Mobil 1 UOAs showing more wear?

[OVERKILL]

Originally Posted By: mbacfp
Thanks Irv. Appreciate your experiences. Would be cool if we could get some Blackstone UOA data and isolate brand and get some universal wear numbers on a per motor basis. Sure there would be plenty of data points to analyze.


Except given the limit of Spectroscopy with respect to resolution: It only sees a narrow range of particles below 10 microns, and the fact that it does not differentiate between chemical chelation and physical wear, that would be of limited utility. Each oil will, in a given application, have its own "wear signature". That is, a somewhat standard UOA result that will remain relatively consistent when trended. Looking for deviations in that trend can prove useful, as it may indicate a change in the health of the equipment, but you cannot, with any confidence, use UOA's on a properly wearing piece of machinery to divine which oil is "better". That's the purpose of tear-down testing which actually directly measures wear and is, as far as I'm aware, the only accepted testing methodology for doing so. Now of course that isn't overly practical for the average end user but generally in field testing, where UOA's are used to track lubricant health, serviceability and machine health, random tear-downs to measure wear are performed. The article I linked you to earlier touches on that.

 

[mbacfp]

Thanks Overkill...worth a shot. Have a great week everyone.

 

[kschachn]

In regards to particle size, this illustration is lifted from a Machinery Lubrication article. Note the upper limit of size detectable by emission spectrography and where it falls on their threat graph.

When I did AA analysis (nowadays ICP) in college for the fluid power department, we performed both a straight analysis and one on an acid digestion. This gave you a rough idea of how many "large" particles were in the sample without having to resort to another method of analysis (which we did not have).

 

[Garak]

Originally Posted By: irv
Mobil is the recommended oil choice for Corvette and Pennzoil is the recommended oil for Ferrari. Not sure if that means anything to anyone, but knowing the RPMS those Ferrari engines spin at, I would assume it is a pretty stout oil.

With respect to the Scuderia Ferrari video, Mobil also formulates oil for Formula 1 teams, McLaren for the last number of years, until last season when they switched to supplying Red Bull. Castrol also formulates for Renault F1. There's no shortage of expertise in the major oil companies.

 

[racin4ds]

Used to be a major M1 fan and also believed all the hype and commercials but I started noticing the MUCH noisier valvetrain and overall engine noise in my vehicles and I switched to Pennzoil. My engines instantly got quieter and smoother, nothing scientific just my great hearing and general observations. Put it this way, my wife who knows nothing about oils and could care less, asked me one day why her car was so "noisy" and asked if it was due for an oil change... it only had 1500miles on that M1 OCI.

I firmly believe that Mobil 1 is not the oil it used to be, it has been reformulated and made cheaper. I will never use it again in anything.