ENGINE OIL TO USE IN G60

[Supercharged 2]

It's a tv programme on Channel 4 in the UK - if your sense of humour isn't slightly skewed, or British, then you may not understand!

 

Craaaiiiig Daaaavvvvviiidd

[potatonet 0]

k cause its freakin me out

[akshaye55 0]

Since the day I took possesion of my 1990 G60, it has been fed a steady diet of Mobil One full synthetic 15w50(I only drive the car in the summer). I have had no engine related problems with the car and the charger has never been re-built and with 200kms on the car, the charger still gives decent boost. So the oil must be doing some good right?

[oilman 0]

If the car is modded then Quantum silver is unlikely to be up to the task. For stock cars it's not a problem but you need to consider something better if your car is pushing out higher BHP than stock.

 

A standard oil will not be thermally stable enough to cope with higher temperatures without "shearing" meaning that the oil will not give the same protection after a couple of thousand miles as it it when it was new.

 

Let’s start with the fundamentals. An engine is a device for converting fuel into motive power. Car enthusiasts get so deep into the details they lose sight of this!

 

To get more power, an engine must be modified such that it converts more fuel per minute into power than it did in standard form. To produce 6.6 million foot-pounds per minute of power (ie 200 BHP) a modern engine will burn about 0.5 litres of fuel per minute.(Equivalent to 18mpg at 120mph). So, to increase this output to 300BHP or 9.9 million foot-pounds per minute it must be modified to burn (in theory) 0.75 litres.

However, fuel efficiency often goes out of the window when power is the only consideration, so the true fuel burn will be rather more than 0.75 litres/min.

 

That’s the fundamental point, here’s the fundamental problem:

 

Less than 30% of the fuel (assuming it’s petrol) is converted to all those foot-pounds. The rest is thrown away as waste heat. True, most of it goes down the exhaust, but over 10% has to be eliminated from the engine internals, and the first line of defence is the oil.

 

More power means a bigger heat elimination problem. Every component runs hotter; For instance, piston crowns and rings will be running at 280-300C instead of a more normal 240-260C, so it is essential that the oil films on cylinder walls provide an efficient heat path to the block casting, and finally to the coolant.

 

Any breakdown or carbonisation of the oil will restrict the heat transfer area, leading to serious overheating.

 

A modern synthetic lubricant based on true temperature-resistant synthetics is essential for long-term reliability. At 250C+, a mineral or hydrocracked mineral oil, particularly a 5W/X or 10W/X grade, is surprisingly volatile, and an oil film around this temperature will be severely depleted by evaporation loss.

 

Back in the 1970s the solution was to use a thick oil, typically 20W/50; in the late 1980s even 10W/60 grades were used. But in modern very high RPM engines with efficient high-delivery oil pumps thick oils waste power, and impede heat transfer in some situations.

 

A light viscosity good synthetic formulated for severe competition use is the logical and intelligent choice for the 21st century.

Consider a "true" synthetic for "shear stability" and the right level of protection.

 

Petroleum oils tend to have low resistance to “shearing” because petroleum oils are made with light weight basestocks to begin with, they tend to burn off easily in high temperature conditions which causes deposit formation and oil consumption.

 

As a result of excessive oil burning and susceptibility to shearing (as well as other factors) petroleum oils must be changed more frequently than synthetics.

 

True synthetic oils (PAO’s and Esters) contain basically no waxy contamination to cause crystallization and oil thickening at cold temperatures. In addition, synthetic basestocks do not thin out very much as temperatures increase. So, pour point depressants are unnecessary and higher viscosity basestock fluids can be used which will still meet the "W" requirements for pumpability.

 

Hence, little or no VI improver additive would need to be used to meet the sae 30, 40 or 50 classification while still meeting 0W or 5W requirements.

 

The end result is that very little shearing occurs within true synthetic oils because they are not "propped up" with viscosity index improvers. There simply is no place to shear back to. In fact, this is easy to prove by just comparing synthetic and petroleum oils of the same grade.

 

Of course, the obvious result is that your oil remains "in grade" for a much longer period of time for better engine protection and longer oil life.

 

If you would like advice then please feel free to ask.

 

Cheers

Guy

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Oil....LOL! People go on about it forever and because engine wear is so slow and you can't see what the heck's going on inside the engine anyway, do we care? Those that like cheap sh1t from Macros, fine. Those that like their premium grade cooking oil, also fine.....but can we please move on from this boring and pointless debate?

 

Oh and a question for you Oilman..... if Fully synth is supposed to be 100% man-made, why does it look like, feel like and smell like mineral oil? Heck it even smells the same burned.

Surely something made in a laboratory from man-made chemicals should be bright blue and smelling of strawberries?

 

I reckon it's nothing more than regular mineral base stock with a few polymers and stabilisers thrown in.

[h100vw 0]

I am interested to hear why my MK1 used boats loads of synta gold but the same engine with supermarket special stuff hardly used any?? No change in driving style?

 

Without wanting to start a fight Kev, the fella at the top asked for advice so why shouldn't he get all that's available and in detail.

 

As for pointless and boring debate, that's got to be passive steering rear axles for me. :mrgreen:

 

Gavin

[oilman 0]

Hmm.

 

Afraid you're wrong. It's not related to petroleum at all. It's either poly alpha olefin or ester in the case of engine oils. It's about molecular structure not smell!

 

Cheers

Guy

[Kevin Bacon 5]

It's about molecular structure not smell!

 

Cheers

Guy

 

Well yeah, but Joe public that has to make a choice between a £40 tub of Mobil 1 and a £3 tub of 'CarClub' oil will think that they look and smell the same, so what's the difference?

It's all about tangible differences, ranting on about molecular shearing means nothing to your average motorist.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

I am interested to hear why my MK1 used boats loads of synta gold but the same engine with supermarket special stuff hardly used any?? No change in driving style?

 

Because Synta Gold is known to be too thin for older engines....just as Vauxhall's own engine oil used to p1ss out the sump and crank seals.

[oilman 0]

so what's the difference?

 

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and when most people talk about oil it's about price not quality and they're entirely different things.

 

This hopefully explains for those that are interested.

 

A word of caution – You get what you pay for!

 

Below is an article written by John Rowland, Silkolene/Fuchs Chief R & D Chemist for 40 years.

 

Quote:

 

Costs of synthetics vary considerably. The most expensive are the “Ester” types originally only used in jet engines. These cost 6 to 10 times more than high quality mineral oils.

 

The cheapest synthetics are not really synthetic at all, from a chemists point of view. These are in fact specially refined light viscosity mineral oils known as “hydrocracked”. These have some advantages over equivalent mineral oils, particularly in lower viscosity motor oils such as 5w-30 or other oils with a low “W” rating such as 5w-50 etc and they cost about 1.5 times more than good quality mineral fractions.

 

We use several different grades of this base oil, where appropriate. This is the “synthetic” which is always used in cheap oils that are labelled “synthetic”. Yes it’s a cruel world, you get what you pay for!

 

Now, you may ask, why are these special mineral oils called “synthetic”?

 

Well, it was all sorted in a legal battle that took place in the USA about ten years ago. Sound reasons (including evidence from a Nobel Prize winning chemist) were disregarded and the final ruling was that certain mineral bases that had undergone extra chemical treatments could be called “synthetic”.

 

Needless to say, the marketing executives wet their knickers with pure delight! They realised that this meant, and still does, that the critical buzz-word “synthetic” could be printed on a can of cheap oil provided that the contents included a few percent of “hydrocracked” mineral oil, at a cost of quite literally a few pence.

 

So, the chemistry of “synthetics” is complex and so is the politics!

 

The economics are very simple. If you like the look of a smart well-marketed can with “synthetic” printed on it, fair enough, it will not cost you a lot; and now you know why this is the case. But, if you drive a high performance car, and you intend to keep it for several years, and maybe do the odd “track day”, then you need a genuine Ester/PAO (Poly Alpha Olefin) synthetic oil.

 

This oil costs more money to buy, because it costs us a lot of money to make, very simply, you always get what you pay for!

 

Unquote:

 

Boring maybe but FACT!

 

Cheers

Guy

[h100vw 0]

Because Synta Gold is known to be too thin for older engines....just as Vauxhall's own engine oil used to p1ss out the sump and crank seals.

 

My mk1 had a 2 litre bottom end in it. So when does a VW motor become new enough to take synthetic oil? It was newer in manufacture than a lot of the Corrados on this forum being from a 1992 car.

 

 

 

 

Guy, in your humble or otherwise opinion, can we have a value for money scale on some of the oil that's out there?

 

Best value for a tenner, fifteen, twenty quid or ...........some other scale you may come up with.

 

Gavin

[oilman 0]

Drop me a mail to mailto:[email protected] and I can forward on to you a list of costs for various types of oil.

 

Cheers

 

Guy.

[rossy t 0]

oilman is the bollocks, i have bought oil from him before when i used to have a civic. top bloke and top service.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

My mk1 had a 2 litre bottom end in it. So when does a VW motor become new enough to take synthetic oil? It was newer in manufacture than a lot of the Corrados on this forum being from a 1992 car.

 

Well you didn't say that did you? You just said 'MK1'. VW engines until recently didn't have 'Japanese' tight tolerances and thin oils like Quantum Gold usually found it's way out of the sump gasket and was burned off easily.

 

I've seen all this before in various forums. Endless debating a £10 tub of oil :roll: Oilman is going to recite tonnes of stuff from text books and other websites because it's in his interests do so, being a reseller, but the fact remains you can use Brand A cheapy stuff for 10 years, and Brand B pricey stuff for 10 years, both receiving regular changes etc and the difference will be negligable.

 

The implications of this debate are fast heading towards that if you DON'T use brand X or what ever, your engine will fall to peices inside 1000 miles, which is complete horse sh1t.

 

Oil is oil...using what's recommended by the manufacturer, it all does the same job, it gets changed every so often, and you put more in. It's hardly rocket science....and believe what you will of the hype different brands will try and impress on the gullible public.

[oilman 0]

So, Oil is Oil is it?

 

We'll agree to disagree there and call it a day on this one.

 

Cheers

Guy

[Kevin Bacon 5]

So, Oil is Oil is it?

 

To the majority of car owners, yes.

 

 

We'll agree to disagree there and call it a day on this one.

 

Agreed!

[surfer.vr6 0]

I might try Olive oil next.....has to be 10/40W extra Virgin oil though.

 

If I spill a bit on the rocker cover, I could knock up a mean fry-up too :D

 

Sorry, it's Friday afternoon...roll on 5pm!

[CaiosG60 PWR 0]

I've always used Mobile 1. Can’t remember exactly which one but its not the really thin stuff. It’s the stuff with a mclaren on the bottle. :lol: I thought everyone said to use mobile 1 in G60's. Think I’ll use this Synta Silver next time because mobile 1 is sooo dam expensive!