Slowmo
Senior Member
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2018
- Messages
- 454
- Location
- United States
- Vessel Name
- Esprit
- Vessel Make
- 40' Tollycraft tricabin diesel
I spent 35 years in the lubrication industry so will offer a view based on my experience. I worked for one of the four major additive suppliers who supply the performance additive packages to all lubricant marketers. These companies are (in rough order of size): Lubrizol, Infineum, Chevron Oronite, and Afton. The additive systems provided by these companies give the wear, deposit, oxidation, and corrosion control of modern engine oils. The base oil, synthetic or otherwise, provide the base viscometric properties. Normally additive companies develop base packages to meet a suite of performance requirements and then adapt them to a customer's (e.g. Shell, BP, Chevron etc) specific base oils and marketing requirements. If you read on you will see this is a very expensive business.
A few points to be aware of
1) All base oils used in modern diesel engine oils are in effect 'synthesized'. I see people refer to 'dino-oil' which I assume refers to distilled fractions of crude. That isn't used anymore and hasn't for some time. I could spend pages on base oil alone but suffice to say that all modern base oils are extremely pure and all are synthesized via hydrocracking and isomerization. The term 'synthetic' is mainly a marketing term applied to higher viscosity index fluids which can enable wider cross grades (e.g. 5W-40)
2) The vast majority of the performance of current diesel engine oils (e.g. API CK-4) is determined by the test requirements set by the performance category. While each marketer has their own focus, these differences are relatively small. To give some perspective a test program to qualify a modern diesel engine oils (DEO) can cost from $5-15MM...yes that means millions. That does not include the R&D cost to develop the basic additive system used in those oils. The company I worked for spent hundreds of millions on R&D.
3) All the major suppliers including Chevron, Shell, XOM, BP, Total, etc supply comparable high quality products. All of these companies were customers of ours and I'm very familiar with all of them. As to XOM, they are highly respectable and demand high performance from their products, I would not hesitate to use their products.
4) It is important to make sure that the lubricant you use meets the performance and viscosity requirements of your engine. The API categories are, for the most part, sequential and backward compatible so if your engine calls for API CG-4 or CH-4 API CK-4 will exceed the requirements of your engine. Many OEMs have requirements that are roughly parallel to the API requirements, generally the use the same tests with slightly higher passing limits. This is especially true for US based OEMs, European oils are a bit more complex in this aspect.
5) Making sure you use the proper viscosity for your engine is important. Newer engines are designed to operate on lower viscosities, such as 5W-30 or 5W-40, for improved fuel economy. We are familiar with this in our passenger cars where we now see 0W20 or 0W-16 oils. However would recommend against putting a lower viscosity oil in an older engine, synthetic or not. I just don't see much upside.
A few points to be aware of
1) All base oils used in modern diesel engine oils are in effect 'synthesized'. I see people refer to 'dino-oil' which I assume refers to distilled fractions of crude. That isn't used anymore and hasn't for some time. I could spend pages on base oil alone but suffice to say that all modern base oils are extremely pure and all are synthesized via hydrocracking and isomerization. The term 'synthetic' is mainly a marketing term applied to higher viscosity index fluids which can enable wider cross grades (e.g. 5W-40)
2) The vast majority of the performance of current diesel engine oils (e.g. API CK-4) is determined by the test requirements set by the performance category. While each marketer has their own focus, these differences are relatively small. To give some perspective a test program to qualify a modern diesel engine oils (DEO) can cost from $5-15MM...yes that means millions. That does not include the R&D cost to develop the basic additive system used in those oils. The company I worked for spent hundreds of millions on R&D.
3) All the major suppliers including Chevron, Shell, XOM, BP, Total, etc supply comparable high quality products. All of these companies were customers of ours and I'm very familiar with all of them. As to XOM, they are highly respectable and demand high performance from their products, I would not hesitate to use their products.
4) It is important to make sure that the lubricant you use meets the performance and viscosity requirements of your engine. The API categories are, for the most part, sequential and backward compatible so if your engine calls for API CG-4 or CH-4 API CK-4 will exceed the requirements of your engine. Many OEMs have requirements that are roughly parallel to the API requirements, generally the use the same tests with slightly higher passing limits. This is especially true for US based OEMs, European oils are a bit more complex in this aspect.
5) Making sure you use the proper viscosity for your engine is important. Newer engines are designed to operate on lower viscosities, such as 5W-30 or 5W-40, for improved fuel economy. We are familiar with this in our passenger cars where we now see 0W20 or 0W-16 oils. However would recommend against putting a lower viscosity oil in an older engine, synthetic or not. I just don't see much upside.
