Neat oil Airtical

[ryanjames170]

evan if you have a 2 cycle this is a interesting read. http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/motor-oil-101/

 

[PaulS]

Interesting? Yes, but far from a correct analysis.
Engines wear most at startup because there is no oil on the moving parts except the thin film left after most of it drips off before it cools down.
Engine parts expand as they heat up. When an engine is cold parts do not fit properly and wear occurs quickly. You always have to warm the engine so the parts fit the way they are designed to run.
Oil does break-down under heat. The manufacturers use heat to "crack" the oil molecules to separate them into similar "chains" to refine the oil for a specific use. The additives in oil provide better lubricity, longer life, better cooling and cleaning. The internal combustion engine produces acids as a by-product of combustion. The small amounts of nitric and sulfuric acids attack bearings and the oil additives. This thickens the oil with time. The acids build up in your oil and with more heat will turn the dirt in your engine to clay - this is what sludge is.
His disertation has some good points but his premise that synthetic oils are not mineral oil is ludicrous. The oil comes from the same drum, sythetic is just more highley refined. This only means that the molecules in the oil are the same size - fewer sizes of molecules mean that the oil is more stable with temperature changes and it will last longer because it is more resistant to the damaging effects of heat. They both come from "dyno-soup". Oil sitting on the shelf in closed containers will last longer than you will live without any measurable degradation.
Bob needs to do a bit more research before he publishes his article.

Paul

 

[djschwartz]

Interesting? ...They both come from "dyno-soup"....

Sorry, you're wrong. From Mobil:

Answer:
Synthetic ester oils are not derived from crude petroleum. The fluids are manufactured using a fundamental reaction of two compounds: an acid and an alcohol. Many types of acids and alcohols can be used to manufacture esters. Careful selection of these starting compounds tailors the final ester fluid to be superior in the properties desired.

Ester Oil | How it's Made

From The technology of synthetic oil. How is synthetic oil made?

What is synthetic oil?


The easiest way to define what synthetic oil is, is to define what it is NOT. Conventional motor oil as we have known it for the last 100 years or so is derived from crude oil that is taken from the earth with oil wells. Through a complex distillation process the crude oil is refined into many different liquids, or fractions, each having distinct characteristics. Some are very light and are used as fuel (gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel), and some are heavier and are used as lubricants (motor oil, gear lube, grease). There are many molecular compounds present in crude oil and many of those compounds are still present in the refined product, detracting from the physical properties of that product. For instance, paraffinnic waxes are present in crude-based oil, but contribute nothing to the lubricative properties of the oil. Also, the size of the hydrocarbon molecules themselves are non-uniform in crude-based oils. Synthetic oil contains none of these contaminants and the hydrocarbon molecules are very uniform, giving the synthetic oil base better mechanical properties at extreme high and low temperature (see the sections below on physical properties). By contrast, synthetic oil is not distilled from crude oil. It is made through a chemical process known as the Fischer-Tropsch process, starting with raw materials like methane, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. This process was developed by Germany in WWII, when that country's access to crude oil was very limited.


Grades of oil.


Motor oils are derived from base stocks. That is, a generic oil base is modified with additives to produce a lubricant with the desired properties. A base stock oil with no additives would not perform very well at all. Base stocks are classified by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and fall into one of five categories.


• Group I and II - these are mineral oils derived from crude oil
• Group III - this is a highly refined mineral oil made through a process called hydrocracking. In North America this group is considered a synthetic oil, for marketing purposes.
• Group IV - these are true synthetic oils, known as Polyalphaolefin (PAO).
• Group V - these are synthetic stocks other than PAO's and include esters and other compounds.

Bob needs to do a bit more research before he publishes his article.

Paul

So do you.

 

[PaulS]

• Group I and II - these are mineral oils derived from crude oil
• Group III - this is a highly refined mineral oil made through a process called hydrocracking. In North America this group is considered a synthetic oil, for marketing purposes.

It seems you have also made MY point. The hydrocracking process was first used to get more gasoline from crude but they found that they could use it to make the "synthetic" oils with similar technology. when you buy your next quart of synthetic read the lable... It is unlikely that it is 100% ester oil.

 

[djschwartz]

It seems you have also made MY point. The hydrocracking process was first used to get more gasoline from crude but they found that they could use it to make the "synthetic" oils with similar technology. when you buy your next quart of synthetic read the lable... It is unlikely that it is 100% ester oil.

Aeroshell 15W50 is a semi-synthetic, I don't know it's base for the "synthetic" portion but that's mostly irrelevant since a portion of its base is mineral anyway. Mobil1 and Amsoil, among many others, are 100% true synthetic. None of this is on the label of the oil bottles of course. You need to research that a bit further. There are dramatic differences between mineral oils and true synthetics as Bob the Oil Guy states. I trust his articles and they match what I've read from other sources. If you have any sources with different information, go ahead and post them so the readers of this forum can check them out and decide for themselves.