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Yes, I had used the Supertech oil from Walmart back in the days of more than some 25 years ago when I had a Honda Accord while I was in school. It never failed me and it was cheap and worked well for me. I didn't have much money to spend back then and money was tight so I'm glad it all worked out.
Originally Posted by danielTRLK
I love when I hear things like I told someone to run Redline and they came back and said it's amazing, etc. Like Really?(Kim K face) Your car talks to you now huh? Without oil analysis you should almost never say, my car ran better. The truth is you can't see what the oil is doing in 5,000 without millions of dollars in lab equipment. You're talking about 3 micron particles you can't even see.
2. The old myth of switching from conventional to sythetic is a bunch of old myths and the biggest myth I hear nonstop. The problem with older "synthetics back in the day" was that they didn't have the right kind of extreme pressure and anti-wear additives, leading to seals swelling and bad wear on certain components. That was over 20 years ago now. M1 is not a synthetic oil, lol. It is conventional, but the truth is Exxon had a fight with BP, they went before the BBB and the BBB ruled in the suit, that because a Group III+ is so highly refined compared to a tradional Group I, II, and III, that it could be marketed as a synthetic oil. Wam bam, ding dong do. Don't believe me? We have to run M1 as a conventional oil in our machines or the machine gets all sorts of weird readings. That's because the machine can actually tell if an oil is truly synthetic during testing with enough baselines. So M1 is not a truly pure "synthetic" by definition. Very few oils are truly synthetic. Most have base stocks of Group III+
3. There is no reason to not run a "synthetic oil". Do you like more horsepower, do you like better fuel economy, and do you like your engine's to last longer? If this is the case, "synthetic" oil is for you. If you hate all of the above, get a crummy supertech oil from wal-mart, actually for what it's worth, it's not all that bad!
4. If you have a car with leaks, run M1 EP, it will actually help keep the leaks from getting worse compared to conventional.
5. The fact is Redline is a good oil, but without data, you are making things up.
6. While Redline is good, there is a far superior oil on the market that is cheaper. For perspective, the VI of redline is around 180~, the oil I run in my RC-F has a VI of 240. Redline doesn't even compare, granted it is a better racing oil in many applications than say M1.
It was great to meet Dan in person. Surprised to see him show up at my house unannounced in a gated community with guards at the gates, but that's another story...
AFA the lifetime fill - this post has a lot of interesting information in it:
While I do not know this guy at all, I found his rant pretty interesting, and believable from the manufacturer's perspective. I also know enough people in the gearbox business to know ATF eventually goes bad. When that actually happens is highly variable, and I did at one time believe WS would work for 200k miles under ordinary conditions. I am not so convinced now, but I am still running WS in my gearbox. I remember too many stories from auto Supra owners who tried different ATFs and always ended up back to T-IV because whatever they tried didn't work.
I have engine oil samples from the GS F that went to Tribologik and to Blackstone. I have the Blackstone results and I expect Tribologik will have their results to me soon. There is more to this than meets the eye for sure, and I'll post for all to see as soon as the results are in for both. These samples are from a standard OCI with dealer supplied oil, so it's anyone's bet what really went in there. I put Mobil 1 5w-30 with an OEM filter in it when the sample came out, and I installed a Fumoto valve to simplify future oil changes. Sure they take longer to drain, but there is zero mess, and it is surprisingly well shielded on the GS F.
Stock oil filters from Toyota, just changing to the WIX now as my free maintenance is over.
Have a custom filter in the making.
Air filter was replaced at around 12,500 miles.
First oil sample was whatever the dealer used, likely valvovine cheap synthetic.
Second was Mobil 1 5W-30.
Third was RLI 5W-30 Low Ash.
on the third sample, I had been playing with E15. I only fill up with 93 Nitro V-Power, maybe 2-3 fill ups from BP.
Tribologik's Expert system is not set up for automotive applications, so don't bother with it's suggestions, for the most part.
So the water is a few different things, it is a combination of water, O-H bonds stretching, combustion by products and additive polymers. I'll bring that back up later.
The RLI was hands down superior and devastated the Mobil 1 and Valvoline oils. It's interesting to note that the RLI read 1.6% fuel when new, while M1 and Valvoline read 0%. This is something I believe related to the plant based esters in the RLI oil as I'm still trying to narrow down why the fuel reading would come back at 1.6% on a fresh oil. The nitration value on RLI on the FTIR came back at 6, so I use that as a baseline when I look at the nitration value of 11. In short, RLI pounded the other oils in the ground, BIG TIME. sort of confirms what I've been saying. Also, this car redlines 8-9 times a day. I haven't even gotten into the wear, where it really shined. My fourth sample will be composed of Valvoline as a control against the RLI and M1.
In short, the fuel % was actually about 1.5% and nitration was 5. That's *************** damn good, like Ferrari good. Overall this engine runs really well. Props yet again to Toyota and Yamaha.
So here we are. Tribologik and Blackstone with samples drawn midstream from a full oil change on the GS F.
Capture method was using a very empty Mobil 1 5 quart container while the oil was pouring into the catch pan. I pulled about 2 quarts after letting the oil run for 10 seconds or so. This oil went into the Blackstone sample container, and I poured this same oil into the container Dan provided. They were as equal as I know how to make them. The numbers are quite a bit different and the analysis is also different. I advised both companies I had made an error and left the oil fill cap loose after adding 0.5 quarts of oil about 500 miles before the OCI. Truth be told, the engine operated with NO oil cap because I failed to put it back on the engine after adjusting the oil level. My total stupid. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time cleaning up an oily mess under the hood, and a lot of money went in the garage curse jar.
Both companies showed high silicates - and they should have. Blackstone was dismissive. Blackstone failed to see the water or fuel in the sample, and Dan had already warned me to expect this. Their testing methodology is primitive, and the results are not something to bank on. Both companies advised me their analysis would be better if they knew what brand and weight of oil was in the engine, but this was a Lexus service, not my own, so I really don't know what was in there. I just know they put too much of it in the engine when I got it back from their service. It was 2+ inches above the full mark on the dipstick. I did remedy that myself with a plastic hose through the dipstick tube and my vacuum pump.
At any rate, my confidence in the Blackstone report is not good. The water and fuel dilution Tribologik identified tells me the analysis at Blackstone is very limited, and if I want the most accurate picture, I need to change labs. Hopefully Dan will be able to chime in and explain what all the numbers mean from a practical perspective.
ugh, that would be 2 pages on this forum. I'll publish something later this week.
Daniel,
You, sir, ROCK! While I can say that I know nothing about oil, I'm a stickler for factual data and scientific analysis. Props to you for taking your time to educate us in such an unbiased fashion.
I switched to Amsoil at 3000 miles. I am strongly considering switching to the RL now. I am interested in getting oil analysis done before making the switch. Thanks to everyone else that is sharing data on this thread as well.
Well, it’s Sunday night and I was thinking I’m just going to watch TV, but I did say I would “publish” something. I’ll start out with my UOA’ first, move on to Lance’s, hit Rick’s and try to finish my show. I am grilling while I’m writing the first portion of this so pardon the grammar.
So I basically bought my RC-F with 1,000~ miles. It was a CPO and for an extra $3,500, I got a 9 year unlimited $0 deductible warranty on the vehicle, dents, dings, tires, rims, roadside, hotel BS, etc. Working in the trans business I saw a lot of people buy vehicles they couldn’t afford and the trans went out on an S65 customer and his bill was $10k. Plus knowing I want to take this car to 500,000+ miles, I don’t want to pay for the trans/diff and the infotainment system. I assume for the first 1,000 miles it was ripped on hard, I was at a Toyota dealership yesterday doing some work for them when the manager wanted to show me their new “86” LE. He popped the hood, started the engine and proceed to redline it for about 10 seconds. I’m not sure but I may be suffering from PTSD after seeing that happen in real life. I did an analysis with 6,600 miles on the engine and 5,000~ on the oil. This was using the dealer’s supplied oil.
edit: First oil was dealer supplied, second was M1, third was BioSyn HDMO all 5W30's.
First UOA L#2245906
Iron – This reading is elevated and high on the first UOA, I had the oil cooler replaced at 3,000 miles and reflects this taking place. Normally this is much higher than I’d like to see but given the cooler being replaced, I’m not too worried, and it has settled in nicely on second and third.
Copper – this is most likely from cooler again and break in.
Tin – No conforming tin materials in this engine. This could be gasket making materials /bonding agents, especially being new. At 1PPM, I’m not worried. This could also be some noise on the ICP. Not normally a bearing alloy until you get deep into the bearing, unlikely in this situation, since it would likely be from wear in the valvetrain.
Aluminum – Piston alloy, this was 6, and has now settled down to 3 on the subsequent results. Likely related to break in, at 3ppm, it’s wearing very well.
Chromium/Nickel – Wrist pin/piston rings alloy/valve guide alloy. 1ppm at the first UOA and none after. GREAT! This engine fully seated, early in its life and should have a great life ahead of it.
Molybdenum – M1 uses this to control some wear and increase fuel economy. You can see in the second sample, it was higher, an indicator of M1. This is also a ring alloy, which can make it really tricky to see as it’s being masked by the chemistries. As I moved to the RLI, which does not use molybdenum, you can see the ring alloys better. Now this could be left over’s of the M1 formula in the oil. Overall at 81 and then 21, this is good; I’m not very worried about it.
Silicon – The first sample came back at 24, and subsequently fell to 7, and then 5. I replace the air filter every 10-15k. The 24 was related to gasket materials from a new engine and likely some materials during the oil cooler install. It was likely an alloy in the cylinders from break in as well.
Magnesium – additive from Infineum
Sodium – could be some dirt ingress or cleaning additive in fuel tanks
Baryum – tracer
FTIR – I think we touched on this already, I’ll recap for those who don’t go back and read forums like myself. FTIR is essentially looking at the molecular level of the oil. ICP or Spectroscopic analysis is looking at the oil at the elemental level. Why is it useful? Well for one example imagine ZDTP. We can see on the ICP work that there is 700ppm of zinc/phos but we don’t know if that’s ZDDP or ZDTP that’s been sheared. FTIR allows us a backdoor to see into the oil and see if there is any active antiwear additives left. Remember an oil can start with a BN of 20, and sheer to 2 in 5,000 miles, whilst another oil can start with a BN of 8 and sheer to 5 in 5,000 miles. We need FTIR to help us see this change. I’ll explain some of the other values as I go along.
Soot – on a gasoline engine, it’s unlikely that this is soot. FTIR shoots a IR beam across the sample and spits back a graph that looks like a wave. On a gasoline engine, this is likely an insoluble material versus an actual molecule of soot. I’ve run new samples of M1 and the baseline is 3 for the soot. So I have to take into consideration that there is a baseline of +/- 3 polymers throwing off the FTIR machine. There is a lot of valve overlap and with post EGR residuals, it’s entirely possible this could be soot as well. At 3-5, I don’t read into it much and I wouldn’t become concerned until it’s at least at 7.
AW/EP. This is AntiWear at ExtremePressure. Basically your active additives in the oil. Now Lance in his response mentioned that neither lab knew what oil he was using, while he was correct, I knew what oil he was using because he used a dealer supplied oil(valvoline) and I have the reference information for valvoline’s oil. Using the ICP + FTIR + VI, I can pretty much tell what formula he was using. Notice both M1 and Valvoline for 5,000 miles were left with 15 but the RLI still had 34 after 6,400 miles. This is a testament to RLI’s formula, not an extended drain oil however.
Oxidation – This is how oxidized the oil has become, now it’s important to note, that RLI’s formula sets off the machine and has a baseline of 100+/-. The more oxidized the oil is, the harder it has been run, been run in an engine, etc. On racing engines or tracked vehicles, they will often rise, it’s an indicator of what kind of temperature the engine has been running at.
Sulfation – this is closely tied to oxidation and has a big part to do with some of the fuel and oil additives. I’m going to shorten up on some of these, and this one is not as important.
Nitration – Ok, this one is huge. This is basically a large component of the combustion dynamic. This shows us how well your spark system is working and A/F ratio. I don’t want to see this over 10 for close to 5K. If it goes over, we know there’s a fueling issue, O2 sensors issue, timing conditions, etc. RLI throws a baseline of 6, most other oils, 2-3. At 6, 9 and 11, this engine is running justtttt right! This is phenomenal and is a testament to Yamaha and Toyota engineering, especially with this engine being ultra low emissions compliant. It’s basically at 5 per every 5K, this is just too good to be true almost. They really did a good job. Something BMW can’t speak of.
Glycol – coolant basically.
Fuel Dilution/Water – I don’t really use these readings and here is the reason, the FTIR machine is made by a company called Perkin Elmer. They have to make references of oils in their system and a whole bunch of things. How many automotive people will ever use FTIR? So PE basically doesn’t car and they really shouldn’t. The FD/water readings from the FTIR are usually good, but I prefer to use gas chromatography and karl fischer. One reason is because we are looking for the O-H bond stretch from the combustion dynamic, polymers and additives from the fuels.
TBN – Look at RLI, It went further and harder many times and it’s still sitting at 7.48. Now one thing to remember is that automotive oil analysis is so hard because few realize wear is not linear in cars. So the Universal averages BS posts are BS, they have some use in mass applications but not in comparison of single vehicles. M1 did a bit better than the cheap valvoline used at the dealership but RLI blew it away. Considering I drove an extra 1,400 miles and it was still much better than M1 and V.
TAN – So RLI starts out with 1.8-2 and M1 starts around 1.2 and a lot less for V. These acids are really not there and in small amounts, overall this is great, signifies the base stock ability to fight the acid is doing quite well.
Viscosity Index, for the RLI the index should have calculated 168.This is a big indicator of how the oil is going to do when the engine is being pushed at high temps. All of these oils are within range with the valvoline/Lexus Blend coming subpar at 152. RLI I will note starts out new at 220! M1 and most others start at around 175.
KF – Ok, finally here. This is an indicator of O-H bonds stretching, polymers, fueling conditions and some additives and ring seal. This is NOT ALWAYS WATER AND MOST INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS WILL TELL YOU OTHERWISE. MOST OF THEM WILL NEVER LOOK AT KF as anything but condensation. The values should be within 300-750ppm. Anything less and your engine is running lean and hot, and helps to determine if the right amount of fuel is being injected. Too much and we know there is over fueling. Now in today’s engines, overfueling is a common way to address the high temperatures they have to run for emissions. So normally 700 is a good value. Sometimes depending on the area, this can be condensation. On this engine with as many valves as it has this can be a factor.
Blackstone uses a test called the crackle and hot plate. These are not accurate for anything, especially with modern fuels. They show 0.0 on water and fuel in almost every test they do, yet I have found it’s never 0.0 in either and their own data indicates in other areas that there’s fuel and water present.
So at 640 and 750ppm for the first two samples, that’s great. The unit is really fueling quite well and there are no issues. The third unit at 940 is elevated, now I can attribute this to a few things. I let my girlfriend drive this car to work for quite some time unlike ever before in the previous samples. Her commute is 10 minutes each way, basically start up and then shut down before the engine gets up to operating temp. Oil is still cold and has poor ring seal in her commute. The next portion is it rained for 2 weeks straight leading up to this sample and this is likely some condensation in the oil. The third is my experimenting running E15 fuel. The third sample had a lotttt of start ups that lasted less than 30 seconds and it shows.
Fuel % - My favorite!!! Great indicator of ring seal and how an oil is performing for you. M1 and V don’t throw any baseline’s on our PE GC machine but it’s interesting that RLI throws a 1.6-1.8% baseline reading from new. This is likely due to the biobase stocks in the formula tricking the machine, which this is the hardest machine to trick, almost near impossible. So removing 1.6-1.8% from 2.95 in the third sample shows a 1.2-1.4% of fuel in the oil. That is really good, like very really really good. LOL. Valvoline’s oil let 3.9% and M1 reduced this to 3.5%, so it shows you how an oil is providing ring seal that ultimately equates to power. Now considering RLI went 1,400 miles further and a lot more stop and go driving, at 1.4, even if you said 2.95%, that is a phenomenal oil. It really sealed up the piston/cylinder rings. It probably would have been 1% at 5,000 miles. Just shows how good that stuff is, I have no affiliation to them for those wondering. Also, note the wear values and how they dropped on the third sample. For those wondering, this thing redlines 4-5 times a day.
Lance’s – summary, combustion dynamic looks great. Switch that oil to RLI’s or M1EP. I assume this gets a good drive daily and is not pushed very hard. I’m wondering if it’s been fully seated. We can do some things to get this sucker fully seated if it hasn’t. Close that oil cap……..lol Don’t be too worried, it was ok. What fuel are you running?
Rick – This is really a 0W20, not 5W30, oil is doing just fine but is close to its useable end life. Your insolubles are too high, this should not be 0.3 on a brand new engine. This is likely related to the filtration of this oil, switch to the WIX XP and get a new air filter in this engine. We need more information from the oil. The wear looks to be good, but I need more info.
Also, for some of you that like the oiled filters and CAI, look at Lance's sample as an example of what happens when a little leak gets through. Lance's 1ppm of tin was likely due to this leak and some of the heat exchangers dumping residual copper, as silicon sand blasts internals. Granted with Lance, he takes good care of his stuff and it's not going to kill this engine any time soon, in his situation it was an accident that has long been corrected. My point is, CAI and oiled air filters do that, over time, if allowed to continue like that it robs the engine of efficiency and ultimately power. An engine can run a long time before it blows. How much power it's making is the better question. Run a cheap air filter every 5K if tracking, 10K if street, 15K if highwaying.
This also addresses synthetic's and other questions. Will your engine blow up if you use cheap Wal Mart supertech? No, but it won't run as nice, fuel economy, power, and other factors are greatly affected by the oil we run. When you get into the constant redlining/tracking/racing/harder use, you want to make sure your engine is prepared the best it can be.
Also, for some of you that like the oiled filters and CAI, look at Lance's sample as an example of what happens when a little leak gets through. Lance's 1ppm of tin was likely due to this leak and some of the heat exchangers dumping residual copper, as silicon sand blasts internals. Granted with Lance, he takes good care of his stuff and it's not going to kill this engine any time soon, in his situation it was an accident that has long been corrected. My point is, CAI and oiled air filters do that, over time, if allowed to continue like that it robs the engine of efficiency and ultimately power. An engine can run a long time before it blows. How much power it's making is the better question. Run a cheap air filter every 5K if tracking, 10K if street, 15K if highwaying.
This also addresses synthetic's and other questions. Will your engine blow up if you use cheap Wal Mart supertech? No, but it won't run as nice, fuel economy, power, and other factors are greatly affected by the oil we run. When you get into the constant redlining/tracking/racing/harder use, you want to make sure your engine is prepared the best it can be.
05-26-17, 11:08 PM
