Valvoline vs Mobil 1 - Round 2

WOW now thats interesting . I wonder what the factory fill automakers think about all this ? I am guessing the API knows about the new claim ?

So , Valvoline's "signifigant performance advantage" might also be Castrol's , Phillips ect ect performance advantage as well ?

In the past i entertained the idea that the high iron came either a result of the type boron used turning into Iron Sulphate once plated and is picked up in analysis as Fe but now ---- i am guessing Valvoline knows what sacrificial elements are , and if they are used , as in whats wear and whats not before sending out letters and such.

Oh well ,looks like there will be some splaining to do one way or other ?

http://jobbersworld.com/valvolineq&Apage1.htm

wow

It could be another clever marketing trick, I've seen these kind of battles a lot.

Mobil 1 scored a 180ul average vs 20ul for Synpower.

The API SL ISLAC GF-3 Sequence IVA dated December 6,2000 = 120 max .

API SM ISLAC GF-4 Sequence IVA dated January 14,2004 - 90 max .

Yeah they completely missed the mark on this one.

If i recall correctly , under the licensing program a motor oil can be entirely reformulated under certain circumstances .Circumstances like a hurricane or something I don't know really since i did not check to far into it because , i really don't care since i don't use the Mobil oil .

However ,here is wording about more than 35 reformulated products and it's straight from Mobil . Click Me

Valvoline uses a fairly good additive pack that deserves a new topic though .

It seems Mobil 1 has gone from being an exceptionally good oil over the years to a average synthetic at best. Why the need for 2 Mobil 1's?

quote:

Originally posted by Buster:
Why the need for 2 Mobil 1's?

More than two . Another SUV type 5w-30 with wording of added dispersant in it on the USA site . Two 0w-30's with different typical data sheets . One USA , the other on the UK site .

Mobil makes a case for PAO's here at the Mobil AU site . Wording about PAO's purity over group III base oils while defining what a synthetic base oil group is. Group II-III-IV-V ect .

Synthetic vs Mineral

From the above link;

""There Are Four Different Types of Motor Oil Base Stocks


We know that basestock composition has a significant effect on the overall performance of motor oil. There are four different types of base stock used in the motor oil market today.

Group 1 - Conventional - Mineral oil derived from crude oil
Group 2 - Hydroprocessed - Highly refined mineral oil
Group 3 – Severe hydroprocessed - Ultra refined mineral oil
Group 4 – Full synthetics (chemically derived) - Chemically built Polyalphaolefins (PAO).

As it infers Groups 1 – 3 basestocks are derived from crude oil pumped from the ground whereas Group 4 basestocks are chemically derived, most often from ethylene gas, and contain none of the contaminants present in mineral oils. Just as distilled water is pure water derived from gas so Group 4 basestocks are pure oils derived from gas.""


Then on another Mobil.AU page the last paragraph says Mobil 1 is a fully synthetic engine oil .

Mobil allows it's a fully synthetic

Then on the Mobil Japan site i read it's a blend of PAO and catalyticaly processed oil . Looks like the 0w-40 is without group III .

Mobil 1 Japan

My question is Mobil 1 a synthetic or a blend ?

From the Mobil web site:

Synthetics

Synthetic motor oils contain a high proportion of base stocks created from pure chemicals.

The statement above (along with the fact that they intentionally omit ALL base stock CAS numbers on their MSDS sheets) has me convinced that Mobil 1 turbo diesel oil is a BLEND of PAO and hydroprocessed base oils.

I wonder if they are doing the same thing to mobil delvac 1 synthetic?? I have used it for years. Im glad that Ive used lucas synthetic additive 20% of total volume now.

I believe all the "0w" oils are PAO based while the others are blends of Grp III/IV and V.

Motorbike, I've noticed the same thing. A bit contradicting.

Exxon/Mobil certainly has the technological means to make a super oil .

Googling Catalytic Antioxidants and Synthetic Phenolic Ether w/ Exxon Mobil patent gets many results .

Many newer patents

Very true.

It looks like the <new formula> 0w-40 uses kerosene to carry the antifoam into solution , slack wax groupIII and PAO.

I saw a chart on the Castrol site that showed Mobil doing well in the sequence IVA test until right at 25 hours of run time.

Everyone uses kero or Stoddard solvent to get antifoams into suspension, if they don't want it to fall out. (Antifoams do not go into solution; if they did, they would't work. They function because the not-quite-evenly dispersed dimethoxysilane molecules create localized areas of higher density within the oil, which destabilizes the bubbles.)

Who ran the Seq IV A? Where did the samples come from?

Since both oils are overkill for automotive applications, who cares?

I care. Usually some of the 'other' brands are on sale, with rebates...... And, if one of the 'other' brands can perform better then Mobil-1, which is expensive, then I'll grab it.

If an oil doesn't meet its specs, this means that blending quality is horrible. This seems to be happening more often. More and more oils being recalled, and/or simply tested and not meeting the 'labeled' specs. I expect it with generic and lesser brands. I don't expect it with brand names, but this seems to be happening with many now. Quality manufacturing is gone!

Who knows anything about the specifics of the Seq IV A? I've not read the method (too busy re-writing test methods these days), but I've heard it's a bit of a dart-board analysis with poor correlation in actual service.

Is it an engine or a bench test? (I'll bet bench - comprehensive but long & expensive engine tests are losing favor to faster, cheaper bench tests of very limited scope these days. The problem comes in when data customers try to use these data as if they were comprehensive.) What are they looking at? What are the stressors and how effectively do they correlate with actual service?

If you don't understand these things about a method, you make the choice to take a warm fuzzy feeling or to run around with your hair on fire at your own risk.

"If an oil doesn't meet its specs, this means that blending quality is horrible." Or maybe not, there are many more places along the path for things to go astray than the blend kettle.

Compounder-blenders are likely to have a very generic formulation that is 2-3 generations behind the majors, their exhorbitant claims notwithstanding. I've seen tearaparts of some pretty high-profile compounder-blender synthetics that were just sad. These guys are buying an adpak from Lubrizol or Infineum and blending it with basestock, usually from ExxonMobil, since that's the company with the most spare basestock capacity. Many of their "specs" beyond the physical properties are read across from the adpak & the basestock specs. In other words, they've never run many of the tests they quote on their actual completed blends, or even on a lab blend. I've seen plenty of oils represented as "GF-4" whose names are suspiciously absent from the ILSAC web page. Blend quality in this market segment is likely to be all over the map.

The majors are typically going to give you a state-of-the-art formulation. Even if LZ or INF produces their adpak, it's likely to be a custom job developed in concert between the two companies and frequently sold exclusively to the major in question. (Once they develop the next generation, you'll frequently find these now-out-of-fashion adpaks in the compounder-blenders' products.) Their problems may be in the blend kettle, but the gremlins are much more likely to creep into their heavily distributor-dependent supply chains.

Right now, most companies are still scrambling in the wake of last year's hurricane season. Any lubricant supplier who sources any portion of their formulation from the Gulf Coast is still reeling. (This subset of the industry is commonly referred to as "lubricant suppliers".)

Katrina & Rita hit the refining end of the business hard. Ike got less attention, but that storm had a very severe impact on the lube business. PAO is very short in the whole industry, still. Lots of suppliers are reformulating on the fly, partiall substituting Grp III & boosting the AO to compensate. Of necessity, this is not being done in the usual anal-retentive, by-the-numbers style that the product development function prefers. Right now is an inopportune time to make a long-term judgement of an oil's (or supplier's) quality based on what's currently on the shelf.

Probably 95% of the cars & light trucks on the road will see no difference in engine life between a synthetic & a good quality mineral. Lots of high-end cars are specifying synthetics, but that has more to do with their desire to present a certain cachet to the market rather than the actual lubrication requirements of the engine in question.

Lamont, you seem to know quite a bit about oil formulating. I agree with your general comments, but why are compound blenders always assumed to be using generic formulations 2-3 years behind the competition? Amsoil and Redline don't appear to be lagging behind from what I have seen. Their new SSO is using a new proprietary ashless AW system.

That's just based on tearaparts I've seen, from a group of some very talented chemists playing with some very fancy toys. "Synthetic" can be about as useful a term with oil as "organic" is with food. Plastic-related materials (as in high levels of VI improver, PIB & diester) are synthetic, but there are better things to put in your lubricants these days. (But those better components, specifically high-vis PAOs and non-ester cosolvents, cut into the bottom line, you know.)

Any supplier touting one specific additive might very well be using that as sleight of hand to distract you from thinking about the rest of a fairly pedestrian formulation.

The same goes for touting one property. "We have 8 ZILLION times better wear protection than Brand X (and those deposits all over the place, uh, they give you extra rust protection, yeah, that's the ticket.)"

Think of a lube formulation as a partly filled balloon. If you squeeze it one place, it's going to bulge out somewhere else. You can also think of an additive like a drug, it's got beneficial properties and side effects. If you push too hard on one property, it's going to hurt you somewhere else. Better suppliers will try to give you a comprehensive formulation that gives the best possible overall performance the current technology can provide.

I get off on a tangent and lose the string, often.

Every component in every formulation is "proprietary". That doesn't mean it's exclusive, or new, or special; it just means they won't tell you exactly what it is.

Ashless AWs aren't new, they've been in use in "environmental" hydraulics and other specialty industrials for years. Sulfur and phosphorus will still give you AW, even without the zinc. (Metals are what cause ash.) Their use is fairly new in engine oils. As such, there are probably a coupla-three technical problems that may or may not have been completely worked out (or even identified). A major has usually drawn a formulation through a knot-hole before it gets to Manny, Moe & Jack. The compounder-blenders don't usually have those sort of resources.

Thanks Lamont.

quote:

Compounder-blenders are likely to have a very generic formulation that is 2-3 generations behind the majors

Not true in ALL cases


"Blend quality in this market segment is likely to be all over the map."

Thats true

+1.

yeah