As per the chart on the Amsoil's website under 0W-30 product page...it shows that Mobil 1 "Extended Performance" causes most metallic wear scar, even more than regular dino 5W-30 Havoline?

http://www.amsoil.com/graphs/sso_4ball_400px.gif

http://ww w.amsoil.com/graphs/sso_4ball_400px.gif

Surprisingly it does not have Valvoline SynPower nor Castrol Edge listed? I wonder why?

Mobil 1 EP is the most advanced oil from Mobil to date, if that is causing so much wear, I wonder what should we make of other regular Mobil 1 and Mobil non-synthetic products?

Amsoil can not certainly be lying on ineternational scale from their "the main" website, they will get in big trouble for that, so what should we make out of this?

Please comment!

We're subscribing to Castrol's "90% of all wear occurs at start up" marketing standards for integrity.

The dreaded 4ball test is one of Amsoils marketing schemes. THey make a great product but it seems that they are reluctant to let the 4 ball test go.

Haven't they come out with more recent test results. Not that I care about 4-ball test results for motor oil anyway.

Is 4-Ball Test fair to judge an oil's performace when it comes to measuring metallic wearing in an engine?

can this be used to say, yes Mobil 1 EP will certainly/highly likely to cause more wear than so and so oil because this was the result from the 4-Ball test?

can this be said!

According to that test, after one hour of operation Mobil One produced a wear scar greater than 1mm and even AMSOIL produced a wear scar of over .4mm. If that was an accurate indication of how those oils would perform in your engine, don't you think you wouldn't have any engine left after about 1000 hours of operation?

Joe

I guess it all depends on how many four-ball-joints, four-ball-bearings and four-ball-roller-rocker-cam-slider-retainers you have in your engine.

None of my cars have any of those, so I'm pretty willing to ignore this test.

IMO, it's no better or worse than any other oil marketing. It's all pretty worthless. The best marketing is rebates, at least around here.

the 4 ball test has a very small contact patch where oil can lubricate. I can't think of any place in my engine that has that small of a contact patch between metals. The only thing that comes close is the needle bearings in the rocker arms. the problem with the 4 ball is that only one ball rotates; the other 3 are fixed. They should come up with a needle bearing test with a short cycle

In addition to the test itself not being relevant, you have to consider the source. I don't mean to bash AMSOIL at all, they make good products, but why would you listen to their advice about OTHER oils? If you were buying a lawn tractor, would you listen to John Deere's advice about Toro?

Is the 4-ball test the same as the Timken Load Bearing test?

The 4-Ball Wear machine is an excellent tool for developing a lubricant for the 4-Ball Wear machine.

Tom NJ

The "source" is not AMSOIL. Try ASTM.

http://www.astm.org/Standards/D4172.htm

seems like the only way you could use this info for a engine is if you had oil pumping out of the area were the metal came in contact such as how and rod bearing and crank do delivering constant oil flow that way the oil film is never sheared or broken allowing metal to metal contact