Originally Posted By: Gokhan
No, you're way behind the times with regards to the modern advances in the moly technology. Antiwear/extreme pressure benefits of trinuclear moly saturate around 50 ppm in Sequence IVA tests.
I'm not behind; I'm aware of trimer moly. You're reading too much into this. That's a tantalising little piece of information, but that's all it is. It's not a study; it's a slide from a presentation. What oil were they using? What viscosity? Was it even a fully formulated oil? Given that moly is syngergistic, and we're only looking at one very singular circumstance here (with many unknown variables), we had better not draw too much out of this. Where are the error bars? Do we see this wear reduction in any oil chemistry? At any temperature? Or only at Sequence IVA temperatures? So, I'm calling it a friction modifier at this concentration, at least until I see a little more information. That's not a bad thing. There's value in that. It's also interesting to note I haven't seen any specialised break in lubes forego ZDDP for tiny doses of trinuclear moly, either.
Now, noting the problems with Lubrizol's sales pitch (not a study), we're also stuck with the idea that there's more than one way to skin a cat. If one lubricant has trimer moly, that automatically means it's a better lubricant than the competitor with the same specifications that uses an alternative friction modification technology? While I think it's great if a lubricant is using trimer (we don't know that it is for certain, but I'd grant the probability is there in the Mobil), I don't wish to pick a lubricant by one ingredient.
You're going too far into the base stock matters, too. Before, it was certainly Group II, now certainly Group I? Let it go. We don't know what base stock it is; all we really know here is that one Mobil batch that Shell tested failed some testing. I'm not about to condemn one brand or an entire class of lubricants based upon it. I'm just glad the oil companies check up on each other.