Carbon-cleaning Valvoline Premium Restore

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So the advice often given here on BITOG about “cleaning up” a dirty/sludged up motor with a short OCI with PYB (cuz it’s a “great cleaning oil with a very robust additive package”)is really a bunch of baloney?
 
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Originally Posted By: Powerglide
So the advice often given here on BITOG about “cleaning up” a dirty/sludged up motor with a short OCI with PYB (cuz it’s a “great cleaning oil with a very robust additive package”)is really a bunch of baloney?


If anything, PYB would be better at cleaning than a synthetic because it would have a more polar base oil (probably a mix of group 1, 2, and 3).
 
Originally Posted By: 77GrandPrix
So, I wonder if Valvoline's Modern Engine oil is a less severe version of this product?

It might some use ester but it wouldn’t make financial sense for them to put a large amount in since the specs. it meets don’t require that and the cost would go up considerably if they did. Follow the money...this Restore oil costs $72/gallon ($18/qt) and at Walmart for 5 qt jugs Modern Engine Oil, it costs $8/qt. The former costs 2.25 as much at those prices.
 
The oil arrived already. It’s smell is unlike any other motor oil I’ve smelled. It has a rather unpleasant chemical smell like Eastman Kodak factory has in Kingsport, TN. Here are pictures of the jug. It says additive package is based on regular Premium Blue CJ-4 additive package.

 
Valvoline's Modern Engine marketing material has it as 30% better carbon build-up protection than industry standards...undoubtedly closer to "just like everyone else" than a revolutionary product. My local Walmart charges a $15 premium for Modern Engine vs. Advanced ( former Synpower ) so it would be interesting to see if it's accurate to describe it as more akin to Mobil's Annual Protection just spun a different marketing direction with a slightly tweaked product vs. Advanced.
 
Yes, we are mostly in the dark guessing about the true performance in different areas with Valvoline Modern Engine oil and M1 AP. I have seen nothing about them that seems to justify their price tags. Both companies need to do a better job of proving that in their marketing. Modern Engine Oil seems focused on GDI engine valve deposits which is quite different from piston/ring deposits that Valvoline Premium Blue Restore was designed to clean. The formulation approaches to achieve success in the different areas is probably fairly different but with some overlap. I would not be surprised if esters helped reduce valve deposits. The choice of ester is likely very important. I think a paper was posted here that stated that. PAO made the deposits the worst, if I recall correctly, especially with used oil. Some esters burn away relatively cleanly and some much less so. Another potential benefit is that esters can dissolve carbon as the above patent shows. The environment of an engine valve in a GDI engine reminds me of the Panel Coker Test with the addition of cyclical combustion.
 
So, you found a Valvoline patent covering the addition of Auto-RX tech to a motor oil? That’s nice. Valvoline were the people, IIRC, that Frank took the idea to when he was trying to sell it. He and Terry always said they just took his idea and told him to pound sand. Looks like more evidence of same, to me.

The idea, and Auto-RX itself, work extremely well. I just wouldn’t pay $70-75 for. Gallon of Valvoline rather than $25 for Auto-RX plus a gallon of whatever engine oil off the shelf.
 
Auto-RX is made from 3 types of esters. The use of esters for cleaning is the biggest similarity to this Valvoline oil. The types of esters in Auto-RX are different (the lanolin ester, extremely so) from what’s in the Valvoline oil. I won’t let those lanolin esters in my engines because they are not completely solubized. They can stick to parts in low flow areas and stay there. That happened to me. They also plug up the oil filter. The concentration of esters when Auto-RX is mixed with the motor oil is considerably smaller than in the Valvoline oil. The additive package is diluted when Auto-RX is mixed with motor oil. The Valvoline oil’s base oils are Groups IV and V. One can not accurately emulate the Valvoline oil by mixing Auto-RX with any motor oil. I spent a lot of time trying to think of a way do approximately that. Filtering out the lanolin ester left me with less than half of the amount of product I poured into the filter, increasing the cost of the end product by over a factor of 2.
 
Originally Posted By: Y_K
Interestingly, the 15W-40 is licensed, yet 10W-30 'meets' API SN, SM, etc.

If you're speaking of the product in the picture, it isn't even licensed CJ-4, and just has the Cummins spec. Now, that's what I call a niche product.
wink.gif
 
Originally Posted By: JAG
Yes, we are mostly in the dark guessing about the true performance in different areas with Valvoline Modern Engine oil and M1 AP. I have seen nothing about them that seems to justify their price tags. Both companies need to do a better job of proving that in their marketing. Modern Engine Oil seems focused on GDI engine valve deposits which is quite different from piston/ring deposits that Valvoline Premium Blue Restore was designed to clean. The formulation approaches to achieve success in the different areas is probably fairly different but with some overlap. I would not be surprised if esters helped reduce valve deposits. The choice of ester is likely very important. I think a paper was posted here that stated that. PAO made the deposits the worst, if I recall correctly, especially with used oil. Some esters burn away relatively cleanly and some much less so. Another potential benefit is that esters can dissolve carbon as the above patent shows. The environment of an engine valve in a GDI engine reminds me of the Panel Coker Test with the addition of cyclical combustion.


Why would PAO make deposits worse? I thought PAO had better resistance against high temps which would lead me to believe that it wouldn’t cause deposits hardly at all.
 
Originally Posted By: cheesepuffs
Originally Posted By: JAG
Yes, we are mostly in the dark guessing about the true performance in different areas with Valvoline Modern Engine oil and M1 AP. I have seen nothing about them that seems to justify their price tags. Both companies need to do a better job of proving that in their marketing. Modern Engine Oil seems focused on GDI engine valve deposits which is quite different from piston/ring deposits that Valvoline Premium Blue Restore was designed to clean. The formulation approaches to achieve success in the different areas is probably fairly different but with some overlap. I would not be surprised if esters helped reduce valve deposits. The choice of ester is likely very important. I think a paper was posted here that stated that. PAO made the deposits the worst, if I recall correctly, especially with used oil. Some esters burn away relatively cleanly and some much less so. Another potential benefit is that esters can dissolve carbon as the above patent shows. The environment of an engine valve in a GDI engine reminds me of the Panel Coker Test with the addition of cyclical combustion.


Why would PAO make deposits worse? I thought PAO had better resistance against high temps which would lead me to believe that it wouldn’t cause deposits hardly at all.




This is an old thread but still has good info.

https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2152848
 
Cheesepuffs, I think the following link was the thread I saw it in. Unfortunately, the link to the paper is broken. https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/3687558/GDI_deposits_-_a_very_differen
PAO has good oxidative and thermal stability but being on a hot valve is apparently too much for it to handle. It’s degrades, producing polar by-products, and also gets spit on by combustion byproducts. Keeping those species from bonding to the valve is not possible. My guess of why it performed worse than the Group II-based and Group III-based motor oils is because of PAOs poor solubility of polar degradation byproducts.

Panel Coker Test Result, from http://www.oil-club.ru/forum/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=102087
 
So PAO can clean carboned up piston ring lands, but will negatively effect what? If your valve stem seals are in good condition then I’m not understanding why there would be oil on a valve anyway. What extremely hot surfaces in the engine would or could PAO bond to in actual operation?
 
PAO is not going to clean anything in an engine. Some esters can. PCV vapors have oil in them and that gets on the valves. EGR vapors have partially burnt oil in them too. When we talk of base oils and deposits, we aren’t saying any of them become a deposit when in their initial form. Chemical reactions occur between them and a huge number of other molecule types, and it’s the products of those reactions that can end up becoming a deposit. When an oil molecule reacts with something, it no longer is what it once was. If it was PAO molecule, it no longer is PAO.
 
Thank you for correcting me. I was looking at Valvoline Premium Blue and mistook it for this one
 
You’re welcome to run a proper test and report the results, JAG. I did that on this board with Auto-RX many years ago. Perhaps a proper test would help back some of your assumptions.
 
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