The industry (except for a couple of blenders and snake oil salesman) consider that test, and the four ball (and certainly 540Rat and his silly assertions) has no relevance to the certification of engine oils.
Surely, if they could gain anything in terms of meeting the life cycle objectives of the engines that they are selling, then either the one armed bandit or the four ball would be part of the SAE/API/ACEA sequencing. Rather than the very expensive to run Sequence IVA.
How's that for scientific ?
If it worked, why all the palaver with the expensive tests ?
As to how you are supposed to carry something around to show people something...if you are showing them something that's zero relevance to their cost of ownership in terms of engine life, claiming that it IS representative or relevant, and all it effectively does is lighten their wallet then that's charlatanism ...not "science".
What's worse than those who are duped by the machines are the "want to believers", who refuse to understand why it's not representative...they want to be convinced that they are doing the right thing,(even when you point out the SAE statements for what they declare them relevant for...and the repeatability/reproducibility...that's science..they reject it for "feeling" like science)..then set out to convince more people to be duped...just like those that try to jam "Awaken" under my door, or sell their message to my kids...it's the same mental process.
Those who claim that their fairground tests prove anything related to engine oil are the lowest of the low, especially if they are the ones AT the fairground duping the gullible.
I was commissioning an MDF factory back in the '90s, when one of the snake oil companies came to town to convince the purchasing department that their one armed bandit proved how inferior their stock grease actually was...I grabbed a tube of the high end rolling press grease, and they cried foul, and that it wasn't representative of "normal" product...
