Originally Posted By: jrustles
Originally Posted By: DragRace
Originally Posted By: Ben99GT
Hope the Pennzoil Ultra can clean up all those Red Line deposits on my pistons!
With that said, I fairly recently tore down my old 4.6 4V short block which spent most of its life on Red Line. Pistons were immaculate, cylinder walls were essentially wear free, in fact everything in the engine, including the interior surfaces of the aluminum block, main/rod bearings,
everything could have passed for a 1,000 mile engine even to a trained eye.
Red Line sucks.
Yeah,this weekend,I'll have to let a few people know Redline oil is no good.I've seen a motor just get put back together a week ago that has run Redline in their 406 powered nova since the motor was first installed 2 years ago. Every time I've seen it torn down after racing season was over,it was in awsome shape from the way the bearings looked,cylinder walls,etc etc.
Yup,I agree time to look for alternatives.
Wait guise!!1 But the TEOST test proved beyond a shadow of a doubt how garbage RL is!! Sure, they tested a isngle viscosity, single batch, but that translates to the entire RL lineup and for past, present and future but do you think your, our and a plethora of professional racers' real world results really matter? It's probably placebo effect. The sludge is probably the same colour of fresh aluminum, so you can't really tell just by eyeballing it. Trust the professionals, trust this one single test. Also, run something trusted and tested for over 50 years,
Mobil 1 instead. It's #1, yknow
Seriously, reading this thread it really seems like a bashfest on Redline. Regardless of the validity of the test (not the procedure, but the specific test, including all interests involved and their interpretation of the results), they tested one grade and one batch.
Now, we have this supposedly "GrV" ester high performance oil failing deposit tests. Let us put this in perspective. What failed? At what level is the failure? Was it a bad batch of base stock? Who supplies RL ester base stocks- last I checked it was XOM. Was it defective? Is there something about the manner in which Redline formulates their 5w30 specifically? What was the viscometry of the base oils used? Do esters just perform badly in high temperatures? Did either batch not meet specifications? Did one or both BARELY meet specification (considered an overall pass)? Is the problem not at the supplier level, and at Redline's? Is it poor blending chemistry? Are they using inferior VMs? Are they using inferior AOs or AO levels?
What about the nature of the "deposits". Do ester 'deposits' weigh more, like ester fluids do relative to other common base stocks? Were deposits affected by the high level of sulfated additives? Were the deposits more polar, and thus more likely to stick to the rod, increasing weight? How about the nature of the deposits, were they hard abrasive coke or just simply very thickened oil with a strong surface tension on the rod? "Wet" deposits would weigh more than dry, coked deposits, so were the characteristics of the deposit material among all of the subjects similar, or different (ie coke on some, sticky sludge on others)? Are any differences in the deposit characteristics recorded?
To think that with so much information missing, and all of these unanswered questions, that we can unequivocally bash the company's entire product lineup based on ONE TEST? That's ridiculous.
Right, one test is no test, but there is insight to be gained here, and one must keep it in perspective. Most on here have daily drivers they are trying to protect, not a 409 Nova race car. Many here are fooled by the "have to have Grp IV or V basestock" arguments. But to throw in "bad batch" and all this other stuff as apologetics is just as ridiculous as reading into too much on this, or to demanding some basestock as the end-all, be all for blending oils.
There is lots of silliness in the decision process for selecting a fully formulated, test-approved lube oil. The fact that this oil is sold as being superior both in design and basestock, has the "superior" group V base, and cant meet this is useful insight. To me it just implies what ive found with use of their other lubes - they arent necessarily as great as some make them out to be. What that means practically is TBD. But to make arguments for the oil is as silly as to make arguments against it for one test. The result, though, may well be telling all the same...
