Feedback on Kixx

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Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
A little background here. I'm an American expat living in Kyrgyzstan. I own and run a car rental company here. We have been using Total full synthetic 5/30 and 5/40 for various vehicles (Ford Ranger, UAZ Patriot, etc). Those cars serviced with Total are frequently developing engine problems before 100,000 km including cylinder damage, main bearings, and similar faults that can be attributed to oil quality. We are using OE filters (except UAZ, we use better than OE) and doing oil changes with full synthetic every 7500 km. Our Renault Dusters were serviced at a different shop and used a couple different oils (shop didn't always specify) including Elf (owned by Total) from a different distributor. We have had 0 instances of major engine problems with the Renaults. My conclusion is that the Russian Total Oil supply has a quality problem, or it's being substituted with junk oil somewhere in the supply chain. This has led us to open our own shop and we're looking to purchase oil. I can get Liqui Moly, but for fleet use it's expensive and ordering a barrel takes several months. Naturally I want to stay away from Total products. Castrol is distributed by the same company as Total, making it suspect. That leaves us with Addinol, Kixx, and a limited supply of Valvoline. I'm leaning toward Kixx as the distributor brings it directly from Korea and it is economically priced. Thoughts? Experience? Research? The internet isn't much help in English or in Russian.
 
Would be handy if you were to send the Total oil in for a used oil analysis (UOA) Unless you run two identical cars one with Total and one with another type of oil, it will be difficult to point fingers.
 
Originally Posted By: Rolla07
Would be handy if you were to send the Total oil in for a used oil analysis (UOA) Unless you run two identical cars one with Total and one with another type of oil, it will be difficult to point fingers.


Unfortunately we don't have any such facility here. What I have is two engines (one 2014 Ford Ranger 2.2 TDCI with 130,000 km and on 2016 UAZ Patriot with 39,000 km) with low compression (rings/cylinders), one 2014 Ford Ranger 2.5 gasoline engine with damaged crank and valves (60,000 km), one 2012 Ford Ranger with around 80,000 km with damaged crank bearings. These were all serviced with Total oil. The same Russian distributor ships castrol here (which we their gear oil for transmissions) and I have two transmissions (one UAZ Hunter one Ford Ranger with failed bearings. This is after meeting or exceeding all change intervals. This is out of a fleet of 3 Ford Rangers, 4 UAZ Patriots, and 2 UAZ Hunters. Should add the UAZ vehicles had three failed timing chains this year and the Fords had 1 failed timing chain and 1 turbo as well. In my opinion there is no way that this is normal!

One follow up question about Kixx, in their G1 series they have almost only API ratings (mostly SN), but not ACEA A3/B4. I need to meet Renault RN0700 if I want to switch over the Renaults to this oil. I've read it's mostly the same as ACEA A3/B4. At what point is oil oil? or is there that large a difference between SN and A3/B4?

Thanks guys! Dealing with a limited number of supply options is frustrating. Don't get me started on tires!
 
Perhaps the oil companies should be alerted if there's a concern you've been receiving the wrong or a counterfeit product.

There is a large difference between SN and A3/B4, and there isn't. The specs can coexist, but won't on a 30 grade, and may on a 40 grade. Without knowing more, it's really hard to answer.
 
Given the choice between a supplier who's cooking Ford Rangers (is that the nearly indestructible Lima/Pinto engine?) with what appears to be counterfeit oil and (hopefully) a controlled supplier who's selling (PAO?) oil from GS Caltex, a company with part Chevron ownership, you even have to ask? You have strong evidence that the Total isn't Total. Seems like your supply chain is everything here, if the Kixx is really Kixx, I think you've answered your question.
 
From what I have read, counterfeiting is huge in that region in pretty much everything. It’s really a card toss sometimes especially when there is no oversight or few dependable sources. China and SE Asia have similar problems but maybe not as severe.
 
Last edited:
Go with the Castrol oil for the time being while
looking for other sources. A UOA wouldn't hurt, at least
you'd know.
Make sure the containers of Castrol are sealed.


My 2¢
 
Originally Posted By: dwendt44
Go with the Castrol oil for the time being while
looking for other sources. A UOA wouldn't hurt, at least
you'd know.
Make sure the containers of Castrol are sealed.


My 2¢


Sealed aside. If the same company is distributing Total AND Castrol IMO that would be suspect. Nothing wrong with Korean synthetic oil production. Chevron owns part of Kixx, Conoco Phillips has an interest in Korean syn that finds its way back into their product. In Central Asia, I imagine, distribution is everything. It might all be bogus.
 
I doubt that an engine can just fail from an oil related problem without any visible and heavy deposits inside the engine. I would suspect bad fuel first. If gasoline is diluted with diesel this may cause severe oil thinning as diesel fuel doesn't burn well and finds it's way to the crank case. Also do you really need 5W-xx oils in the subtropics? I bet that 10W-40 would be a lot safer from any point of view. Slightly thicker, cheaper and the chances to get a counterfeit oil much lower.
 
Thanks for all the great feedback guys! I joined a while ago so I could use the search function and this is my first post, the responses have been helpful. If I were to find a lab, can I send freshly purchased oil to see if it matches the manufactures' claims?

Regarding oil thinning, that's a potentially fair point. However, only two out of the listed failures were on diesels, the rest are gasoline engines. It could be a contributing factor and would indicate I made the right move in phasing out diesels from our fleet. Csandste, it's the Puma engine, the gasoline Ranger is the 5V-LE (if I remember correctly) Mazda engine, and the UAZ products have the ZMZ-409 2.7 gasoline engine (one of the best ZMZ engines in my opinion, though they aren't going to win any world records).

Yeah, counterfeiting is a huge problem. The supply chain for Total/Elf/Castrol is a factory (I think in Russia) to a Russian distributor to a Kyrgyz distributor to the shop we were using. We were going to one of the largest, cleanest shops in the city, hardly shady. The Renault dealer here uses Elf and hasn't seen any problems yet, so it could be at the Kyrgyz distributor or local shop level. Kixx is a direct supply from the factory in Korea and I can inspect the shipping documents. Not impossible to counterfeit, but harder.

Regarding 5w vs 10w...we are actually in a sharp continental climate. It was -7C when I left for the office this morning. Our fleet will see temperatures as low as -35C on occasion during the winter. The motorcyclist in me wishes it was the sub-tropics! Here's a picture from my drive to work this morning.


In the short term till I settle supply, I'm using Mobil1 from a shop who claims to import it from Europe. A touch pricey, but should be ok. Long term I need to reduce costs because we'll use a minimum of 800 liters per year of motor oil, at least 200 liters per year of gear oil, and another 100 liters of ATF. I'm meeting the head sales guy for Kixx today, so I'll push and see if they can supply us with ACEA A3/B4 at least for our Renault engines. The UAZ/ZMZ engines should be fine with API SN (the manual lists old ACEA standards or API SG or higher).

I think the shops get away with the counterfeit oil because it doesn't show up as clearly with the normal driver. But the average car in Kyrgyzstan is 10-15 years old imported from Japan or Europe. These cars arrive with 150-200k KM on the odometer. The average driver probably drives around 15,000-20,000 km per year maximum. This means that these older designed engines which are already more tolerant of oil quality than our brand new Euro5 engines don't notice the low quality as much. Then by time failures do start happening it's easy to blame the age of the engine rather than the oil.
 
As an update I've verified the import and export documents for the company's oil supply that's distributing Kixx. They are offering pretty good pricing and seem to be on the up and up. Now working on sourcing filters. Looks like we'll be going with Hengst and Filtron. While Filtron is now owned by Mann, they have their own distribution network. Mann is imported by the Total/Elf/Castrol company, so trying to just avoid them completely. Between Hengst and Filtron I think we'll be able to cover our fleet...even our more unusual cars.

Also hear there's a lab in Almaty, Kazakhstan that can do oil samples. Hoping to find out and send some samples up there.
 
Originally Posted By: P8bsgOy
Originally Posted By: CT8
This website link may be of help or at least a good start. LINK


This is interesting; hard to decipher.


Yeah, I read Russian, but couldn't figure out the exact method and aims of the tests. Anyway, did our first few fills with Kixx and so far no consumption or problems showing up.
 
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