Engine oil

jonbills

jonbills

Membership Secretary
Site Administrator
SeanDezart said:
This from Anglo-American Oil (Joe Gibbs/Driven) :

I spoke to Lake Speed who is the senior oil guy at Driven and he has seen this report and he is not worried about the apparent low rating of his oil, as

he disputes the real world accuracy of the tests and the interpretations that have been made.


A lot of labs use fairly standardised tests to report on oils and these can skew the relevance of the data produced . There is much weight placed throughout the document on the

TBN values of the oil as an example. This is a measure of the ability of the oil to cope with high acid levels and was a valid test when there were high sulphur levels in pump fuels as these produced sulphuric

acids which would cause corrosion. Modern fuels are now all low sulphur, so high TBN values are no longer a key performance measure for an oil.


These standardised tests identify zinc levels but not the actual type of zinc product being used in the oil. The different types work in different ways, some are there to last a long drain period

others have shorter life span but give better protection, so it depends on what the oils have been formulated to do as to how effective the zinc content is.


Lab results are one thing, but Driven develop and fine tune the oil formulations in actual engines doing wear analysis and performance measurements and have been doing this for the last 15 years.

Attached is a development report where Driven ran dyno power runs using different oils with the same spec engine, changing to a new cam for each oil and the measuring the wear rates and

power produced. This shows that the Driven products perform very well and better that some of those brands include in the lab tests that on paper are better.
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Who'd a thunk it, an oil manufacturer with a scientific report that their oil is great and an opinion that a negative independent review is rubbish!
 
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johnymd

johnymd

Club Member
IMO the problem with commending oil is that most peoples opinions are not based on anything tangible. For example: "I've been using XYZ for 10 years and never had a problem". You could have this same result for pretty much any oil if your car was driven normally. Then you could has someone else say: "I used ABC and my engine failed after 200 miles". He doesn't mention its a race car he has increased the HP from 95 to 450.

At the end of the day none of us have sufficient data to make the best choice for our situation so just make a best guess based on your requirements and you should be fine. I'm going along with VR1 now as I've already bought it and it should do a reasonable job for my situation.
 
SeanDezart

SeanDezart

Well-Known Forum User
jonbills said:
Who'd a thunk it, an oil manufacturer with a scientific report that their oil is great and an opinion that a negative independent review is rubbish!
Click to expand...

Tch, tch....theirs wasn't merely lab tested for content and then narrowly judged upon those content %s.....please show me another manufacturer that has tested oils so thoroughly under stressed conditions. And still bear in mind that your next MZR +£100k 240Z will have this oil inside.

I'm not saying it's the best and agree with John - whatever works best for 'you'.
 
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