surface of parts does not lubricate. It is the FLOW of oil between parts that lubricates. Thick, old, waxy oil can only be bad.”
This is a complete lie. It is fear-mongering and preaching at its absolute worst…
Fact – it is the presence of oil in a thick enough film that lubricates - period. Flow may be the replenishment mechanism. Proof - take a rusty bolt put a drop of oil on it and turn the nut. It is lubricated. Come back a week later, it is still lubricated. There has been
no flow. This entire flow argument is bogus and misleading in the extreme.
Then let’s talk about drain-off - a well documented phenomena for some synthetic oils because of their inherently lower surface tension (the thing that naturally makes them thinner). They do drain off and leave a thinner film so that cold-start metals are not cushioned as well. Many motors click and clack on synthetics when cold-started after a long period of non-use. Dino oils generally have higher surface tension and therefore better capillary fill. They remain on parts better (thicker cushion) so they can protect surfaces from actual contact. And actual contact will result in wear.
Thin oil, thick oil, any oil - wear is prevented by keeping contact surfaces apart, period. If there is contact, there is wear. The harder the contact, the more wear. Oils job is to keep things separated with a fluid that will allow low levels of molecular friction in the lubricating film (soaps do this in some air compressors). Pumped oil may replenish the supply to the bearing surface, but it does not actually protect anything.
To reiterate, it is the presence of oil with sufficient film thickness to separate surfaces that is important. Splash, spray, dip, drip, pumped - it does not matter how the oil gets there. We had cars, trucks, tractors, stationary engines, etc - for many decades before we had commonly available pressure fed lubrication systems. As long as they had enough good clean oil of sufficient viscosity, they did not wear appreciably.
Metallurgy, closer designed clearances and manufacturing tolerances, and Motor Oils have lead to the current crop 300,000 mile car and light truck motors, and 1,000,000 mile heavy diesel engines. And in 2016; many, many of these parts still rely on splash and sling oiling. Flow, as described in Oil U, is completely misleading as presented. And it is a bogus argument to support some erroneous lubrication “theories” that are presented as fact. Bad, bad, bad…
Synthetics may be able to cope with heat better and may stay in-grade longer, but they are not better lubricants. For some jobs, whale oil would be better, but it is not legal. Soap may be better, but is to hard to integrate in the lubrication scheme. Most top end wear comes from dirty air, not oil. Please re-do Oil U to really state the correct processes and outcomes. Everybody, even outside BITOG, will be better off for it
