Rand, that is very cool of you to be willing to ship some oil. At least for now, I don’t want to do sign up for doing any testing. I might be willing to in the not-too-distant future. I’ll let you know if I’d like a sample. The Motul 300V intrigues me simply because it is the Rolex of motor oils in terms of cost.
It would be great if other members did some testing. It would be both fun and informative. The testing I’ve shown above doesn’t require any expensive or hard to find equipment. Blow-torch, vice-grips, metal plate, and a knife is what I used. I have used an expensive electronic scale, syringes, hard-to-find aluminum and porcelain cups, thermocouple, and a toaster oven in tests years ago. That equipment set is more expensive and harder to acquire. So, are any of you willing to do some testing? You can choose your own methods. It just needs to done carefully and consistent enough and be able to differentiate performance between some oils. For example, subjecting oils to conditions that turns every one of them into complete char can’t differentiate them. Neither can trying to have the oils attempt to dissolve deposits that are impossibly difficult to dissolve.
I plan to do a few more tests like the type I showed results for above. I do want to see if adding 10% ester to 90% Mobil 1 0W-20 EP improves its ability to dissolve the varnish. If synergy happens and it performs as well as Amsoil SS and Castrol 0W-40, it perhaps indicates an antidote to that particular Mobil 1’s weakness in the cleaning category. If it still doesn’t perform as the other two oils did, perhaps it indicates a limitation with its detergents and/or dispersants. I am also curious how Pennzoil Platinum performs.
I did do a different test but I concluded that there was too much variability in it to be useful. Used syringe to put equal volumes of Mobil 1 0W-20 EP in two aluminum cups. Needle-nose pliars held the two cups side by side while I heated them very rapidly from below with a blow torch. Combustion happened after around 10 to 15 seconds and I kept the blow torch on them until all smoking ceased. The combustion was very sooty and air drafts blew the flames in all directions. The deposits were very inconsistent between the two cups. After cool-down, added equal volumes of M1 and Amsoil to the separate cups and let them sit for 24 hours, occasionally bringing the temperature up to around 140 F. The carbon-covered ash deposits were largely loosened from the cups’ surfaces while the other deposits were so thoroughly hardened that neither oil could dissolve them. Too much variability between the cups’s deposits and the deposits were either undissolvable or too easily dislodged, depending on their type.
I have plans for a different test that tests the oil’s ability to keep surfaces clean while mixed with gasoline and a small amount of water. The gasoline has poor oxidative stability and will first stress the oils’ antioxidants and then when they deplete enough, the detergents and dispersants will be stressed because of the polar reaction products that are building up. The base oils will then also be stressed because of the depleted antioxidants, which are the protectors of the base oils. Water has a devastating effect on the additives and the base oils. It is well known by experts and I observed it in tests I did years ago. Water is a catalyst for a variety of undesirable reactions. Why include water? It is a product of combustion, so our motor oils have to endure its effects, particularly the oil in the ring packs.
