Technical Switching grades and types of engine oil and its affects on engine noise, exhaust etc.

For what ever it is worth I called Shell's tech.. number and asked about the zinc level in Rotella T 15w30 CI4 and CJ4sm. They said 1200ppm in both.

 

Have used Rotella 15-40 in my Y block for a while, but one thing that's different about Diesel rated oils versus gasoline engine oil is the anti-foaming agents. The high detergent levels are probably a good thing, especially in a draft-tube equipped Y but Diesels are normally a lower RPM affair. Foam is a bad thing in a crankcase is my understanding. Ted Eaton, (Y-blocksforever.com) also does not recommend Diesel rated oils be used in gasoline engines. Hm.

 

Well, there is a company, in Western Canada anyways, that is providing an oil for the hobby:
www.camoils.com/engine-oil/camoil.php

Its a "cold" blended product by Boss Lubricants, who buys motor oil by the tank car from Vavloline most of the time depending upon the best deal they can get.
So all they are doing is adding a zinc additive of some sorts, Quality unknown, and re-packaging it for Camoils.
(Boss Lubricants is known as a re-brander or second brander. Take someone else's oil, re-packaged it under another name and sell it cheaper than the major brand product.)



Contrary to what we think, our hobby is just a very small drop in the very big bucket, hence the major lubricant manufactures are not going to "niche" market. They will leave that to others such as Lucas, Joe Gibbs, Edelbrock, etc.

 

Very interesting thread. Still a lot of mis-information, wives tales, out there.
If you buy a gasoline engine oil at any retail store like NAPA, Walmart, PEP Boys, AutoZone, O'Reiley's (in Canada, Canadian Tire, Parts Source, Bumper to Bumper, AutoValue, etc.)and any gas station, you will get a retail oil with an 800 ppm zinc level, and that includes Valvoline VR-1. That is the law. Some of the Parts Stores named may sell specialty oils too, such as Lucas or Joe Gibbs.

If you go to a true die-hard speed shop, you might get a different Valvoline VR-1 with a higher Zinc level. They have two types of oils depending upon the distribution channels.

I use to use Rotella 15W40 in my dual quad flat tappet cam 429 as at one time, the Zinc content was in the 1600 - 1800 ppm's. Then it got lowered down to 1200 PPM. And in time, it will be lowered to the gasoline engine oils
level of 800 ppm's.

So I switched over to Lucas Hot Rod Classic 10W30. No problems. Supposedly, the zinc level is around 2200 ppm's.

But I must add that I change the oil every 3000 miles (5000 KMS in Canada) and have never lost an engine in any vehicle (lost trannies but that's another story).
I had to change out the oil pump on the 429 and after 10,000 miles, the oil pan was clean as a whistle.
Now on the hot rod, I change the oil at the beginning of the cruise season and at the end of the season, and depending upon how many miles I put on, it will get changed out in mid season too. During winter, I run the engine at least once a month for 1/2 hour, hence the reason I change out the oil at the start of the cruse season.

 

One area that has been touched upon only briefly is Base Oil technology.

In an early part of this thread, one person said "oil is oil". Not true. Not all oils are created equally.
Some oils are known as "just meet specs" oils whereas others are "exceed specs" oils, and a lot of it is not just the additive packages themselves, which vary from manufacturer to manufacturer (each lubricant mfg has it's own secret recipe), but also the base oil quality, which can vary significantly.
In the case of synthetics, again, not all synthetics are created equally either. However, we are talking about mineral oils in this thread.

Most of the major North American lubricant manufactures such as Esso/Exxon, Shell, , Castrol, Valvoline, etc. use a solvent refining process, which may produce a base oil of anywhere from 85% to 90% pure depending upon the crude utilized. Higher quality crudes produce a higher quality base oil, still with impurities in it though. Additive packages must also overcome the impurities in the base stocks.

There is also another process known as HydroTreating (not with water, with Hydrogen) that produces a base oil of 95% to 99% purity depending if it's a one stage or two stage process. I'm only aware of one one-stage HydroTreater,
that being Standard Oils in California. The only two-stage HydroTreater in North America is Suncor/Petro-Canads' in Mississauga (Toronto), Ontario which produces a 99% pure base stock. What this means is that it does need a heavy dose of additives as in the solvent refined process to overcome the impurities. HydroTreating is a more superior form of lubricant refining. In fact, you don't need a high quality crude to get superior products. In fact, some of the industrial lubricants produced in this two-stage process outperform synthetics.

In a nutshell, the more purer the base stock, the better the lubricant. Additive packages can only do so much.

 

Cool. Seems at every corner of this thing we learn something new. Thanks.

 

Is this Canadian law? That's not US law, though there may be some regulation in CA against selling obsolete motor oils (i.e. SB), I'm not really sure about that. But there is no U.S. law stating all oils sold from auto parts chain stores or gas stations must have 800 ppm zinc limit. If the blender wants to have his oil carry the API license, then he has to meet their specifications, that's how it works.

 

Just to clarify, the API has developed a grouping system for different base oils; there are 4 groups that are separated by the characteristics of the oil itself, not by how it is refined. Solvent refining is old technology, it is still in use at many refineries, but it is quickly going away, because it is impractical to impossible to refine the higher performing Group II and Group III base oils using solvent refining, though solvent refined oils can be "hydro-treated" or "hydro-finished" with a low level treatment of hydrogen forced into the base oil under light pressure. Hydro-cracking (forcing hydrogen into the oil under very high pressures and high temperatures) is used to crack open aromatic and napthenic rings and convert waxy compounds into high quality paraffins. But at the end of the day, it is the quality of the oil that determines the Group number, not the technology used to refine it.

Here is a chart of the different base oil groups which shows the defining characteristics:

Sulfur % is self explanatory, it's how much sulfur remains in the base oil after refining. Saturates refers to the hydrocarbon compounds that make up the oil, saturates are those hydrocarbon moelcules that have no open double bonds, all are are filled with a hydrogen atom. The more saturates, the better. VI refers to Viscosity Index, which I described in another post above. It is a rating of how stable the oil is relative to changes in temperature. The higher the number, the better. (trivia: originally when this rating was developed 100 was the VI of Pennsylvania grade crude oil, it was thought that was as good as it gets, they had no idea at the time that technology would allow these kinds of improvements in base oil)

Group I base oils used to be pretty common in motor oils, but those days are pretty much gone. With the Volatility requirements of current GF-5/SM motor oils, especially those low viscosity oils labeled as "energy conserving, Group I base oils really don't cut it anymore, everybody has moved to Group II. Full synthetic motor oils are made with either Group III highly refined base oils, or Group IV PAO's (or a blend of the two), or one of the other synthetic technologies found in Group V (i.e. ester/diester base oils). Synthetic blends are usually a blend of Group II with either Group III or PAO.

 

I live in western Canada too, and have not heard about this either.
Onebad56 can you please post some documentation of this. Its not that I don't believe it, but would like to see the legal end of it...

 

Anyone use Brad Penn oil products?

 

To blues4u, do you have a specific brand and weight of the diesel oil you use?

 

The actual brand isn't important is it? I don't want to get into brand wars, it just gets ugly. I'll PM you what I use, but I use a common CJ-4 spec mineral oil diesel engine motor oil in 15W40 viscosity grade, it is readily available all over the US at auto parts chain stores and large retailers like Wally World, and the pricing is decent. I trust the brand from professional experience in heavy duty off-road earth moving equipment, and I have oil analysis data on it. But I would also be comfortable using other brands of a similar oil type/specification, though I have my personal reasons for using what I do, I just don't want to get drug into an online battle of "my brand is better than yours". I do like to stick to major brands and avoid the low priced house brands, or the small non-API licensed boutique brands.

 

I find it helpful , thanks

 

Haven't completely read through this entire thread. I did however read the good info on Amsoil in issue #70 of The Rodders Journal.

 

I've mentioned "Oxidation" several times over this thread, I thought I would post a link to an article that discusses this process, which really is the main limiting factor to how long we can run oil, or why it needs to be changed periodically BTW, you see people sometimes say that oil doesn't wear out, it just gets dirty, and if you can filter out the dirt you can run oil forever. That is incredibly wrong, on several levels, oxidation of the oil being one of them. You may be able to filter out dirt, you cannot filter out oxidation.
http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/30165/oil-oxidation-stages

 

I would like to read the info you speak of about Amsoil. Is it available online? If so do you have a link?
If not, where can I find/ or purchase it?

 

Found the Rodder's Journal web site and issue #70 and got it opened up to read the first page and the facing page on oil article you mentioned, but never figgered out how to turn the page for more!
Guess I'll have to buy it ti read it

 

I have been following this topic and I appreciate your insightful posts. Your recommendations are similar to those of the Corvair oil article except that Widman prefers CI-4+ & earlier dual-rated oils for protecting flat tappet engines. I have a Heavy Duty Engine Oils web page and, while updating it, I see that many of the dual-rated CJ-4/SM HDEOs have now become CK-4 only. The CK-4/SN oils appear to have lower phosphorus levels.

https://www.oildepot.ca/solution-ford-concerns-2017-api-ck-4-diesel-motor-oil-specs/
http://www.infineuminsight.com/trends/pc-11/latest-pc-11-news

Would you know if the API CK-4 oils would also meet the performance requirements of API SN except for SN's 0.08% maximum phosphorus limit? What other differences would there be between API CK-4 and API CK-4/SN?

 

You've touched on an interesting topic that has come up with the new specification. For many years the industry has allowed lubricant companies to dual license their products, so if you produced a CJ-4 motor oil and also wanted the SM license, they would allow it, even though the phos level was too high for SM. The auto co's didn't like that, so with this new specification they are no longer allowing if; if you want the dual license then your product must meet the limit for phoshorus. That means that some CK-4 oils may have a much lower level of phos, and this worried Ford, so Ford has issued their own specification for oils used in their engines.

Bottom line is, if the oil is co-licensed, with both CK-4 and SN, then it will have reduced phos levels, and you may want to avoid it. If it ONLY carries the CK-4 license, then it most likely does not have reduced phos levels, and you can confirm that by checking to see if Ford has approved of it (Ford has a list of approved oils you can download from their website).

Hope that helps.

BTW, I'm familiar with Richard Widman, he lives and works in So America, in a market where CI-4 oils are still readily available. You would be hard pressed to find CI-4 oil's around here, though some of the smaller companies may carry them.

 

My understanding of why diesel-only oils were unsuitable for use in gasoline engines was their high levels of sulfated ash (SA), which was a result of the additives used to deal with high levels of sulfur in diesel fuel.

Because SA in CK-4 is low (1.0% max), is there anything in the formulation of a single license CK-4 that would make it unsuitable for use in flat-tappet engines without catalytic converters? For example, Irving IDO Premium + CK-4 10W-30 does not have any SN rating.

I checked with Petro Canada and they told me that their current non FA-4 HDEOs have higher levels of zinc and phosphorus than their previous CJ-4/SM oils. Their 10W-30 Duron SHP (for example) does have Ford WSS-M2C171-F1 suitability because that product is approved for API CK-4 and is suitable for (but not approved for) API SN.

 

Sulfur levels in diesel fuel have been restricted to 15ppm for many years now, it's known as Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD). So the need for certain additives to deal with the sulfur in the fuel has been reduced, and there is a cap on Sulfated Ash in diesel engine oils of 1%, which was established 10 years ago with CJ-4 specification. 1% SA is actually lower than many gasoline engine oils from back in the day, making modern diesel engine oils great for gasoline engines IMO.