[craigawoodman]

It is worth noting that if you are using a synthetic oil for the first time, or if you do not know the history of the car/engine, plan of changing the oil fairly frequently after you do your first change. THe reason for this is the cleaning agents work much better in newer oils and will effectively sludge up the new oil very quickly (excessive carbon loading). The old deposits will be broken down, which will deplete the lubricating properties of the oil. sometimes adding very good oil can lead to a failure simply from its ability to remove all of the built up crud from the oil galleries, etc.

Oils are a blend, regardless of brand. There used to be around five (5) additive manufacturers worldwide, that create the additive package that is used in every oil. Each oil sold on the market consists of a base oil and an additive package. From memory, when I used to do this stuff, zinc works well under high friction environments and is usually added to hydraulic oils. Be careful however, as it eats any silver in the engine. We had journal bearings in traction motors that we thought were showing cavitation, which was actually the zinc corroding the silver away under pressure and heat.

So it is not surprising that two oils have similar component levels, it is probably the same additive package added to both, but slightly different base oils.

THe most important part of the oil is the additive package - not the base oil. This is particularly true for synthetics, as the base oil is manufactured to a specification.

Food for thought.

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[ebarone968]

I see some oils labeled synthetic blends. I may have misunderstood this thinking the oil was a blend of mineral and synthetic oil. So I assume the labeling means synthetic with additives ? The containers don't always give you a break down of the mixture.

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[Ryan]

Rico, I think the blends are mineral/synthetic as their price would indicate. They are in between cost wise. If they were synthetic with more additives I think the price would be more than the regular synthetics.

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[craigawoodman]

Synthetic blends are a blend of the base oil (synthetic plus mineral oil). You should not need more additive package, assuming it is the correct additive package in the first place.

There are numerous additional additives, like anti-friction packages (Nulon, etc) that you should not need. If you run a good oil, in good condition, it should work fine.

Remember that a normal oil film is something like 4 microns in thickness. You engine is running on a very small lubricating film (main bearings and conrod bearings are journal bearings and require lubrication to work).

It also highlights why seemingly small particles can cause a huge amount of damage. Most paper filters cannot filter down to this sort of size, so every time a particle which is bigger than the lubricating film passes through the system, it is causing wear (you also need to balance the filtering size to avoid removing the additives).

I used to work in the mining industry and we had a major push to actually clean lubricants and achieve specified cleanliness. Most pre-packaged oils wold not meet our criteria for cleanliness. Caterpillar has a very good video which shows just how much dirt is pumped around a hydraulic circuit per year if the lubricant is not clean.

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[ebarone968]

Excellent info ! Thanks again

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