Originally Posted By: JonfromCB
Not trying to be flippant. I asked why a 20% PAO blend simply to find out how you might answer being a tribologist.
A common reason for a 20% PAO in the base blend would be because the base is primarily Esters.
The information I was given by Spectro and Liqui-Moly is that 5w40, MA2 oils from both companies are 100% PAO base oils with no moly' in either....as I said earlier in post
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in regards to MA2 oils. MA2 requirements originated out of the new European motorcycle standards, a small part of which are emission standards up to 10 times more stringent starting model year 2017 and increasing over the next three model years. The standards include exhaust noise limits, increased gas mileage requirements, Mechanical noise limits from the engine and transmission, tire/road noise limits. In short, shared sump machines required use of some new materials, including clutch materials in order to reduce what are now greatly reduced emission particles. One of those changes brought new clutch materials and coatings into being. Moly was also an easy emission particle to eliminate in addition to it's corrosive effect to new coatings and materials. New oil with a new clutch friction coefficient was needed...hence MA2 and a new class of oils unique to shared sump motorcycles meeting the new Euro standards.
Most of the US sourced MA2 oils listed in post are no longer available as they were unable to meet EU emission requirements.
Sorry if my response came off as combative or defensive as that wasn't my intention. I am just asking questions.
As I said, I don't know their formulations, so they very well may be all PAO, I just didn't see the evidence myself, so I was trying to find out where the information came from. I missed that they specifically said the products were 100% PAO in your previous post, and I have absolutely no reason to believe that isn't true, so that is certainly good enough for me on that front.
As a tribologist, the reason to have a base oil blend with 20% PAO would be for performance. If I were trying to gain a specific performance level, especially a 5W rating, 20% PAO should be enough PAO added to a group III blend to attain the low temperature performance I needed without increasing cost too much. For a 5W-40 semi-synthetic I would say that was just about the perfect ratio of PAO to group II or III.