I receive dealer pricing on Royal Purple products. The cost to me is roughly that of Mobil 1. I have a friend who manages a nuclear power plant. He says Royal Purple is used in the turbines. To me, that's a pretty impressive endorsement.
I have been using it in my Police Interceptor. Ford specs call for 5-30 weight. Once the car reached 150K, I switched to Royal Purple 10-40 for the Spring/Summer months. Come winter, I will use the 5-30 again. Georgia summers are BRUTAL. I feel more at ease with the 10-40 when we are at 96-degrees, and I'm at idle in a traffic jam.
Some have said that the overhead cam, in the 4.6, could be harmed by the 10-weight at starting. I maintain that, being fully synthetic, the "10-weight" of the 10-40, should flow as well,if not better, than the "5-weight" of conventional "Dino" oils.
What is Royal Purple, a group III, IV or V? I hear it is synthetic, but at least the 10w40 does not have a very good flash point for a synthetic. What gives?
Might as well run Mobil 1 as it should be just as good and you can get it cheaper.
I do not know a lot of specifics on R.P. however, the One-Arm Bandit (Timkin Bearing Tester) is a useful tester of lubricants with E.P. Additives. It's my perception that if R.P. is using the Timkin to show performance, there must be some kind of E.P. additive in their oil(s). The premise behind the Timkin is in fact Extreme Pressure testing. My questions are three-fold: 1. What kind of additives does R.P. have in it ? 2. What would be the purpose in putting E.P. additives in their engine oil ? 3. Do you folks have access to the companies that put E.P. additives in their engine oils & would you share them with us ?
1998 Toyota Tacoma PreRunner V6 3.4L 147,543 mi AMSOIL 0w-30 Engine Oil / AMSOIL By-Pass Filter
Posts: 38 | Location: Claremore, OK, USA | Registered: Fri January 09 2004
The assumption I would make re RP is that it is a PAO with an ester additive ie similar to M1, so I would buy on price but prefer M1 option.
Timer,
Although I agree that minerals can make grade and are probably better now than ever, Synthetics can last the longer OCI intervals and protect better at the performance end of market. If you pay for oil changes or even consider time spent on oil changes then Synthetics make more sense.
If you exclude performance end of market and just consider OCIs then VW run into problems not specifying Synthetics. The Group III and III+ can give synths a run for their money at a cheaper price, but I & II are really becoming dino oils.
My thoughts on royal purple, sorry it has taken so long to get back on, I've been traveling the last couple of weeks, Royal Purple one arm bandit, yes the test is impressive, however they hesitate to show the complete range of ASTM test for their oils, They use a proprietary formulation with large amounts of antimony, heavy metals,sulfer ect. to acomplish the performance shown in the one arm test. I have visited their manufacturing facility and could not get a straight answer about anything. In the test they demonstrate their oil against a "ISO-100" mineral oil, I suspect the oil is just a basestock ISO-100 with no addatives of any type in them. I also would like to know, and have been unable to obtain the information on their claim that a bearing will heal itself??? If royal purple is used after onset of failure?? That is just an unrealistic claim. Anyone who is educated in the craft of mantenance, tribology,vibration thermography, or basicly anyone with a fair amount of common intellegence knows that once metal removal has taken place (of any type) it can not be put back on by some miracle "cure all" lubricant. If you listen closely to their sales pitch you will notice that they will state that their oils "do not fair well on some test however experience in use demonstrates remarkable results". Knowing what is known about contamination of lubricants I'm not sure I would recommend to anyone that they use an oil or grease that "Micro-polishes" the bearing surfaces?? What micro-polishes the metal surfaces????? In a sales brochure they show examples of three different bearing surfaces at 1500x magnification, one is a new bearing surface, one is a galled bearing surface, and one is a "micro-polished' bearing surface after the addition of a royal purple lubricant. There is a distinct difference in the asperities . I will just give you a case in point; One of our plants let a RP salesman talk them into changing over from an OEM recommended fluid in 2 Garner Denver 250 hp rotary screw compressors. The fluid was changed to RP parafilm-46 at the recommendation of the salesman. Within 3 weeks of the fluid change the plant experienced a catastrophic air-end failure on one of these compressors. The compressors were flushed according to best practices before the introduction of the new fluid. Vibration levels before the change over indicated no problem and oil analysis indicated no abnormal results. The air end that failed had been re-manufactured by the OEM 9 months previously and still carried the remaining warrranty period. The OEM will not warranty any equipment that uses any lubricant that does not meet the OEM specifications. The decision to change over is a managment one and I will not get into these issues, but this is the experience that our company has had with RP so far. I feel that RP has a marketing stratagie of selling their lubricants as a "quick fix" to stave off the inevitable once failure has commenced. I am in the reliability field and it just does not sit well with me, not to mention that RP lubricants are quite pricey as industrial lubricants go. I see no bang for the buck here. I do not know much about their motor oil as I am in an industrial setting and not automotive. My personal opinon is that they use a lot of smoke and mirrors to sell their product and it is really hard to get a straight answer from them. My advice is "Buyer beware" and pay close attention to what they say about their product.
