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Oil Cans

2:50 am by digitalmbul in Automotive

How much do you value the engine in your car? Think about it, because the
life of your engine depends in no small part on the quality of the oil you
put in it. Oil is the lifeblood of your car’s engine. From the mid 80′s for
8 or 9 years there was a veritable revolution in car engine oil. All oils
are no longer the same. Thanks to the increased popularity of sporty GTi’s,
16 valve engines and turbos in those years, in combination with the
devastating problems of black death, the days of one oil catering for
everyone were over.
Take Castrol for example. They led the field for years with GTX. This was
surpassed a few years back by semi-synthetic and fully synthetic oils,
including GTX2 and GTX3 Lightec. Now, that’s been surpassed by Formula SLX
which will cost upwards of £50 ($75) for 5 litres. And most recently,
Castrol GTX Magnatec which is muscling in on the hitherto separate world of
friction reducers (and we’ll deal with them later, on the additives page.).
What does my oil actually do?

An engine oil’s job is primarily to stop all the metal surfaces in your
engine from grinding together and tearing themselves apart from friction,
and dissipating the heat generated from this process. It also transfers
heat away from the combustion cycle and must be able to hold in suspension
the nasty by-products of fuel combustion, such as silica (silicon oxide)
and acids. It cleans the engine of such chemicals and buildups, and keeps
the moving parts coated in oil. Doing this helps minimise exposure to
oxygen and thus oxidation at higher temperatures. It does all of these
things under tremendous heat and pressure and for the most part without
succumbing to fatigue or black death, the ultimate engine destroyer.
What the heck was Black Death?

Black death first appeared in the early 80′s when a horrible sticky black
substance was found to be the cause of many engine seizures in Europe. Many
engines were affected but Ford and Vauxhall (GM) suffered the most. Faster
roads, higher under-hood temperatures, tighter engineering tolerances and
overworked engine oils turned out to be contributors to the problem. The
oils just couldn’t handle it and changed their chemical makeup under
pressure into a sort of tar-like glue. This blocked all the oil channels in
the engines, starved them of lubrication and caused them to seize. This
could all happen in a matter of minutes. I don’t recommend this but you can
reproduce the effect with a frying pan, cooking oil and a blowtorch. The
cooking oil will heat up far quicker than it’s designed to and will turn to
a sticky black tar in your pan. Either that or it will set fire to your
kitchen, which is why I said “don’t do this”.
Anyway, burning kitchens aside, Black Death was the catalyst for the
production of newer higher quality oils, many of them man-made rather than
mineral-based.
Black death for the 21st century
sludge

There’s a snappy new moniker for black death now, and it’s called sludge.
The cause is the same as black death and it seems to be regardless of
maintenance or mileage. The chemical compounds in engine oils break down
over time due to prolonged exposure to high temperatures and poor
maintenance habits. When the oil oxidises, the additives separate from the
oil and begin to chemically break down and solidify, leading to the
baked-on oil deposits turning gelatinous, and that nasty compound is what
is lovingly referred to nowadays as sludge. It’s like black yoghurt. What
doesn’t help is that modern engines, due to packaging, have smaller sumps
than in the “good old days” and so hold less oil. This means that the oil
that is present in the engine can’t hold as much crap (for want of a better
word) and can lead to earlier chemical breakdown.
The most common factor in sludge buildup is mineral oils combined with a
lack of maintenance by the car owner combined with harsh driving
conditions. But this isn’t true in all cases. For some reason, a 2005
Consumer Reports article discovered that some engines from Audi, Chrysler,
Saab, Toyota, and Volkswagen appear prone to sludge almost no matter how
often the oil is changed.
What does sludge look like?

I was contacted by a BMW driver who’s been having a particularly harsh time
with sludge and has been discussing it on the Bimmerfest forums. He posted
some images of his problem and other readers posted similarly-framed images
of the same engine components in “normal” condition. Below are two of those
photos. On the left is what the cam case should look like in a well
maintained engine when photographed through the oil filler cap. On the
right is what the same type of engine looks like when suffering sludge
buildup.
sludgesludge

In this example, the consensus was that the sludge buildup was caused by an
overheating engine, oil that hadn’t been changed for 20,000 miles of
stop-go city driving, a lot of cold starts and a period of about 12 months
in storage without an oil change. Most of this happened before the current
owner got it.
Curing sludge

There’s no hard and fast rules for curing an engine of sludge buildup. If
it’s really bad, flushing the engine might be the only cure, but that could
also cause even more problems. If flushing the engine results in bits of
sludge getting lodged where they can do more damage, you’re actually worse
off.
It’s interesting to note that some race techs have reported sludge buildup
in race engines as a result of aftermarket additives being used in
conjunction with the regular oil. The chemical composition of the additives
isn’t as neutral as some companies would lead us to believe, and combined
with particular types of oil and high-stress driving, they can cause oil
breakdown and sludge to appear. The lesson from them appears to be “don’t
use additives”.
When is sludge not sludge?

combustion leak tester Easy. When it’s an oil and water emulsion from a
leaking or blown head gasket. If this happens, you get a whitish cream
coloured sludge on the inside of the oil filler cap. The filler cap is
typically cooler than the rest of the cam case and so the oil/water mix
tends to condense there. So if you take the oil filler cap off and it looks
like it’s covered in vanilla yoghurt or mayonnaise, you’ve got a blown head
gasket. A surefire way to confirm this is if your oil level is going up and
your coolant level is going down. The coolant is getting through the breaks
in the head gasket and mixing with the oil. When it gets to the sump it
separates out and the oil floats on top. A slightly more accurate way to
check for this condition is to use a combustion leak tester, or block
tester. If you’re in America, NAPA sell them for about $45 (part #BK
7001006). If you’re in England, Sealey sell them for about £70 (model
number VS0061). Combustion leak testers are basically a turkey baster
filled with PH liquid, with a non-return valve at the bottom. To use one,
run your engine for a few minutes until its warm (not hot) then turn it
off. Use a protective glove (like an oven glove) and take the radiator or
reservoir cap off. Plug the bottom of the combustion leak tester into the
hole and squeeze the rubber bulb on top. It will suck air from the top of
the coolant through the non-return valve and bubble it through the PH
liquid. If the liquid changes colour (normally blue to yellow), it means
there is combustion gas in the coolant, which means a head gasket leak.
There is one other possible cause for this yellow goop : a blocked
scavenger hose. Most engines have a hose which comes off the cam cover and
returns to the engine block somewhere via a vacuum line. This is the
scavenger hose which scavenges oil vapour and gasses that build up in the
cam cover. If it’s blocked you can end up with a buildup of condensation
inside the cam cover, which can manifest itself as the yellow goop inside
the filler cap.
VW / Audi sludge problems

While the the 1.8T engines in Audi A4′s, Audi TT, VW Passat, Jetta, Golf,
New Bettle, are all very prone to sludge build-up, Audi/VW does not have an
extended warranty for them from the factory. The factory warranty is 4
year/50,000 miles but it can be extended if purchased.
Although Audi/VW now has 10,000 mile service intervals, oil changes can be
done between “services”, and should be done if the vehicle is driven in
heavy traffic, offroad, and non-highway use. Also, Audi/ VW will only
warrant an engine if the customer has proof of all their oil changes. As of
2004 I belive all 1.8T engines must use synthetic oil.
So if you own one of these sludge-prone engines, what can you do?
Obviously, Volkswagen Audi Group (VAG) recommends that you use only VW/AUDI
recommended oil which at the time of writing is Castrol Syntec 5W-40. You
should also keep up on your oil changes, making them more frequent if you
drive hard or haul a lot of cargo. The most important thing for the VW or
Audi owner is this: if the oil light comes on and beeps the high pitch beep
that most everyone ignores, pull over and shut the engine down immediately.
Many VAG engines can be saved by this procedure. Have the vehicled towed to
a VAG dealer. Their standard procedure is to inspect the cam bearings; if
they’re not scored, the oil pan will be removed and cleaned out and all the
crankcase breather hoses and the oil pickup tube will be replaced. They’ll
do an oil pressure test with a mechanical gauge, and hopefully will also
replace the turbo lines. Finally, the turbo will be checked for bearing
free-play. The VAG turbos run really hot even with proper oil and coolant
supply – that’s why you need a good quality synthetic in them.
Toyota sludge problems

For their part, Toyota have the dubious honour of having the most
complaints about sludge buildup in their engines – 3,400 at the last count.
At the time of writing there is a class action suit going on against them.
Details can be found at www.oilgelsettlement.com
Saab sludge problems

For an example of sludge in a Saab 9 5 Aero with only 42,000 miles on it,
you might be interested to read my case study on this engine, put together
with the help of a reader. Our sludge case study.
Mineral or synthetic?

Mineral oils are based on oil that comes from dear old Mother Earth which
has been refined. Synthetic oils are entirely concocted by chemists wearing
white lab coats in oil company laboratories. For more info, see the section
on synthetics further down the page. The only other type is semi-synthetic,
sometimes called premium, which is a blend of the two. It is safe to mix
the different types, but it’s wiser to switch completely to a new type
rather than mixing.
Synthetics

Despite their name, most synthetic derived motor oils (ie Mobil 1, Castrol
Formula RS etc ) are actually derived from mineral oils – they are mostly
Polyalphaolifins and these come from the purest part of the mineral oil
refraction process, the gas. PAO oils will mix with normal mineral oils
which means Joe public can add synthetic to his mineral, or mineral to his
synthetic without his car engine seizing up. The most stable bases are
polyol-ester (not polyester, you fool). When I say ‘stable’ I mean ‘less
likely to react adversely with other compounds.’ Synthetic oil bases tend
not to contain reactive carbon atoms for this reason. Reactive carbon has a
tendency to combine with oxygen creating an acid. As you can imagine, in an
oil, this would be A Bad Thing. So think of synthetic oils as custom-built
oils. They’re designed to do the job efficiently but without any of the
excess baggage that can accompany mineral based oils.
Pure synthetics

Pure synthetic oils (polyalkyleneglycol) are the types used almost
exclusively within the industrial sector in polyglycol gearbox oils for
heavily loaded gearboxes. These are typically concocted by intelligent
blokes in white lab coats. These chaps break apart the molecules that make
up a variety of substances, like vegetable and animal oils, and then
recombine the individual atoms that make up those molecules to build new,
synthetic molecules. This process allows the chemists to actually “fine
tune” the molecules as they build them. Clever stuff. But Polyglycols don’t
mix with normal mineral oils.

[amsoil] While we’re on synthetic oils, I should mention Amsoil. I
originally had them down as an additive. I was wrong. I’ve got to say I’ve
had no experience of the product myself so I can’t vent my spleen about it.
However, there is a particularly good page with a ton of info about it
here. I recommend you pop over and read this and see what you think.
I’ve been contacted by Amsoil themselves and asked to point out the
following:
Amsoil do NOT produce or market oil additives and do not wish to be
associated with oil additives. They are a formulator of synthetic
lubricants for automotive and industrial applications and have been in
business for 30+ years. They are not a half-hour infomercial or
fly-by-night product, nor have they ever been involved in a legal suit
regarding their product claims in that 30+ year span. Many Amsoil products
are API certified, and ALL of our products meet and in most cases exceed
the specifications of ILSAC, AGMA etc….. Their lubricants also exceed
manufacturers specifications and Amsoil are on many manufacturers approval
lists. They base their claims on ASTM certified tests and are very open to
anyone, with nothing to hide.

It turns out that Amsoil actually have the stance that they recommend
engine oil additives are NOT to be used with their products. This will
become relevant later on this page, and in the additives section. They have
a pretty good FAQ on the Amsoil website, which you can find here.
Mixing Mineral and Synthetic oils – the old and busted concepts

For the longest time, I had this to say about mixing mineral and synthetic
oils:

    * If you’ve been driving around with mineral oil in your engine for
years, don’t switch to synthetic oil without preparation. Synthetic oils
have been known to dislodge the baked-on deposits from mineral oils and
leave them floating around your engine – not good. I learned this lesson
the hard way! It’s wise to use a flushing oil first.
    * If you do decide to change, only go up the scale. If you’ve been
running around on synthetic, don’t change down to a mineral-based oil -
your engine might not be able to cope with the degradation in lubrication.
Consequently, if you’ve been using mineral oil, try a semi or a full
synthetic oil. By degradation, I’m speaking of the wear tolerances that an
engine develops based on the oil that it’s using. Thicker mineral oils mean
thicker layers of oil coating the moving parts (by microns though).
Switching to a thinner synthetic oil can cause piston rings to leak and in
some very rare cases, piston slap or crank vibration.
    * Gaskets and seals! With the makeup of synthetic oils being different
from mineral oils, mineral-oil-soaked gaskets and seals have been known to
leak when exposed to synthetic oils. Perhaps not that common an occurrence,
but worth bearing in mind nevertheless.

Mixing Mineral and Synthetic oils – the new hotness

That’s the thing with progress – stuff becomes out-of-date. Fortunately for
you, dear reader, the web is a great place to keep things up-to-date, so
here’s the current thinking on the subject of mixing mineral and synthetic
oils. This information is based on the answer to a technical question posed
on the Shell Oil website.
There is no scientific data to support the idea that mixing mineral and
synthetic oils will damage your engine. When switching from a mineral oil
to a synthetic, or vice versa, you will potentially leave a small amount of
residual oil in the engine. That’s perfectly okay because synthetic oil and
mineral-based motor oil are, for the most part, compatible with each other.
(The exception is pure synetics. Polyglycols don’t mix with normal mineral
oils.)
There is also no problem with switching back and forth between synthetic
and mineral based oils. In fact, people who are “in the know” and who
operate engines in areas where temperature fluctuations can be especially
extreme, switch from mineral oil to synthetic oil for the colder months.

They then switch back to mineral oil during the warmer months.
There was a time, years ago, when switching between synthetic oils and
mineral oils was not recommended if you had used one product or the other
for a long period of time. People experienced problems with seals leaking
and high oil consumption but changes in additive chemistry and seal
material have taken care of those issues. And that’s an important caveat.
New seal technology is great, but if you’re still driving around in a car
from the 80′s with its original seals, then this argument becomes a bit of
a moot point – your seals are still going to be subject to the old leakage
problems no matter what newfangled additives the oil companies are putting
in their products.
Flushing oils

These are special compound oils that are very, very thin. They almost have
the consistency of tap water when cold as well as hot. Typically they are
0W/20 oils. Don’t ever drive with these oils in the engine – it won’t last.
Their purpose is for cleaning out all the gunk which builds up inside an
engine. Note that Mobil1 0W40 is okay, because the ’40′ denotes that it’s
actually thick enough at temperature to work. 0W20 just doesn’t get that
viscous! To use them, drain your engine of all it’s oil, but leave the old
oil filter in place. Next fill it up with flushing oil and run it at a fast
idle for about 20 minutes. Finally, drain all this off (and marvel at the
crap that comes out with it), replace the oil filter, refill with a good
synthetic oil and voila! Clean engine.
Of course, like most things nowadays, there’s a condition attached when
using flushing oils. In an old engine you really don’t want to remove all
the deposits. Some of these deposits help seal rings, lifters and even some
of the flanges between the heads, covers, pan and the block, where the
gaskets are thin. I have heard of engines with over 280,000km that worked
fine, but when flushed it failed in a month because the blow-by past the
scraper ring(now really clean)contaminated the oil and screwed the rod
bearings.
Using Diesel oil for flushing

A question came up some time ago about using diesel-rated oils to flush out
petrol engines. The idea was that because of the higher detergent levels in
diesel engine oil, it might be a good cleaner / flusher for a non-diesel
engine. Well most of the diesel oil specification oils can be used in old
petrol engines for cleaning, but you want to use a low specification oil to
ensure that you do not over clean your engine and lose compression for
example. Generally speaking, an SAE 15W/40 diesel engine oil for about 500
miles might do the trick.
The question of phosphorus.

Phosphorus is the key component for valve train protection in an engine,
and 1600ppm (parts per million) used to be the standard for phosphorus in
engine oil. In 1996 that was dropped to 800ppm and then more recently to
400ppm – a quarter of the original spec. Valvetrains and their components
are not especially cheap to replace and this drop in phosphorus content has
been a problem for many engines. So why was the level dropped? Money. Next
to lead, it’s the second most destructive substance to shove through a
catalytic converter. The US government mandated a 150,000 mile liftime on
catalytic converters and the quickest way to do that was to drop
phosphorous levels and bugger the valvetrain problem. Literally.
In the US, Mobil 1 originally came out with the 0W40 as a ‘European
Formula’ as it was always above 1000 ppm. This initially got them out of
the 1996 800ppm jam and knowledgeable consumers sought it out for obvious
reasons. Their 15W50 has also maintained a very high level of phosphorus
and all of the extended life Mobil synthetics now have at least 1000ppm.
How do they get away with this? They’re not classified as energy/fuel
conserving oils and thus do not interfere with the precious government CAFE
(corporate average fuel economy) ratings. (See my section on the EPA and
fuel economy in the Fuel and Engine Bible for more info on this). This also
means that they don’t get the coveted ratings of other oils but they do
protect your valvetrain.
A quick guide to the different grades of oil.
Fully Synthetic     Characteristics
0W-30
0W-40
5W-40     Fuel economy savings
Enhances engine performance and power
Ensures engine is protected from wear and deposit build-up
Ensures good cold starting and quick circulation in freezing temperatures
Gets to moving parts of the engine quickly
Semi-synthetic Characteristics
5W-30
10W-40
15W-40    Better protection
Good protection within the first 10 minutes after starting out
Roughly three times better at reducing engine wear
Increased oil change intervals – don’t need to change it quite so often
Mineral   Characteristics
10W-40
15W-40    Basic protection for a variety of engines
Oil needs to be changed more often
So what should I buy?

Quality Counts! It doesn’t matter what sort of fancy marketing goes into an
engine oil, how many naked babes smear it all over their bodies, how bright
and colourful the packaging is, it’s what’s written on the packaging which
counts. Specifications and approvals are everything. There are two
established testing bodies. The API (American Petroleum Institute), and the
European counterpart, the ACEA (Association des Constructeurs Europeens
d’Automobiles – which was the CCMC). You’ve probably never heard of either
of them, but their stamp of approval will be seen on the side of every
reputable can of engine oil.

The API
    [api]The API classifications are different for petrol and diesel
engines:

        * For petrol, listings start with ‘S’ (meaning Service category,
but you can also think of it as Spark-plug ignition), followed by another
code to denote standard. ‘SM’ is the current top grade, which recently
replaced ‘SL’ and ‘SH’. ‘SH’ will be found on most expensive oils, and
almost all the new synthetics. It’s basically an upgraded ‘SG’ oil which
has been tested more sternly.
        * For diesel oils, the first letter is ‘C’ (meaning Commercial
category, but you can also think of it as Compression ignition). ‘CH’ is
the highest grade at the moment, (technically CH-4 for heavy-duty) but ‘CF’
is the most popular and is well adequate for passenger vehicle
applications.

    Note about Castrol oils: Castrol have recently upgraded all their oils
and for some reason, Castrol diesels now use the ‘S’ rating, thus
completely negating my little aid-memoir above. So the older CC,CD,CE and
CF ratings no longer exist, but have been replaced by an ‘SH’ grade diesel
oil. This link is a service bulletin from Castrol themselves, explaining
the situation.
The CCMC/ACEA
    [sae]The ACEA standards are prefixed with a ‘G’ for petrol engines and
a ‘D’ or ‘PD’ for diesel. Coupled with this are numerous approvals by car
manufacturers which many oil containers sport with pride. ACEA replaced
CCMC in 1996 primarily to allow for greater read-across in test programs
(eg. for viscosity, viscosity modifiers and base oil). The CCMC
specifications were G (1 to 5) for gasoline, D (1 to 5) or heavy duty
diesel and PD1 and PD2 for passenger car diesel. ACEA though have a
slightly different nomenclature they can be summarised as A for petrol, B
for passenger car diesel and E for heavy duty diesel. The ACEA grades may
also be followed by the year of issue which will be either ’96, ’98
(current) but coming soon is 2000.
    Full ACEA specs are:

        * A1 Fuel Economy Petrol
        * A2 Standard performance level
        * A3 High performance and / or extended drain
        * B1 Fuel Economy diesel
        * B2 Standard performance level
        * B3 High performance and / or extended drain
        * B4 For direct injection passenger car diesel engines
        * E1 Non-turbo charged light duty diesel
        * E2 Standard performance level
        * E3 High performance extended drain
        * E4 Higher performance and longer extended drain
        * E5 (1999) High performance / long drain plus American/API
performa
nces. – This is ACEAs first attempt at a global spec.

Typically, these markings will be found in a statement similar to: Meets
the requirements of API SH/CD along the label somewhere. Also, you ought to
be able to see the API Service Symbol somewhere on the packaging:

api

Beware the fake API symbol
fake api symbolfake API symbolSome unscrupulous manufacturers (and there’s
not many left that do this) will put a symbol on their packaging designed
to look like the API symbol without actually being the API symbol. They do
this in an effort to pump up the ‘quality’ of their product by relying on
people not really knowing exactly what the proper API symbol should look
like. To the left is an example of a fake symbol – it looks similar but as
long as you remember what to look for, you won’t get taken by this scam.
Amsoil are one of the biggest inadvertent offenders of the fake API symbol.
Take a look at one of their labels here on the right. See that little
starburst that says “Fuel efficient formula SL-CF”? It can say all it
likes, but the fact of the matter is that this is absolutely not an
API-certified SL or CF oil. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t perform to those
levels, but for warranty purposes, this is not an API certified product. To
be fair, some Amsoil products are API certified and they do have the
correct labelling, but their top-tier products do not. The issue of fake
API labelling and non-compliance has caused such a stir at Amsoil that they
had to put an entire page up on their site dedicated to answering this
particular question. You can find it here. Basically what it boils down to
is money. Amsoil don’t want to pay the $300,000 it can cost for an API
certification of a single oil formulation, and getting API certification
can limit them to single vendors for some of the raw products they use. If
those vendors put their prices up or go out of business, Amsoil need to
either pass the increase in price on to the consumer, or go through the
whole API thing again from scratch.

If this is all confusing you, then rest assured that all top oils safely
conform to the current standards. What you should treat with caution are
the real cheapies and those with nothing but a maker’s name on the pack.
Anything below about £12 ($18) for 5 litres just isn’t going to be worth
it.

A Brief History of Time API ratings
Some people have asked about the old standards, and although they’re not
especially relevant, some rampant plagiarism from an API service bulletin
means I can bring you all the API ratings right back from when the earth
was cooling.
Petrol Engines      Diesel Engines
Category  Status    Service   Category   Status    Service
               CJ-4      Current   Introduced in 2006 for high-speed
four-stroke engines. Designed to meet 2007 on-highway exhaust emission
standards. CJ-4 oils are compounded for use in all applications with diesel
fuels ranging in sulphur content up to 500ppm (0.05% by weight). However,
use of these oils with greater than 15ppm sulfur fuel may impact exhaust
aftertreatment system durability and/or oil drain intervals. CJ-4 oils are
effective at sustaining emission control system durability where
particulate filters and other advanced aftertreatment systems are used.
CJ-4 oils exceed the performance criteria of CF-4, CG-4, CH-4 and CI-4.
               CI-4      Current   Introduced in 2002 for high-speed
four-stroke engines. Designed to meet 2004 exhaust emission standards
implemented in 2002. CI-4 oils are formulated to sustain engine durability
where exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) is used and are intented for use with
diesel fuels ranging in sulphur content up to 0.5% weight. Can be used in
place of CD, CE, CF-4, CG-4 and CH-4
SM   Current   For all automotive engines presently in use. Introduced in
the API service symbol in November 2004       CH-4      Current
Introduced in 1998 for high-speed four-stroke engines. CH-4 oils are
specifically designed for use with diesel fuels ranging in sulphur content
up to 0.5% weight. Can be used in place of CD, CE, CF-4 and CG-4.
SL   Current   For all automotive engines presently in use. Introduced in
the API service symbol in 1998     CG-4       Current   Introduced in 1995
for high-speed four-stroke engines. CG-4 oils are specifically designed for
use with diesel fuels ranging in sulphur content less than 0.5% weight.
CG-4 oil needs to be used for engines meeting 1994 emission standards. Can
be used in place of CD, CE and CF-4.
SJ   Still current but nearly obsolete   For all automotive engines
presently in use. Introduced in the API service symbol in 1996    CF-4
Current   Introduced in 1990 for high-speed four-stroke naturally aspirated
and turbo engines. Can be used in place of CD and CE.
SH   Obsolete  For model year 1996 and older engines.   CF-2      Current
Introduced in 1994 for severe duty, two stroke motorcycle engines. Can be
used in place of CD-II.
SG   Obsolete  For model year 1993 and older engines.   CF   Current
Introduced in 1994 for off-road, indirect-injected and other diesel engines
including those using fuel over0.5% weight sulphur. Can be used in place of
CD.
SF   Obsolete  For model year 1988 and older engines.   CE   Obsolete
Introduced in 1987 for high-speed four-stroke naturally aspirated and turbo
engines. Can be used in place of CC and CD.
SE   Obsolete  For model year 1979 and older engines.   CD-II     Obsolete
Introduced in 1987 for two-stroke motorcycle engines.
SD   Obsolete  For model year 1971 and older engines.   CD   Obsolete
Introduced in 1955 for certain naturally aspirated and turbo engines.
SC   Obsolete  For model year 1967 and older engines.   CC   Obsolete
Introduced in 1961 for all diesels.
SB   Obsolete  For older engines. Use this only when specifically
recommended by the manufacturer.   CB    Obsolete       Introduced in 1949
for moderate-duty engines.
SA   Obsolete  For much older engines with no performance requirement. Use
this only when specifically recommended by the manufacturer.      CA
Obsolete  Introduced in 1940 for light-duty engines.

[sae] Grade counts too!The API/ACEA ratings only refer to an oil’s quality.
For grade, you need to look at the SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers)
ratings. These describe the oil’s function and viscosity standard.
Viscosity means the substance and clinging properties of the lubricant.
When cold, oil can become like treacle so it is important that any lube is
kept as thin as possible. It’s cold performance is denoted by the letter
‘W’, meaning ‘winter’. At the other end of the scale, a scorching hot oil
can be as thin as water and about as useful too. So it needs to be as thick
as possible when warm. Thin when cold but thick when warm? That’s where
MultiGrade oil comes in. For ages, good old 20W/50 was the oil to have. But
as engines progressed and tolerances decreased, a lighter, thinner oil was
required, especially when cold. Thus 15W/50, 15W/40 and even 15W/30 oils
are now commonplace. Synthetics can go down as far as 5W which seemed
unbeatable until Castrol came up with SLX – a 0W30 formulation! ‘Free
flowing’ just doesn’t describe it! It’s predominantly a workshop oil
retailing at around £10 ($15) a litre, but recommended for use in places
like Canada in the winter. The latest offering to this 0W30 engineering
miracle comes from AMSOIL.

So again: what should I buy? That all depends on your car, your pocket and
how you intend to drive and service the car. All brands claim theirs offers
the best protection available – until they launch a superior alternative.
It’s like washing powders – whiter than white until new Super-Nukem-Dazzo
comes out. For most motorists and most cars, a quality mainline oil is the
best. Ones which are known to be good at their job. Stuff like Castrol GTX.
They’re not too dear either. Don’t believe the sales hype – they all
perform to the same standards once they’re out of the can and into your
engine. Moving up a step, you could look at Duckhams QXR and Castrol

Protection Plus and GTX3 Lightec. The latter two of these are designed
specifically for engines with catalytic converters. They’re also a good
choice for GTi’s and turbo’d engines. Go up a step again and you’re looking
at synthetic oils aimed squarely at the performance market. To get more
money out of you, the manufacturers sell this stuff in smaller amounts
which makes an oil change more expensive.
Marine Diesels and other special considerations.

Inland Marine Diesels (and certain road vehicles under special conditions)
can, and do, glaze their bores due the low cylinder wall temperature
causing the oil (and more importantly the additive pack) to undergo a
chemical change to a varnish-like substance. The low temperature is caused
by operating under light load for long periods.
This is related to engine design, some engines being nearly immune to it
and others susceptible. The old Sherpa van diesel engines were notorious
for this problem. The “cure” such as it is, is to use a low API
specification oil, such as CC. Certain engine manufacturers/marinisers are
now marketing the API CC oil for this purpose under their own name (and at
a premium). You’ll find some modern engines where its’ industrial/vehicle
manual states API CF and the marinised manual states API CC/CD. {Thanks to
Tony Brooks for this information.}
Marine Oils.

I sometimes get asked “why are marine engine oils so expensive and why
can’t I just use regular motor oil in my marine engine instead?”. Well, the
National Marine Manufacturers Association Oil Certification Committee
(click here for more info) introduced a four-stroke engine oil test and
standard called the 4T certification. This specification is meant to assist
boaters and manufacturers in identifying four-stroke cycle engine oils that
have been specially formulated to withstand the rigors of marine engine
operation. The certification was prompted by the growing influence of
four-stroke engines in the marine market and their unique lubrication
demands. So the simple answer is that regular road-based engine oil
products don’t contain rust inhibitors and won’t pass the 4T certification.
Lakes, waterways and the sea is a lot more aggressive an environment for an
engine to operate around than on land.
Note : the NMMA have long had a similar specification for 2-stroke oils
destined for marine use, called the TC-W3® certification.
The eBay problem

I couldn’t decide whether to put this in the FAQ or the main page, so it’s
in both, because I get asked this question a lot. Typically, the question
is along the lines of “GenericAutoSuperStore are having a sale on
WickedlySlippy Brand synthetic oil. If I buy it now, how long can I keep if
before I use it?”
In general, liquid lubricants (ie. oils, not greases) will remain intact
for a number of years. The main factor affecting the life of the oil is the
storage condition for the products. Exposure to extreme temperature
changes, and moisture will reduce the shelf life of the lubricants. ie.
don’t leave in the sun with the lid off. Best to keep them sealed and
unopened.

Technically, engine oils have shelf lives of four to five years. However,
as years pass, unused engine oils can become obsolete and fail to meet the
technical requirements of current engines. The specs get updated regularly
based on new scientific testing procedures and engine requirements. But
this is only really a concern if you’ve bought a brand new car but have
engine oil you bought for the previous car. An oil that is a number of
years old might not be formulated to meet the requirements set for your
newer engine.

If your unopened containers of engine oil are more than three years old,
read the labels to make sure they meet the latest industry standards. If
they do meet the current standards, you might want to take the extra
precaution of obtaining oil analysis before using them. An oil analysis
will check for key properties of the oil and ensure that it still meets the
original manufacturing specs. Of course the cost of getting an analysis
done on old oil is probably going to outweigh going and buying fresh stuff.
So it’s a double-edged sword.
As a general rule, the simpler the oil formulation, the longer the shelf
life. The following is a guideline under protected conditions:
Product   Shelf Life
Base Oils, Process Oils  3 years
Hydraulic Oils, Compressor Oils, General Purpose Lubricating Oils      2
years
Engine Oils and Transmission Oils  3 years
Industrial and Automotive Gear Oils      2 years
Metal Working and Cutting Oils     1 year

The following are signs of storage instability in a lubricant:

    * Settling out of the additives as a gel or sticky liquid
    * Floc or haze
    * Precipitates/solid material
    * Colour change or haziness

Water contamination in a lubricant can be detected by a “milky” appearance
of the product.
“High mileage” oils.

gtx[label] More and more oil companies are coming out with “high mileage”
oils now, some recommended for engines with as few as 75,000 miles on them.
So what is a “high mileage” oil you ask? Well very generally speaking,
these oils have two additives in them which are more suited to older
engines. The first is normally a burnoff-inhibitor which helps prevent the
oil from burning off if it gets past an engine seal into the combustion
chamber. The second is a “seal conditioner”, the exact makeup of which I’m
not sure of, but it’s designed to soak into seals such as head- and
rocker-cover gaskets and force them to expand. Thus if one of the seals is
a bit leaky, the seal conditioner will attempt to minimise the leak.
I’ve not had experience of high mileage oils myself, but a few people
who’ve e-mailed me have passed on various tales from it being the miracle
cure to it making no difference at all. I think the general rule-of-thumb
though should be “if it ‘aint broke, don’t fix it.” Just because your
engine has over 75,000 miles on it, doesn’t automatically mean you need
high mileage oil. Is the exhaust sooty or smokey? Are you noticing oil
leaks? Is the engine consuming oil? If your engine is working fine, the
exhaust is clean and you’re not noticing any problems, my guess is that it
doesn’t need high-mileage oil.
What about own-brands?

If you can’t afford the big-name players, you could look at own-brand oils.
These are usually badged oils from one of the larger companies but sold
without the name, they are cheaper. Check the standards and grade ratings
on the pack first! The example on the right is a local store in Chelmsford
in England who sell their own label oil which is bottled for them by a
volume retailer. The label tells you all you need to know.

[SAE rates]
Viscosity and Viscosity Index (VI).

The proper viscosity is the single most important criteria of a lubricating
oil. The basic performance of machinery is based on the viscosity of the
lubricant. Viscosity is, if you like, the resistance to the flowability of
the oil. The thicker an oil, the higher its viscosity. The chart on the
right shows a rough guide to ambient temperatures vs oil viscosity
performance in both multigrade (top half) and single grade (lower half)
oils.
Multigrade oils work by having a polymer added to a light base oil which
prevents the oil from thinning too much as it warms up. At low
temperatures, the polymers are coiled up and allow the oil to flow as it’s
low number (W number) indicates. As the oil heats up, the polymers unwind
into long chains which prevent the oil from thinning as much as it normally
would. The result is that at 100°C, the oil has thinned only as much as
it’s higher rating. Think of it like this: a 10W30 oil is a 10-weight oil
that will not thin more than a 30-weight oil when it gets hot.
The viscosity index of a lubricant is an empirical formula that allows the
change in viscosity in the presence of heat to be calculated. This tells
the user how much the oil will thin when it is subjected to heat. The
higher the viscosity index, the less an oil will thin at a specified
temperature. Multi-viscosity motor oils will have a viscosity index well
over 100, while single viscosity motor oils and most industrial oils will
have a VI of about 100 or less.

Viscosity and oil weight numbers is quite a nauseatingly detailed topic. So
if you’re curious about why a 15W50 oil is so-called, then put on the geek
shield and pop over to the Viscosity Page…..

Servicing and checking

For God’s sake don’t skimp on either of these. You can never check your
engine oil too often. Use the dipstick – that’s what it’s there for – and
don’t run below the ‘min’ mark. Below that, there isn’t enough oil for the
pump to be able to supply the top of the engine whilst keeping a reserve in
the sump. All oils, no matter what their type, are made of long-chained
molecules which get sheared into shorter chains in a running engine. This
in turn means that the oil begins to lose it’s viscosity over time, and it
uses up the additives in it that prevent scuffing between cams and
followers, rings and cylinder walls etc etc. When this happens, fresh oil
is the key. And don’t worry about the engine oil turning black. It will
lose it’s golden-brown colour within a few hundred miles of being put in to
the engine. That doesn’t mean it’s not working. Quite the contrary – it
means it is working well. It changes colour as it traps oxidised oil, clots
and the flakes of metal that pop off heavily loaded engine parts. Just
don’t leave it too long between oil changes.
So how often should I change my oil?
[oilchange]

You can never change your engine oil too frequently. The more you do it,
the longer the engine will last. The whole debate about exactly when you
change your oil is somewhat of a grey area. Manufacturers tell you every
10,000 miles or so. Your mate with a classic car tells you every 3,000
miles. Ole’ Bob with the bad breath who drives a truck tells you he’s never
once changed the oil in his car. Fact is, large quantities of water are
produced by the normal combustion process and, depending on engine wear,
some of it gets into the crank case. If you have a good crank case
breathing system it gets removed from there PDQ, but even so, in cold
weather a lot of condensation will take place. This is bad enough in
itself, since water is not noted for its lubrication qualities in an
engine, but even worse, that water dissolves any nitrates formed during the
combustion process. If my memory of chemistry serves me right, that leaves
you with a mixture of Nitric (HNO3) and Nitrous (HNO2) acid circulating
round your engine! So not only do you suffer a high rate of wear at
start-up and when the engine is cold, you suffer a high rate of subsequent
corrosion during normal running or even when stationary.
The point I’m trying to make is that the optimum time for changing oil
ought to be related to a number of factors, of which distance travelled is
probably one of the least important in most cases. Here is my selection in
rough order of importance:

   1. Number of cold starts (more condensation in a cold engine)
   2. Ambient temperature (how long before warm enough to stop serious
condensation)
   3. Effectiveness of crank case scavenging (more of that anon)
   4. State of wear of the engine (piston blow-by multiplies the problem)
   5. Accuracy of carburation during warm-up period (extra gook produced)
   6. Distance travelled (well, lets get that one out of the way)

If you were clever (or anal) enough, you could probably come up with a
really clever formula incorporating all those factors. However, I would
give 1, 2, and 3 equal top weighting. Items 1 to 3 have to be taken
together since a given number of “cold” starts in the Dakar in summer is
not the same as an equal number conducted in Fargo in January. The effect
in either case will be modified by how much gas gets past the pistons. What
we are really after is the severity and duration of the initial
condensation period. All other things being equal, that will give you how
much condensate will be produced and I would suggest that more than
anything else determines when the oil should be dumped.
Dammit Chris, get to the point already!

Hang on a tic – if you really want the answer, there’s a couple more
factors you need to take account of: Crank-case scavenging (that’s the
clever term for sucking the nasty fumes back out of the crank-case) – or
lack of it – is a crucial multiplying factor affecting all the other items
listed above. As an example, the worst I’ve heard of was a Ford Fiesta of
the mid 70s or so. It’s crank-case fume extraction was via a tiny orifice
directly into the inlet manifold which obviously could not handle any
significant volume of crank-case fumes without upsetting the carburation.
The car in question had been used almost exclusively for 5 mile journeys
to/from work, shopping etc, and it had always been serviced “by the book”.
[averagecar]Despite (or because of) this, the engine was totally buggered
at 40,000 miles. Alternatively you might get a car that by virtue of
excellent crank case fume scavenging could tolerate many more cold starts
than one without.

Taking all these into consideration, my philosophy would be to totally
ignore the distance and change the oil three times a year – about November,
February and May. Move these dates a bit according to the severity of the
winter. An average family car will do around 14,000 miles per year and
about 2/3 of that will fall in the May – November period. At the end of
that period, the car will have just about touched on the recommended oil
change distance – but all done at reasonable temperatures and including
long distance runs during vacations and good weather. During the Nov – Feb.
period it may accumulate only 2 or 3 thousand miles, all low temperature
starts and mostly short runs. The Feb. to May period is likely to be about
the same.
About 10 or 15 years ago, an article in the ANWB journal (ANWB is the Dutch
equivalent of the AA – or the AAA in the American case) reached more or
less the same conclusion that distance was not very important. In their
case they applied this to their road service fleet, which typically once
started in the morning never got cold. In effect, they hardly ever changed
the oil! I seem to remember 30,000 miles between oil changes being quoted.
I also seem to remember that they had some kind of water or acid indicator
attached to the end of the dipstick and went by that rather than distance.
That’s a politician’s answer – you’ve dodged the entire issue!
[5000]

Have I? I don’t know how far you drive in a year, where you live, the style
of your driving or anything else so I can’t tell you what’s right for your
car. Personally, I changed the oil and filter in my 1985 Audi Coupe every
5,000 miles. It had done over 150,000 miles when I sold it, wasn’t leaking
and didn’t consume any oil. If you must have a figure from me, then 5,000
is it.
What else happens when I change the oil then?

Engines pump about 10,000 litres of air for every litre of fuel consumed,
and along with all that air, they suck in plenty of dirt and grit. A good
air filter will stop everything bigger than a micron in diameter -
everything smaller mostly just floats around harmlessly in the 0.001inch
minimum thickness oil films that separate all the moving parts. Despite all
of this, there will always be submicron particles that get in and there
will be places in the engines oilways where they will gather. Every time

you empty the oil from your sump, you’re also draining this fine grit with
it.
Checking the oil in your engine, and topping up.

[oilways] Note that this section only applies to wet sump engines – the
type found in most consumer vehicles. For more info on sump types, see Wet
sumps vs. dry sumps below.
To a lot of people, this little section could be categorised by the
rearranging the words “granny eggs teaching suck your to”. But you’d be
surprised by the number of people that don’t know how to do even this basic
task. When checking the level of oil in the engine, the car should be on a
level plane, and should be relatively cold. I’ve run into several people
lately who insist in keeping the crankcase topped off completely, and they
invariably check the dipstick just after shutting down the engine. Reading
the oil in this way results in an erroneous reading because a quantity of
oil (usually about half a litre) is still confined in the oilways and
passages (galleries) of the engine, and takes some time to drain back into
the crankcase. (On the image, the blue areas are where oil is likely to
still be running back down to the sump). On seeing what appears to be an
abnormally low level on the dipstick, these people then add more oil to the
oil filler at the top of the engine. The oilways and passages all empty,
and suddenly the engine becomes over-filled with oil, going way above the
‘MAX’ mark on the dipstick.
What happens when an engine is overfilled with oil?

So you topped up the engine when it was warm after getting a faulty
dipstick reading, or you put too much oil in when you changed it yourself.
What’s the worst that could happen? Well the problem with this is that the
next time the engine is run, the windage in the crankcase and other
pressures generated by the oil pump, etc. place a great strain on the seal
on the rear main bearing.
Eventually, often much sooner than the ordinary man in the street might
expect, the rear main bearing seal ruptures, and the engine becomes a
‘leaker’. If you’ve got a manual gearbox, this means one thing: this oil
goes right onto the flywheel and the face of the clutch disc. A lubricated
clutch is A Bad Thing. If this still goes unnoticed, the front seal is the
next to go, and the engine then becomes a ‘gusher’ (or to be more
colourful, it starts pissing oil all over the place). As well as smothering
the clutch with oil from the rear, the oil now coming from the front leak
will be neatly distributed about the engine bay as it hits the front pulley
- often propelling it out as far as the brake discs. At the same time as
this Hollywood disaster movie is unfolding outside the engine, things
aren’t working out any better on the inside. As you can see from the
diagram, the correct oil level is really close to the rotating crank.
Overfilling will mean the crank dips into the oil and churns it into a
froth. Froth is good on certain types of coffee but not good in an engine.
The mixture of aerated oil will be forced into the bearings and in case you
didn’t know, air is not a lubricant. Typically this means that bearing
damage will follow quite rapidly, especially if you are driving on a
motorway. You’ll know bearing damage when you get it. The engine smells
like a garage mechanic cooking over an open flame and the noise coming from
the engine is the sort of thing you’d normally hear in vaudeville plays
when a piano is pushed down a flight of stairs. As if that all wasn’t bad
enough, the excess oil gets thrown up into the piston bores where the
piston rings have a hard time coping with the excess oil and pressure. It
gets into the combustion chamber and some of it will get out into the
exhaust system unburned resulting in a nice patina of oil all over the
platinum surfaces of your catalytic converter. This renders it utterly
useless for good.
Well, you did ask.
So what’s the best way to check the oil level?

If your car is cold, like it has sat unused overnight, you can check the
oil level right away. The oil will have had time to settle back into the
sump. Just make sure the car is level before you do. If the engine is warm
or hot, like you’ve just been driving, then you should wait for 30 minutes
or so to let as much oil as possible drain back into the sump. Ideally,
checking it first thing the next morning is ideal.
Wet sumps vs. dry sumps.

Almost all passenger cars, trucks and SUVs use what’s called a wet sump
system. If you look at the diagram above you can see the sump (or oil pan)
is the lowest part of the engine. In a wet sump system, excess oil drains
back into the sump when it has passed through the engine, and the oil pump
then sucks it out of the sump and pumps it back to the top of the engine.
The advantage of a wet sump is that it’s cost effective to build and
maintain and it makes oil-checking easy for the average driver. The
disadvantage is that cornering and braking can cause the oil to slosh
around in the sump.oil sumps This can cause the oil to not cover the oil
pump pickup tube, which could starve the top end of oil, or it could get
deep enough in a severe cornering maneuver to bog-down the crank, which is
A Bad Thing. To counter these problems, a lot of wet sumps now have baffles
in them to stop the oil moving around so much, and for your average
road-going consumer-level vehicle, this is a fine compromise.
Dry sumps

When it comes to racing vehicles, wet sumps simply have too many
disadvantages. Instead, race engines typically use a dry sump. As its name
implies, the sump of the engine is dry – it never fills with oil. In a
wet-sump system, the sump has to be large enough to accommodate all the oil
from the engine when it is turned off. In a dry sump system, that
requirement is gone so the sump can be much much smaller. (In the image on
the right, the right-most sump is representative of a dry sump). A smaller
sump means the engine can be mounted lower down in the vehicle, which in
turn lowers the centre of gravity. So how can this be? Well a dry sump
system uses a remote oil reservoir or tank, and a either a second oil pump,
or a single multi-stage pump. In a double pump system, one oil pump works
just like a wet sump – it distributes oil to the top end of the engine, but
it pulls the oil from the reservoir instead of the sump. The second pump
scavenges the oil from the sump and returns it to the reservoir. In a
single pump system, one pump is either a three- or four-stage pump. It has
multiple circuits running off the same pump to pressurise the engine and
scavenge oil back from the sump. The advantages of dry sumps for racing
become obvious when you examine the design. The engine can be mounted lower
in the chassis because of the shallow oil pan. The pumps typically don’t
run off the crank-driven belts so no engine power is sapped in driving
them. The remote tank or reservoir can be pretty much any size you like and
be mounted anywhere in the vehicle (usually low down again for centre of
gravity reasons). There isn’t oil sloshing around in the sump so you don’t
run the risk of bogging down the crank. For all these reasons, dry sumps
are considered to be safer and far more dependable than their wet
counterparts. So if it’s that much better, why don’t you find this system
in consumer vehicles? Simple. The increased weight, complexity and cost of
having larger or more pumps and a remote reservoir with all the additional
high pressure oil lines involved. For a racing team, this isn’t an issue,
but for Toyota or Ford, adding that sort of cost and complexity to their
passenger vehicles is just a no-go.
Can I use car engine oil in my motorbike then?

No you can’t.
Well, actually you can in some cases. The real answer to this question lies
in the type of motorbike you own. If you own a bike with a wet clutch (ie.
where the clutch sits partially submerged in the sump oil) and you dump car
oil into it, all sorts of nasty things happen. Oils formulated for car
engines have friction-modifiers in them. When the engine oil gets into the
clutch, the friction-modifiers get to work an
d you’ll end up with a clutch
that won’t bite. Bike oils generally don’t have friction-modifiers, so they
don’t have this problem. If you’re not sure, check for a JASO MA spec on
the bottle. If you see that on the label, then it means the oil has been
tested and confirmed to work with a wet clutch.
The other side of this coin is if you have a dry clutch bike, like some
BMWs. In this case, the clutch is configured similar to a car in that it’s
never in contact with the engine oil, and if that’s the case, then regular
car engine oil should provide all the protection and lubrication you need
for your bike.
Can I use diesel engine oil in my petrol engine?

Not really. Diesel engines run much higher compression ratios than petrol
engines and they run a lot hotter, so the oil is formulated to deal with
this. Plus they produce a lot more dirt in terms of combustion by-products.
Diesel-rated oils typically have more detergents in them to deal with this
(see Using Diesel oil for flushing above). It’s not unheard of for diesel
oils to clean a petrol engine so well that it loses compression.
Diesel-rated oils also have an anti-foaming agent in them which is unique
to diesel engines, and not needed in petrol engines.
And so to engine additives

Think what you will of these. Whatever you call them, they are an addition
to the engine which it was not designed to take. Engines are designed to
use engine oil, not Teflon®. Make up your own mind – read this report and
see what you think. In my opinion (and that doesn’t mean I’m right) the
majority of these are primarily a placebo to put uneducated minds at rest
whilst making a nice profit for the additive manufacturer.
The additive part of this site started quite small, but as more and more of
the companies got into lawsuits and legal actions, and lost, this page
became far too long to read all in one go. So if you’re considering
Duralube, ProLong, Slick50 or any of the other brand-name placebos, you’ll
be wanting to hot-step it over to my additives page pretty darned
quickly…..
Nanolubricants

Not something off Star Trek, although it sounds like it. Nanolubricants use
the geometrical properties of miniature particles to provide lubrication. A
couple of companies are working on these new generation lubricants; New
York-based Applied Nanomaterials (ApNano) is one of them. Their R&D lab in
the commercial arm of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel is
initially developing an onion-type nanostructure, i.e. a multilayered
hollow structure of nested spheres called NanoLubTM. According to the
theory of the company’s founders, such a structure can replace lubricants,
because it works like a box moving along a near infinite layer of
super-miniaturized ball bearings. They claim that respected institutes
worldwide have proved that powder made from these nanostructures is six to
ten times more effective than regular lubricants.
In their case, the nanospheres are built from tungsten disulfide (WS2). The
layers slide past each other, reducing friction, while the hollow cores
provide flexibility. Applied Nanomaterials claims the materials can
withstand immense pressures. The material acts as a kind of solid ball
bearing between the metal layers, rather like the wheels of a tank tread.
In addition, the nanostructures insert themselves within each metal layer,
while other nanostructures slide over them, creating a smooth layer at the
molecular level.

The idea is that unlike oil, the nanolubricant never wears down; it is
permanent and requires no maintenance. Theoretically, a nanolubricant can
be used for various friction reducing applications, such as on the outer
coating of ships and planes to reduce water and air friction, respectively.
If you’re that way inclined, think of what it could do to the sex toy
industry….

The powder will eventually stand on its own as a lubricant, however Applied
Nanomaterials realizes that recognition of the technology requires
collaboration with lubricant manufacturers as an additive to existing
lubricants. The problem of course is that if this lubricant never needs
changing, anyone who decides to mass manufacture and market it is going to
lose a chunk of revenue – once you dump it in your engine, you never buy
any more. Great for you and me, bad business model for the company who
dares to market it.

Applied Nanomaterials competitors are developing similar materials, but
based on nested carbon nanotube structures that over time tend to
disintegrate under friction from the materials they lubricate.

Don’t expect to see NanoLubTM on the shelves just yet though. It can take a
day to manufacture just 750g of the stuff.
An alternative to engine additives: pre-pressurisation

[auto engine lube kit] What the additive manufacturers tell you is true -
when you start your engine, there really is very little oil in the right
place – most of it is in the sump. There is another alternative. I found a
site called AutoEngineLube.com and they seem to be offering an interesting
alternative. They have a system which uses a cylinder of pressurised oil
and a solenoid valve, all connected to the regular oil system. It works
with only one moving part, (the solenoid valve – duh!). When the key is
turned on it opens the valve and the oil that was trapped in the tank the
previous time it was running goes back into the oil gallery in 1 or 2
seconds and the low oil pressure light will flash off. There’s likely to
still be a little lag before full-on lubrication gets to the main bearings,
but from what I can tell, this system will massively reduce that lag
compared to starting from cold – it pressurises the system before the
starter engages. Of course an engine that has set up for a few months and
is completely dry will take a few more seconds. When the engine is turned
off the solenoid valve shuts off in 30 milliseconds so you end up with
pressure on the tank equal to the pressure the last time it was running.
The tank will hold more than enough oil to accomplish this. Its completely
over engineered as the tank is rated for over a thousand pounds and the
hose is good for 300lb. Because the valve is designed for an industrial
application with an expected duty life of several million cycles,
AutoEngineLube give it a lifetime warranty. It only uses previously
filtered oil from the gallery so no damage can be done by it in any way.
Their system comes as a kit and requires some menial installation – most
savvy home mechanics should be able to do it. I’m not sure how it would
affect the warranty on a car engine. In theory, if it works, it ought to
make no difference but you know what manufacturers are like – if you even
sneeze on your engine, it’s likely to void the warranty.
Pop over and check them out if you’re interested. If you end up buying one
of these, I’d like to know what sort of results you get so I can add an
objective review to my site. AutoEngineLube.com can be found here. Another
site sells a similar product – PreLuber.com can be found here.

It’s worth pointing out that pre-lubers have been around for quite a while;
the original systems featured an electric pump that circulated the oil from
the sump before the starter turned. The pump would bring the oil up to full
operating pressure before you attempted to start the engine. A reader of
this site e-mailed me about this. He had one on an old MG-TD, because the
car got very infrequent use; it worked rather well and he never had any
major engine problems with it installed. Enginelube.com still do the “old
style” pre-lubers but their website has vanished so I don’t have a good
link for them now.
Oil filters and filtration.

Thanks to one reader who noted that in all of this page, until mid-2001 I
had not given much, if any space, to the topic of filters and filtration.
So here we go.

bosch It’s all very well changing your oil often, but it’s not just the oil
that helps prevent engine wear. The oil filter does its part too. Dirt is

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the prime cause of engine wear. Not big dirt, like you’d see in a yard, but
minute particles of dirt. It’s dirt nevertheless, and it’s abrasive. These
contaminants vary from road dust (which are razor-like flakes from an
engine’s perspective) that doesn’t get filtered out by the air filter, up
to actual metal particles – the byproducts of the casting scarf from the
original engine manufacture, and basic engine wear. All this nastiness is
carried around by the oil into the minute parts of your engine, being
rammed into the precision clearances between bearings and other moving
parts. Once in, they don’t come out easy, but tend to stay there, wearing
grooves, grinding and generally messing up your engine. Other debris that
causes problems are a by-product of the mere way an engine works – sooty
particles from the combustion process can be forced past the piston rings
and transported around in the oil too. This is definitely A Bad Thing – the
soot acts like a sponge and soaks up other oil additives reducing the oil’s
anti-wear properties, and messing up it’s viscosity. All this dirt is why
oil goes black when it’s used. That lovely syrup-like yellow that it is
when you put it in is pure oil. The black stuff that comes out at an oil
change is the same oil full of contaminants and by-products from wear and
tear.

That’s where the oil filter comes in. It’s job is to catch all this crap
floating around in the oil, and to stop it from recirculating. Most oil
filters that you or I will ever see are the spin-on type. They’re shaped
like an aluminium can and spin on to a threaded oil feeder poking out of
the side of the engine somewhere. They’re called ‘full-flow’ oil filters
because they sit in the normal flow of the oil through the engine. Sort of
like an electrical component in series with all the other electrical
component. Because it sits in-line, it has to be designed not to restrict
the flow of oil around the circuit, and thus can only really be effective
at stopping the larger particles. Large, in this case, is around the
20micron size. So here’s the catch. The smallest contaminants are in the
10-20micron size range. Not only is that “extremely small”, but it means
that they pass right through the oil filter and back out into circulation.
This is why regular oil changes are a necessity, because these tiny little
things can be the most damaging.
spinonfilter
This is an exploded view of a typical spin-on oil filter used in automotive
applications. I’ve sliced the filter element (the brownish-yellow part) so
you can see the internal structure of the filter). Typically the engine oil
enters through the ring of 5 or 6 holes in the base and into the main
cannister. From there it is forced inwards through the filter element,
through the drain holes in the central core and out through the central,
threaded hole in the base.

There is another alternative, but it’s only really used in heavy
applications or for racing. That alternative is to fit a secondary bypass
oil filter. This is sort of like a filter in parallel with the primary one.
It doesn’t restrict the flow of oil in the main circuit, but the oil that
passes through it is filtered down to the 5 micron range, thus removing
even the smallest contaminants. The newest filters claim to work down to 1
micron, though I can’t confirm nor deny those claims. The upside is that by
cleaning the oil so completely, bypass oil filters increase not only engine
life, but also the life of the oil itself. This means longer service
intervals.
Magnetised oil traps

beartrap beartrap Recently, magnetic filter additions have started to
surface. I was sent one in 2001 to try out and it really did seem to work.
The product in question was called the Bear Trap BT500. Their website can
be found here (now owned by One Eye Industries). It’s basically a sleeve
made of foam rubber and plastic with some magnets in it. It bends to clamp
around the outside of your regular spin-on oil filter. The idea is that the
magnets will attract any metal debris in your oil and stick them to the
inside of the oil filter wall, thus preventing them from going back into
the oil circulation. Being of a curious nature (or stupid, depending on how
you look at it) I decided to dismantle my oil filter after using the Bear
Trap for 5000 miles. I learned a couple of things.

   1. You shouldn’t try to do this yourself.
   2. It’s bloody messy.
   3. But most importantly, after a brief period in accident and emergency
to stitch up the gash in my hand, I discovered that sure enough, there were
tiny arrangements of metal filings clustered around the inside of the oil
filter wall where the magnets from the beartrap had been. You’ll excuse the
lack of photos to prove the point, but I had other things to worry about.
If you visit their website or that of FilterMag (below) you’ll see similar
cutaway photos.

So can I recommend their product? Yes.

filtermag Another alternative to the Bear Trap is the FilterMag -
essentially the same style of product but from a different manufacturer.
FilterMag can be found at this link.

An alternative to custom magnetised oil traps.

Thanks to John Nightingale who read my pages and then felt he should
contribute something. For those of you who do more than just change your
filter – ie. take off the oil pan completely, John writes:
” Next time you are in the mall or high street, drop into the Radio Shack
or a hardware store and purchase a package of modern, powerful ceramic
magnets. These are available in various shapes and they are cheap. Radio
Shack sells a package of two wafer shaped magnets, for instance. Stroll out
to your car at the end of your shopping trip, bend down and stick these
magnets onto convenient flat surfaces the bottom of your oil pan either
side of the drain hole or as convenient. Now the magnets will magnetize the
steel of the oil pan in their area. On the inside, particles coming through
the field established by a magnet will be sequestered by being stuck to the
bottom of the oil pan. Next time you take off the oil pan, clean it out in
the usual way, pull off the magnets from the outside, clean them up and
then stick them onto the inside of the oil pan at the bottom but clear of
the drain hole. This will give an even better result since now the oil is
exposed to the naked magnets themselves. The bottom of the oil pan in the
area of each of the magnets is also magnetized, of course, and contributing
to the effect. Resist the temptation to stand the magnets on edge to expose
more of their surface to the oil. Placing the magnets flat on the oil pan
uses the oil pan’s steel as a keeper for the magnets and will ensure that
they stay powerful. Placing the magnets flat will increase the area of the
oil pan that is part of the magnetic circuit so you will loose no particle
pick up area by having the magnets lying flat. ”
Magnetised oil traps – doing it yourself.

There’s nothing really special about magnetised oil traps other than the
type of magnet they use. Bear Trap and FilterMag basically offer a
consumer-oriented product. But if you’re a tinkerer, there’s nothing to
stop you doing it yourself. The magnets normally used are Neodymium, nearly
the most powerful nonelectric magnet type. They are the kind of magnet used
in computer hard drives, often coming in pairs held just a few millimeters
apart with the back end of the hard drive head assembly (the part being
made of coiled wire) in between. If you can find a couple of old hard
drives – try the local computer junk store – you ought to be able to
disassemble them and take the magnets out to stick to your own oil filter.
John Nicholas Sarris, a reader of my site, suggested this and provided the
following photos as an example.
diy filter magnets  An open hard drive. The magnets (one visible) are in
the upper left corner and are crescent shaped.
diy filter magnets  The top magnet plate has been removed. As you can see
on the lower magnet it is attached to a metal plate. I presume this it to
keep the magnetic field from the magnets between the two magnets and not
extend outside the hard drive case.
diy filter magnets  The hard drive’s head assembly has been removed. The
lower magnet attached to its plate is clearly visible.
diy filter magnets  A pair of hard drive magnets side-by-side. They are
still attached to their metal plates because the adhesive used to attach
them is immensely strong. I once removed a hard drive magnet from its
plate, but broke it in half in the process.
diy filter magnets  The same magnets holding themselves to my hand. I could
have them stick to each other through my palm, but it was hard to take a
good picture. This actually hurt my fingers a bit. As you can see they are
strong despite being only 2mm thick. The plate they are attached to itself
is 3mm thick.
The importance of neodynium magnets

I thought it worth pointing out here what a potential disaster awaits the
home tinkerer if you just grab any old magnet and stick it on the outside
of your oil filter. Your common or garden ferrous magnet, like those
horrible souvenir magnets stuck to your fridge (you know you’ve got some)
are usually made from iron, and thus have a limited life span which in some
cases can be as short as 6 or 12 months. During this time they
progressively lose thier power. Not enough for that hideous magnetic photo
frame to drop off the fridge, but enough to be a problem if it was stuck to
your oil filter. Why’s that then? Well, come the end of the filters life,
just as the magnet is weakening and the collection of metal particles is at
it’s highest, one good jolt and it could dislodge, and a large collection
of metal shavings and filings could detach from the inside of the filter
and find its way back into your engine all in one go. That would be bad. So
as much as you might like the magnetic photo of granny and the giraffe from
Whipsnade zoo to be stuck in a filthy oily place on your car, don’t do it.
Larger filters on standard cars?

There’s a school of thought which says that enlarging the oil filter on
your car is A Good Thing. Why is this?
The small oil filters fitted to engines these days run with quite a high
back pressure, and the bypass valve trips at about 3500rpm. That means that
your oil is not being filtered when the engine is spinning faster than
3500rpm. As the oil filter does its job and starts to clog up, that rpm
value can be lower.
If you increase the size of the filter, this will raise the rpm at which
the bypass valve will switch. With a bigger filter and lower back pressure,
for the same rpm (prior to bypass valve operation) less engine power will
be lost in the filter. Bigger filter means better filtering and more power
at low to mid revs. Clever eh? But there’s some things you need to be aware
of if you’re going to try this approach, all of which are relevant, and
none of which I can confirm or deny

    * Bigger filter = more “dead” space = more oil. Remember you’d need to
add more oil to the engine to keep the oil level at the correct mark on the
dipstick. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – more oil doing the same job
theoretically means less stress on the oil.
    * Oil may take a little longer to circulate around the engine after
startup, as the pump may have to fill up the larger capacity oil filter.
With modern filters this ought not to be a problem though because all but
the cheapest filters have backflow preventers which keep oil in the filter
when the engine is off.
    * Availability of filters and fouling. If you put a larger filter on it
might foul something else in the engine bay. That is if you can find a
larger filter to start with. The rule of thumb is to go to a motor factors
shop, and find the oil filter that was designed for your engine .Then look
through the myriad of larger oil filter boxes for a bigger filter that has
the same screw thread and sealing ring diameter. Nowadays most spin-on
filters have a 20mm screw thread so that’s not going to be the hard part.
Finding the same sealing ring diameter is the thing to be careful of. And
don’t ask the people at the parts counter. Because of liability issues,
they’re unlikely to sell you anything other than exact filter for your make
and model of vehicle.

A Practical example of the proper procedures saving an engine.

I started these pages back in 1994 and have been adding to them ever since.
I’ve always followed my own advice and in 2005, it paid off big time. I’ll
tell this in the past tense because it’ll get lost in the page and I’ll
forget to update it when I change motorbikes.
So I owned a 2001 BMW R1150GS motorbike. I bought it pre-owned from my
local dealer who assured me it had been through the workshops as part of
the “standard procedure” of them taking a bike in and re-selling it. For 2
years I’d been riding it with horrible engine noise and engine detonation
(pre-ignition). Every time I took it back to the dealer, they were adamant
there was nothing wrong with the engine, and that “they all do that”. Not
believing them, I finally found an independent BMW specialist who took the
engine apart for me. It turned out the BMW dealership had lied – the bike
had never been in their service department. This was evidenced by the fact
that the cylinders had sand in them. The dealership had never bothered to
check the bike and wouldn’t believe my complaints about the noisy engine.
The independent mechanic fixed it all up for me – an $1100 repair bill that
involved basically stripping down the entire engine, honing the cylinder
barrels, putting in new piston rings, cleaning the pistons, barrels, heads,
throttle and airbox, flushing and cleaning the whole thing and putting it
all back together. The point is that during the two years I’d been riding
it with sand in the engine, I’d been religiously topping up the oil and
changing the filter. It’s a testament to BMW engineering that the engine
ran without seizing up, but it’s also a testament to paying attention to
your oil changes. If I’d let it slide, or not done the filter, that engine
would not have been a rebuild – it would have been a far more costly brand
new engine.
This is all great. Now how do I actually change my oil?

A good number of readers will get to this point in the page and think “this
is easy – I could do this!”, and for the most part, you can. Below is a
generic, idiots-guide to changing the oil in your engine. It’s not specific
to any particular car but ought to cover most engines.

Before you start, you’ll need the following :

    * new oil (duh!)
    * a drain pan
    * an oil funnel
    * rags
    * a socket wrench set and / or hex wrench set (allen wrenches)
    * an oil filter remover
    * a new crush washer
    * rubber gloves
    * engineer / shop manual, if one is available

   1. Start your engine and run it for a couple of minutes to get some heat
into the oil
   2. Leave the engine to stand for 5 or 10 minutes. When you started it,
it heated the oil but it also filled the oilways. You want the oil to drain
back to the sump.
   3. Take the dipstick out or loosen it off and break the seal where it
plugs into the engine dipstick tube. This prevents a vacuum building up
behind the oil when you start to drain it.
   4. Get your drain pan / oil container and stuff it under the sump. Make
sure it’s sitting under the sump drain plug. I Really like the combined
drainer / container types. They look like regular oil containers but if you
lay them on their side, there’s a pop-out plug. When you drain the oil, it
runs into the side of the container, then you can put the plug back in and
use the same container to take the oil away.
      draincontainer
   5. Put your rubber gloves on. Try to use the disposable type. Your mum /
wife will never forgive you if you use the washing-up gloves. Remember -
used oil is toxic and carcinogenic. If you get it on your skin, it could
cause problems. Use your socket wrench or allen wrench to loosen the sump
plug just slightly. Once it’s loose, remove it by hand.
      drainplugs
   6. Be amazed as the black syrup runs out of the engine and into your
container. Be more amazed how, if it’s windy, those last dregs just won’t
hit the container no matter where you put it. They will however go all over
the road/garage floor/cat.
   7. Remove the old crush washer from the sump plug and throw it away.
Replace it with a new one. Use some of the oil from the drain container on
the end of a rag to wipe around the drain hole in the sump. This will help
clean any mess away and leave you with a smooth surface. Screw the sump
plug back in by hand until it’s finger tight and then use your wrench to
crush the washer. This can vary from a quarter turn to a half turn. Don’t
overdo it or you’ll strip the threads. Similarly, don’t leave it too loose
or it will fall out. If in doubt, use a torque wrench set to the value
indicated in your shop manual.
      sumpbolt
   8. Now get your oil filter remover out. Push the oil drain container
under the oil filter – when you spin it off, there will be a lot of oil
comes out. Use the filter remover to grip the oil filter and spin it off
anticlockwise. 99.9% of oil filters take some muscle to get going. This is
why a filter remover is a must-have. Stabbing the filter with a screwdriver
and using brute force may work, but you’ll be finding oil all over yourself
for weeks to come if you use that method. Apart from that, some cars have
aluminium inserts that protrude out of the engine block into the body of
the filter, so firing a screw driver into the filter near its base (the
strongest part) may shear that aluminium bit off the engine block. That
Would Be Bad.
      Once the filter is finger-loose, spin it off by hand. (these things
below are filter removers)
      filter wrenches
   9. Clean off the face of the oil filter mount on the side of the engine
block using a rag. Use a little oil on a rag to wipe around the seal of the
new filter and spin it on by hand. Once it’s locked against the side of the
engine block, another quarter-turn by hand is normally enough to secure it
in place.
  10. Pull the drain container out from under the car and use a rag to wipe
down any excess oil that has spilled down the side of the engine block. Pay
attention around the sump plug and the filter. These are places you’ll be
checking later for leaks so the cleaner they are now, the better.
  11. Use a little WD40 on the oil container and an old rag to clean the
remaining oil down into the container. Put the plug back in and make sure
it fits snug. That’s your waste oil. Don’t drink it.
  12. Up to the top of the again engine now. Put the dipstick back in. Find
the oil filler cap and take it off. It might say “OIL” or it might say
“710″. It is not a “710 cap” as one person once asked for. “710″ is “OIL”
upside-down. Some people need to be told….
  13. Look in your shop manual for the system capacity with filter change.
This will be more than the capacity without a filter change. A lot of oil
containers now come with capacity marks on the side of them. Put your oil
funnel into the oil filler hole and pour in the right amount of oil. Do it
slowly. If you do it quick, you’ll get airlocks and the funnel will burp
oil in your face.
  14. Once you’re happy you’ve got enough oil in there (check it with the
dipstick if you’re not sure), remove the funnel, replace the oil cap and
replace the dipstick.
  15. Pull the main high tension wire from the distributor cap or in some
way disable the engine so that you can crank it over but it WILL NOT start.
(Note : you might want to pull out the fuel pump fuse too – if you crank
the engine without it starting, it will still be pumping fuel – that could
cause a backfire or damage the catalyst). Crank it over until the low
pressure light goes off, and another 15-20 seconds for good measure. You
are pumping new oil into the empty filter and then expelling all the air
from the oil lines and cavities.
  16. Replace the high tension lead (and fuel pump fuse) and start the
engine and let it idle for a minute or so. Stop the engine. I don’t want
you crawling under a car to look for leaks when the engine is running.
There’s so many things that can go wrong with spinning fan blades, belts,
human hair, clothes, fingers and the odd dodgy auto-gearbox that will slip
into “D” and run you over.
  17. With the engine off have a look at the side of the engine block
around the oil filter. Check the area around the sump drain too. Both
should be as clean as you left them with no sign of leaks. If there’s a
leak, a little tightening of the drain plug or filter should cure it.

One reader suggested and additional step before (9) above. When he changes
his filter, he fills the new one up with clean oil and waits for it to soak
into the filter itself. Once he’s satisfied that the filter is soaked, he
pours the excess oil out of the filter and then screws it on to the engine.

Job well done. Now you should have hands that smell of talcum powder and
rubber (from the gloves), a couple of greasy, slippery tools and a
container full of old oil. Oh, and a crush washer and filter. If you’ve got
more than this, you took something off that I didn’t tell you to. If you
turned the engine off before checking for leaks, you should also have a
full complement of fingers, hair (if you had it to start with) and you
should still be fully clothed. Congratulations. You’ve changed your engine
oil.
Using oil extractors
[oil extractor]

There’s another way of getting the oil out of your car’s engine during an
oil change – oil extractors. The typical extractor uses a vacuum mechanism
either generated by you pumping a handle to build up a vacuum in the
reservoir, or by a powered vacuum pump. The example on the right is a
manual style. Basically you pump the handle to build up a vacuum, then poke
the extractor hose into the oil and let her rip.
Extractors are a convenience item designed to eliminate the need to get
your vehicle up on a ramp, or for you to crawl under it and deal with the
drain plug. The only problem with an extractor is that you can never be
100% guaranteed that you get all the oil out. For it to work best, the
suction hose needs to be in the lowest point of the sump pan, where the
drain bolt is. The problem is that first of all, the sump isn’t
transparent, so you can’t tell where the suction hose really is. (Remember
you’ll be feeding it in through dipstick tube). Second, a lot of sumps have
anti-slosh baffles in them both horizontally and vertically. If you don’t
get the extractor pipe through one of the baffle holes, you’ll be leaving
the entire sump’s-worth of oil in there. Third, and finally, any congealed
oil, clogs or clumps of sludge will likely get stuck in the extractor hose
causing a blockage. That would mean taking the hose out, cleaning out the
blockage, then feeding it back in again which subjects you to the initial
two problems all over again.
Oil extractors are more commonly used for getting oil out of smaller
engines like lawnmowers. I’ve never used one in a car engine but because of
the problems mentioned above, I can’t imagine it would be especially
efficient. Having said that, the Smart car has no sump drain so the only
way to get oil out of those things in a service is to use an extractor.
Finally, and just as importantly: Disposing of used engine oil.
[oilcare]

Think about it for a minute. What did you do with that last oil change?
Pour it away down a drain? Seal it and bin it? The annual average for oil
which is just washed away is 720Million gallons! About 120Million of that
is from tanker spills which leaves another 600Million from domestic and
business disposal. This all ends up polluting the groundwater.
So what can you do? Well, you can dispose of your used oil properly.
Firstly, it’s worth noting that engine oils which have been used are mildly
carcinogenic. This means cancer, specifically skin cancer. To be safe, wash
any off quickly with a de-greaser like GUNK. For heavens sake, don’t use
petrol (gasoline) – most fuels contain long chain hydrocarbons, which when
exposed to skin pass right through to the blood stream. (This can mean
liver damage, and possibly failure) Better still, wear protective gloves.
Once the oil is drained into a suitable container, try your local garage.
All garage workshops must have disposal barrels and many will allow you to
dump your oil into their barrels. In the UK, many DIY superstores now have
oil disposal banks where you can empty your used oil, and it’s collected
every couple of days by a tanker. So next time, just think about first. If
only for the fact that in most civilised countries, it’s actually an
arrestable offence to dispose of oil in the public sewerage system. If you
live in the UK, phone 0800 663366 to find the location of your nearest oil
bank. Alternatively, you can use the postcode search on the oilbank
website.

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    Comment by Dorine Ricklefs — July 2, 2012 @ 8:39 pm

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    Comment by Jess Langerman — July 4, 2012 @ 2:11 am

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    2. H&S. Simpatico of the most instructive reasons why you should like griddled viands is health. Indubitably, your mastermind should without exception be to purvey the highest locale amount of the provisions nutritional value as practical while cooking it correctly like you be it. According to the US Dept of Agriculture “The color of cooked eatables and poultry is not beyond question a convincing signal of its estate of doneness. Solely forth utilizing a viands thermometer can a woman exactingly find completely that nutriment has reached a make up for temperature.” As you can uphold, at into the vicinity employing a wireless barbecue thermometer, you will-power not at worst be in a incline to have your corn and other sustenance products cooked the proclivity you as a matter of fact high-priority but you’ll identify for what duration and at what temperature you hankering to cook them so as to ponder a usurp meal.

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    Reply

    Comment by healthcarehelp — September 18, 2012 @ 4:04 am

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