ECP oil

[skyship007]

Originally Posted by Munro83

Ok right now I'm.confused- my car is away to turn 100k and does have a DPF
Are you saying I should stick to the 18k/2yr oil change?
And castrol is no better than shell helix? Ow40?
If money was no problem which oil should we all be using?

I would change the oil only at half the recommended max (It says something rather big like 30K km) for an older engine, then change both oil AND filter at the recommended max.

Castrol Edge is defintely no better than Shell Helix ULTRA (Helix is the name of the series). The one on special offer is the 5w40 (A3/B4) at present, although they do make a 0w40 and a 0w30 Ultra.

If money was no object I would use a Gen Volvo oil filter and the recommended Liqui Moly Synthoil plus half a can of Ceratec. Always check their oil guide page for engine specific rec's:
http://www.liqui-moly.com/liquimoly/...oil_guide.html

Shell oil finder page:
http://lubematch.shell.com/gb/en_GB/browse/cars

Note: Shell tend not to recommend Ultra for some older diesels, as it is something of a loss leader in cost terms. They often just list a cheaper Helix HX7 10w40 that is similar to Castrol Magnetec 10w40.

PS: My idea of major brand oil companies includes Liqui Moly (Owned by ***hs), Shell, Mobil and Castrol. For cheap high mileage oil I would also include Valvoline.
The only company that has had quality issues (Motorbike oils) and recall notices is Castrol who are owned by BP. BP also own Aral who do stupidly expensive oils for fuel station shops.
Not seen an oil with a Texaco label for sale in Germany and their web site lists mostly Havoline oils, which are perfectly good but expensive.
Shell is a tough company to beat in cost vs performance terms, which is why I have given up on LM Synthoil (Unless I see a good special offer) and moved fully into the Ultra camp.

One thing I don't like about non major brand engine oil companies is that some of their web sites are biased and tend to list their most expensive oil only in the oil finder/guides, even if it is not in a sensible SAE group.
Oddly enough Halfrauds even had a 15w40 listed for my old diesel, which is kind of thick stuff in winter, unless you are talking about the middle East. Nothing beats a fully synthetic 15w40 for hot desert operations, although only Amsoil make one at present.

[Munro83]

Thanks- really interesting.
Will keep this in mind when the v70 is In for its 108k service.

[skyship007]

Originally Posted by bottlestop

Worth buying skyship?
http://www.eurocarparts.com/ecp/p/ca...2241&0&cc5_247

Yes if your handbook says the oil must be an Acea C3. They are good for diesels with a DPF that don't list A3/B4 or another Acea cat.

What did the Shell oil guide web page list in terms of the required Acea cat ??

There does seem to be some real good special offers for several different Shell oils at present.

[Backhill1]

Originally Posted by skyship007

You need to read more about turbo bearing and HG or VVT unit failures, not main block wear rates, as they are more informative in oil related terms.

I would never recommend using an oil additive that contains detergents, although they do exist. Oddly enough top up oil during a service interval has a similar effect, as it tops up the oil with new active detergent additives that will help keep the Carbon from clumping and keep the oil cleaning. The secondary effect of detergents is to reduce corrosion and they do not interfere with anti-foaming agents. The only downside is inteference with the combined Mo/Zn/Bn layer during the first 1K miles on new oil.

Oddly enough viscosity improvers are more of a negative in wear terms, as an oil with a difference of more than 40 between the lower and upper figures does not last as long. That's why 5w40 makes more sense than an 0w40 for some non Artic use engines and why 10w50 or 60's should be regarded as race oils fit for shorter oil change intervals.

Engine manufacturers do not tell the truth in general, cos their advice is based on using an oil that gives the best fuel economy, NOT the lowest wear rates. They also do not provide advice after the warranty period is over, although some oil finder pages of the big oil company web sites do.
They are also governed by the fact that the car dealers want to do the minimum possible number of oil changes, so they almost never recommend a severe service interval or changing manual gearbox oil.
The box oils they recommend are also spec for max fuel economy, so tend to be a bit thin for hot and heavy towing in summer.

Blackstone Lab in the US is far cheaper than any EU Lab that has both a full data base of average figures for many different engines AND makes sensible comments with a report.
They charge 25 usd (Plus about 4 quid postage) and send free sample kits. Only downside is they charge another 10usd if you want the TBN figure, which some US Labs do for free.

Skyship I have now covered over 160K with my D5 and my last sample using only the oil used by the dealer is 100%. There is no need to recommend all these snake oil additives like this Liquid Moly stuff.
In fact if was doing more miles and trying to save money by condition based monitoring my oil I think it would be good for over 25K miles and still be doing a good job so 18K or Annual is a very good and conservative routine.

As for Filters the micron rating when new will be sufficient to protect the engine and prevent any damage from debris. When the filter gets older it has more of a restriction and the DP across it will increase making the likelihood of By-pass operation more likely which is something that should be avoided.

There is only good to be had from replacing an oil filter and the thought process that in a partially dirty state it is providing more protection does not make sense. The cleaner the surface area of the filter the better the flow the less DP across it which is good for the engine.

[skyship007]

Originally Posted by Backhill1

Skyship I have now covered over 160K with my D5 and my last sample using only the oil used by the dealer is 100%. There is no need to recommend all these snake oil additives like this Liquid Moly stuff.
In fact if was doing more miles and trying to save money by condition based monitoring my oil I think it would be good for over 25K miles and still be doing a good job so 18K or Annual is a very good and conservative routine.

As for Filters the micron rating when new will be sufficient to protect the engine and prevent any damage from debris. When the filter gets older it has more of a restriction and the DP across it will increase making the likelihood of By-pass operation more likely which is something that should be avoided.

There is only good to be had from replacing an oil filter and the thought process that in a partially dirty state it is providing more protection does not make sense. The cleaner the surface area of the filter the better the flow the less DP across it which is good for the engine.

I never use oil from the dealers as they downgraded it from Castrol Edge 0w30 or 40 to Castrol Magnetec 10w40, but did not downgrade the price.
Recent tests showed that one quarter of all dealer or garage maintained vehicles have the wrong oil in them. It's either not what the receipt shows, the wrong viscosity or worst of all, the wrong Acea group. Porsche did the survey because of high turbo bearing failure rates and it turned out that many of them had cheap conventional engine oils like GTX 10w40 or Mobil 10w40, which get fried by the bearings down to too low a viscosity.

Every engine is different in terms of the ideal oil change interval, mine turned out to be much longer than I first thought, but that is because the block is real tight (One third of a liter in 10K km and some of that is an oil leak from the turbo), so not causing much blowby contamination. I'm also lucky enough to have bought the last of the non DPF diesels, so don't get any fuel contamination issues that the very occasional autobahn session does not burn off.

You don't seem to understand how an engine oil filter works, it never goes into bypass unless it blocks up (Rare) or during very cold starts (Common in winter). The few seconds of bypass that occurs during cold starts does not cause an increase in wear if you are using an oil that has a pour point more than 10c above the block temperature (0wX in the artic, 5wX up North outside or 10wX for most EU folks is OK) AND has enough Zinc anti wear additives included in the oil (Not possible if it's C3 or DPF rated).

The oil pressure when warm will be be almost constant until the oil has sheared down or been contaminated by Bio diesel enough to thin it down. Failure of the integral bypass valve in cheap oil filters can cause real trouble if the filter blocks and it can even cause oil leaks during cold starts, otherwise the wear rates go down the more dirty the filter is until the valve opens, which will be 2 or 3 times the recommended max oil change interval for a block in good condition.

No one has designed the perfect oil filter (Some truck dual units are better as they have a special ultra fine filter in addition to a normal full flow one) in performance terms and a new one will always let tiny particles of Silicon (Sand) past them, which is why the air filter performance is just as important as the oil filter.

I'm doing an experiment at present with LM Ceratec and Synthoil to see if it can beat the used oil figures for both fuel economy and wear particles in the used oil. The Synthoil produced the same results as Shell Ultra which did surprise me, as it's a more expensive oil at present.

Bobs the Oil Guy forum has a lot of good info on Ceratec, although many posters forget it has 2 components and already includes Moly(Mo) in addition to the hexagonal form of Boron Nitride ceramic particles (Too small for even a dirty filter to stop) that are real good news in older engines. Alas it's in short supply, so there are few special offers in Fleabay (18.50 Euros inc postage over here).

[skyship007]

This article about oil filters and why basic car ones are not too good is interesting and easy to understand:
http://www.machinerylubrication.com/...ass-filtration

You can fit a dual filter bypass unit to a car diesel, but in most cases it would require the battery be moved to the boot so that the ultra fine filter and associated valve can use the same location, which would make it easy to access. The fine filter needs changing much more often than the full flow one.

The engine oil life would be extended, although most modern trucks do condition based oil changes due to the amount involved (Often 20 to 30 liters).
For a truck doing mostly long trips that might mean oil changes every 100K km, rather than 30K km, BUT the ultra fine filter would probably need changing every 50K km. The transmission fluid and filter for the modern ZF boxes also needs doing every 100K km, so both fluid changes are normally done together. The normal full flow filter is also changed at the same time.

The only reduction in flow rates with a good quality full flow filter is caused by the oil pump inlet screen in the sump sludging up and cavitating, OR longer term varnish deposits in the oil galleries after the pump. Those deposits are caused by bad oil or overheating and play a big part in both turbo bearing and head gasket failures.

[Backhill1]

Skyship you would be shocked how long cold engines sit in by-pass and I do fully understand how engine filtration systems work.
I have recorded by-pass times in certain applications in excess of 2 minutes on some engines hence why cold short running does so much damage.

The cleaner the filter the less the restriction agreed?
The less the restriction the less the DP is?
The lower the DP the less likely by pass will happen or duration reduced?

Hence the cleaner the filter the better?

This is my logic and that shared of most engine manufacturers hence the introduction of supplementary by-pass filtration and centrifugal filters on engines to make sure the oil in the sump is as clean as possible reducing the risk under these circumstances.

[GP1]

Originally Posted by skyship007

Castrol Edge is defintely no better than Shell Helix

That's somewhat of an understatement..

[skyship007]

Originally Posted by Backhill1

Skyship you would be shocked how long cold engines sit in by-pass and I do fully understand how engine filtration systems work.
I have recorded by-pass times in certain applications in excess of 2 minutes on some engines hence why cold short running does so much damage.

The cleaner the filter the less the restriction agreed?
The less the restriction the less the DP is?
The lower the DP the less likely by pass will happen or duration reduced?

Hence the cleaner the filter the better?

This is my logic and that shared of most engine manufacturers hence the introduction of supplementary by-pass filtration and centrifugal filters on engines to make sure the oil in the sump is as clean as possible reducing the risk under these circumstances.

How long the oil bypass valve opens depends on a lot of different factors, but in most cases it's only a few seconds IF the oil is of the correct type. It makes very little difference in engine wear terms unless the oil is too cold to flow around the top end. Just to confuse matters most TD oil filters are in partial bypass all the time at high revs. So the time quoted depends on how you define open.

No normal full flow filter works well when clean, that's why they introduced dual units with an ultra fine secondary. If you ask on Bobs The Oil Guy forum they should have some wear particle rate graphs showing just how bad the first 1000 miles is with a new air or oil filter, although it does depend on if you pre fill a new oil filter. If you do prefill a new oil filter, then the initial efficiency is much better and often turns out to be similar to the efficiency of a dirty filter. Alas it's not possible to prefill a side on spin on oil filter.

Oddly enough one thing I learnt there recently was that the initial TBN of oils approved for DPF diesels has to be restricted to help reduce the ash factor. I thought they only reduced the Zinc content, so those oils are worse than I first thought at cleaning as they contain less detergent additives.
The TBN (Total base number, which gives a very good idea of how well the oil will clean and how long it will last) of a good 15w40 HDEO is around 12. A standard Acea A3/B4 5w40 will be around 9 to 10, BUT I've seen some C3 and E cat oils that are in the 7 or 8 area. Once you get down into the lower initial TBN figures, the solvent effects of the base stock become far more important and this is where both Shell Ultra (Made from natural gas) and the more expensive German Synthoils do so well in UOA results.

[skyship007]

Originally Posted by GP1

That's somewhat of an understatement..

SHELL ULTRA (Helix is the range)!

http://www.shell.com/motorist/oils-l...tra-5w-40.html

The bad news is that the 0w40 (A3/B4) is slightly more expensive than the 5w40 and that was the one that shocked both Mobil and Castrol:

Shell Helix Ultra 5W-40 provides:
■Unsurpassed sludge protection – no other motor oil can keep your engine closer to factory clean 1
■Exceptional protection and cleansing, even at the longest manufacturer-recommended oil-drain intervals
■Approved for use by numerous makers of high-performance vehicles and is the only motor oil used by Ferrari

Specifications: API SN/CF; ACEA A3/B3, A3/B4; BMW LL-01; MB approval 229.5, 226.5; VW 502.00/505.00; Porsche A40; Renault RN0700, RN0710; PSA B71 2296, Ferrari. Meets the requirements of Fiat 9.55535-Z2 and Chrysler MS-10725
1 Based on Sequence VG sludge test results using 0W-40
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