OIL education Interesting info
04-27-2005, 09:25 PM
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OIL education Interesting info
Take from Scooter Swami page.
OIL
The Not So Slippery
The Slippery
and
The Too Slippery
Not so long ago, petroleum based lubricating oils were nowhere near as good as they are today. In fact, they were terrible.
In the condition crude oil comes out of the ground, the only thing it’s good for is sustaining a fire. That crude oil needs a whole lot of work to get it into a condition that approaches something acceptable for lubricating an engine. During World War One, the preferred lubricant for aircraft engines was a vegetable based oil: castor oil. Unfortunately for these heroic fighter pilots, the engines sprayed considerable quantities of castor oil back into the cockpit, some of it getting into their mouth. Since one of the more well-know uses for castor oil is to treat constipation, what do you think happens when you ingest castor oil and you are not constipated? Some very un-fighter-pilot-like intestinal distress…let’s leave it at that.
The superior lubricating qualities of castor oil was offset by it’s short life and tendency to turn into a plastic-like goop. With improvements over the years, petroleum lubricants became more reliable and better suited to internal combustion engines. Castor oil is still a great lubricant; you can find it commonly used today in model airplane engine fuel. The swami flashes back to his model airplane days whenever he smells castor oil smoke.
You might be interested to know what is actually extracted from a 42 gallon barrel of crude oil and how much of it is lubricating oil:
Product Gallons per barrel
gasoline 19.5
distillate fuel oil 9.2 ( includes home heating oil and diesel fuel)
kerosene-type jet fuel 4.1
residual fuel oil 2.3 (fuels for electrical power plants and ships)
liquified gasses 1.9 (gasses that are dissolved in the crude oil)
still gas 1.9
coke 1.8
asphalt & road oil 1.3
petrochemical feedstocks 1.2
lubricants .5 Yes, that’s ½ gallon!
kerosene .2
other .3
To get that precious ½ gallon of lubricant out of the 42 gallons of crude takes a lot of mechanical and chemical processing.
It’s complicated, but the major process for separating the various components is distillation…boiling the oil. The various components of the crude oil boil and condense at different temperatures. For example, if I mixed some olive oil, water, and rocks in a pot, then boiled the mix at 212 degrees F. the water in the mix would turn to steam. When that steam condenses on a cool surface, there will be water and only water, the oil is still in the pot with the rocks. The water has been extracted from the mix by boiling. To get the oil to boil and vaporize, so it could be condensed, would take around 500 degrees. By the time you boil and vaporize the oil, the water is long gone, with nothing but rocks left in the pot. The many components of crude oil boil and vaporize at different temperatures. By carefully controlling these temperatures, separation of the various components is accomplished.
Lubricating oil is the single most important element in the life of an engine. Simply put, the oil is there to keep metal from touching metal. It’s those brief moments at startup, when lubricating oil is in short supply, or when the engine overheats, and the oil is as thin as water, that extreme wear and sometime catastrophic failures occur.
As oil technology improved, so did the life span of engines. There was a time when you looked to oils from certain regions of the world for superior lubricating oils. Now, with new chemistry and manufacturing techniques, it no longer makes a difference.
OK, lets cut to the chase; you want to know what oil you should be using in your scooter engine to give it maximum protection.
The first place you want to look to is the manufacturers’ recommendations. You have heard this before, "when all else fails read the Owners Manual". Despite some conspiracy theories circulated by the uneducated, manufacturers want their engines to last as long as possible. A manufacturer can live with a low number of replacement parts sales; they can’t live with a reputation for engine failures.
Some of you have older engines and you really can’t find the designation of the oil listed in your manual, or they might be listing oils tested to a standard not used in this country or may be listing an out of date standard.
A note of caution here! The swami is discussing oils for 4 cycle engines. For those of you who announce your arrival and departure with 2 stroke smoke, he strongly and sincerely recommends synthetic oils. If you do the math, you will find it a small investment with many rewards; little if any smoke, no clogged exhaust ports, longer engine life, and a chance to see some smiles and 5 finger waves from the environmentally conscious instead of the single digit salute. That is all the swami has to say on that subject.
Most engine oils available today carries a donut symbol on the front of the bottle. Across the top is printed "API SERVICE SJ", API stands for the American Petroleum Institute. This is an independent oil testing agency that licenses oil manufacturers to use the API Quality Mark on their oil containers, if the oil passes the minimum performance standards set by the API…sort of like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for engine oils.
As oils have improved over the years, the performance standards they must meet get tougher and a new letter designation is used. The current standard is API SJ. Previous categories, now obsolete are: SH, SG, SF, SE, SD, SC, SB, & SA. Since there are very few diesel-powered scooters, I’ll not bother you with the designations for diesel oil.
Inside the "hole" of the API donut the viscosity of the oil is designated. The "SAE" stands for Society of Automotive Engineers, who set the standard for viscosity tests. The numbers below "SAE" are the viscosity ratings of the oil. Viscosity is a measure of the oil’s thickness and ability to flow at certain temperatures.
Most oils used and recommended today are multi-viscosity. Here’s why: In cold weather oil will get thick and stiff. Starting an engine with thick oil is difficult, even if you have electric start. A 10W-40 designation, for example, means that the oil acts like a 10 weight oil when it’s cold (thus the W for winter) and like a 40 weight oil at operating temperatures. If you started off with a straight 10 weight oil, by the time your engine had warmed up to operating temperatures, your oil would be getting very thin and not lubricating very well.
If you don’t have specific factory information, a general recommendation for scooters and motorcycles would be 10W-40 or 20W-40 for outside temperature up to about 90 degrees F. When outside temperatures get higher, or if you drive long and hard, you should consider 20W-50 oils.
Bajaj Auto recommends 20W-40 oils for their 4 stroke scooter engines, unfortunately, for some reason, this grade is hard to find, so it's OK to use any of the viscosities mentioned above in your Bajaj scooter.
Keep in mind that the API SJ designation is a minimum standard that oil must meet, which is a high standard, but there is no additional designation for outstanding or superior oils within the SJ designation, yet those oils exist. How do we find them?
The swami will now reveal the secret for finding these higher performance oils within the SJ designation: look for words on the label, in various forms, that identify the oil as approved or suitable for use in turbocharged engines.
Turbochargers are internally lubricated by the oil from the engine. Turbochargers are powered by exhaust gases and get hot. Inside the turbocharger are ball bearings that get very hot! For oil to continue to lubricant under those abnormally high temperatures special oil formulations are needed. Oils that perform just fine in normal engines will begin to oxidize and fail when subjected to the higher temperatures of a turbocharger.
Here’s why an SJ rated oil that says it’s designed for turbocharged engines will be perfectly suited for your motorcycle or scooter:
The API certification tests are done on actual engines. These engines are selected to duplicate the average automobile engine, giving validity to the test results. Unfortunately for us, these engines are water-cooled and their crankshaft bearings are "plain" bearings. Our motorcycle and scooter engines are mostly air-cooled, with higher cylinder and head temperatures, and the crankshaft bearings are almost exclusively ball bearings. If you haven’t gotten the connection yet, re-read the part about turbochargers, ball bearings, and heat in the paragraph above.
There is one last piece of important information at the bottom of the API "donut", if it says "Energy Conserving" watch out! The oil may be too slippery for your engine.
How is it possible for an oil to be too slippery?! …you incredulously ask. Isn’t that exactly what we are looking for? The answer is "Yes, most of the time", but if you have a wet clutch that shares the engine oil you may find your clutch doing less clutching and more slipping. Before using any energy conserving oils or aftermarket oil additives designed to improve the performance of engines, be sure you do not have a wet clutch that shares oil with the engine.
OIL
The Not So Slippery
The Slippery
and
The Too Slippery
Not so long ago, petroleum based lubricating oils were nowhere near as good as they are today. In fact, they were terrible.
In the condition crude oil comes out of the ground, the only thing it’s good for is sustaining a fire. That crude oil needs a whole lot of work to get it into a condition that approaches something acceptable for lubricating an engine. During World War One, the preferred lubricant for aircraft engines was a vegetable based oil: castor oil. Unfortunately for these heroic fighter pilots, the engines sprayed considerable quantities of castor oil back into the cockpit, some of it getting into their mouth. Since one of the more well-know uses for castor oil is to treat constipation, what do you think happens when you ingest castor oil and you are not constipated? Some very un-fighter-pilot-like intestinal distress…let’s leave it at that.
The superior lubricating qualities of castor oil was offset by it’s short life and tendency to turn into a plastic-like goop. With improvements over the years, petroleum lubricants became more reliable and better suited to internal combustion engines. Castor oil is still a great lubricant; you can find it commonly used today in model airplane engine fuel. The swami flashes back to his model airplane days whenever he smells castor oil smoke.
You might be interested to know what is actually extracted from a 42 gallon barrel of crude oil and how much of it is lubricating oil:
Product Gallons per barrel
gasoline 19.5
distillate fuel oil 9.2 ( includes home heating oil and diesel fuel)
kerosene-type jet fuel 4.1
residual fuel oil 2.3 (fuels for electrical power plants and ships)
liquified gasses 1.9 (gasses that are dissolved in the crude oil)
still gas 1.9
coke 1.8
asphalt & road oil 1.3
petrochemical feedstocks 1.2
lubricants .5 Yes, that’s ½ gallon!
kerosene .2
other .3
To get that precious ½ gallon of lubricant out of the 42 gallons of crude takes a lot of mechanical and chemical processing.
It’s complicated, but the major process for separating the various components is distillation…boiling the oil. The various components of the crude oil boil and condense at different temperatures. For example, if I mixed some olive oil, water, and rocks in a pot, then boiled the mix at 212 degrees F. the water in the mix would turn to steam. When that steam condenses on a cool surface, there will be water and only water, the oil is still in the pot with the rocks. The water has been extracted from the mix by boiling. To get the oil to boil and vaporize, so it could be condensed, would take around 500 degrees. By the time you boil and vaporize the oil, the water is long gone, with nothing but rocks left in the pot. The many components of crude oil boil and vaporize at different temperatures. By carefully controlling these temperatures, separation of the various components is accomplished.
Lubricating oil is the single most important element in the life of an engine. Simply put, the oil is there to keep metal from touching metal. It’s those brief moments at startup, when lubricating oil is in short supply, or when the engine overheats, and the oil is as thin as water, that extreme wear and sometime catastrophic failures occur.
As oil technology improved, so did the life span of engines. There was a time when you looked to oils from certain regions of the world for superior lubricating oils. Now, with new chemistry and manufacturing techniques, it no longer makes a difference.
OK, lets cut to the chase; you want to know what oil you should be using in your scooter engine to give it maximum protection.
The first place you want to look to is the manufacturers’ recommendations. You have heard this before, "when all else fails read the Owners Manual". Despite some conspiracy theories circulated by the uneducated, manufacturers want their engines to last as long as possible. A manufacturer can live with a low number of replacement parts sales; they can’t live with a reputation for engine failures.
Some of you have older engines and you really can’t find the designation of the oil listed in your manual, or they might be listing oils tested to a standard not used in this country or may be listing an out of date standard.
A note of caution here! The swami is discussing oils for 4 cycle engines. For those of you who announce your arrival and departure with 2 stroke smoke, he strongly and sincerely recommends synthetic oils. If you do the math, you will find it a small investment with many rewards; little if any smoke, no clogged exhaust ports, longer engine life, and a chance to see some smiles and 5 finger waves from the environmentally conscious instead of the single digit salute. That is all the swami has to say on that subject.
Most engine oils available today carries a donut symbol on the front of the bottle. Across the top is printed "API SERVICE SJ", API stands for the American Petroleum Institute. This is an independent oil testing agency that licenses oil manufacturers to use the API Quality Mark on their oil containers, if the oil passes the minimum performance standards set by the API…sort of like the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for engine oils.
As oils have improved over the years, the performance standards they must meet get tougher and a new letter designation is used. The current standard is API SJ. Previous categories, now obsolete are: SH, SG, SF, SE, SD, SC, SB, & SA. Since there are very few diesel-powered scooters, I’ll not bother you with the designations for diesel oil.
Inside the "hole" of the API donut the viscosity of the oil is designated. The "SAE" stands for Society of Automotive Engineers, who set the standard for viscosity tests. The numbers below "SAE" are the viscosity ratings of the oil. Viscosity is a measure of the oil’s thickness and ability to flow at certain temperatures.
Most oils used and recommended today are multi-viscosity. Here’s why: In cold weather oil will get thick and stiff. Starting an engine with thick oil is difficult, even if you have electric start. A 10W-40 designation, for example, means that the oil acts like a 10 weight oil when it’s cold (thus the W for winter) and like a 40 weight oil at operating temperatures. If you started off with a straight 10 weight oil, by the time your engine had warmed up to operating temperatures, your oil would be getting very thin and not lubricating very well.
If you don’t have specific factory information, a general recommendation for scooters and motorcycles would be 10W-40 or 20W-40 for outside temperature up to about 90 degrees F. When outside temperatures get higher, or if you drive long and hard, you should consider 20W-50 oils.
Bajaj Auto recommends 20W-40 oils for their 4 stroke scooter engines, unfortunately, for some reason, this grade is hard to find, so it's OK to use any of the viscosities mentioned above in your Bajaj scooter.
Keep in mind that the API SJ designation is a minimum standard that oil must meet, which is a high standard, but there is no additional designation for outstanding or superior oils within the SJ designation, yet those oils exist. How do we find them?
The swami will now reveal the secret for finding these higher performance oils within the SJ designation: look for words on the label, in various forms, that identify the oil as approved or suitable for use in turbocharged engines.
Turbochargers are internally lubricated by the oil from the engine. Turbochargers are powered by exhaust gases and get hot. Inside the turbocharger are ball bearings that get very hot! For oil to continue to lubricant under those abnormally high temperatures special oil formulations are needed. Oils that perform just fine in normal engines will begin to oxidize and fail when subjected to the higher temperatures of a turbocharger.
Here’s why an SJ rated oil that says it’s designed for turbocharged engines will be perfectly suited for your motorcycle or scooter:
The API certification tests are done on actual engines. These engines are selected to duplicate the average automobile engine, giving validity to the test results. Unfortunately for us, these engines are water-cooled and their crankshaft bearings are "plain" bearings. Our motorcycle and scooter engines are mostly air-cooled, with higher cylinder and head temperatures, and the crankshaft bearings are almost exclusively ball bearings. If you haven’t gotten the connection yet, re-read the part about turbochargers, ball bearings, and heat in the paragraph above.
There is one last piece of important information at the bottom of the API "donut", if it says "Energy Conserving" watch out! The oil may be too slippery for your engine.
How is it possible for an oil to be too slippery?! …you incredulously ask. Isn’t that exactly what we are looking for? The answer is "Yes, most of the time", but if you have a wet clutch that shares the engine oil you may find your clutch doing less clutching and more slipping. Before using any energy conserving oils or aftermarket oil additives designed to improve the performance of engines, be sure you do not have a wet clutch that shares oil with the engine.
04-27-2005, 09:26 PM
#2
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Don’t feel bad if you can’t use Energy Conserving oils. With small engines the differences are barely measurable, if at all. But if you wish to make a significant, and measurable, contribution to conservation, recycle your oil and use recycled oil.
Maybe if the swami didn’t use the word "recycled", and instead used the more accurate term "re-refined", not so many of you would have wrinkled your noses at the suggestion.
Re-refined oil goes through essentially the same process that the crude oil does. It is re-distilled to regain the good elements of the oil that were never really destroyed, just contaminated. You change the oil in your engine to remove the buildup of contaminates in the oil not because the oil is worn out. If it were not for this contamination of the lubricating oil, it could continue to lubricate an engine almost indefinitely. Perhaps you would feel better knowing that airlines, trucking companies and fleets all over the country who are concerned with engine reliability, have been successfully using re-refined oils for a very long time.
Maybe if the swami didn’t use the word "recycled", and instead used the more accurate term "re-refined", not so many of you would have wrinkled your noses at the suggestion.
Re-refined oil goes through essentially the same process that the crude oil does. It is re-distilled to regain the good elements of the oil that were never really destroyed, just contaminated. You change the oil in your engine to remove the buildup of contaminates in the oil not because the oil is worn out. If it were not for this contamination of the lubricating oil, it could continue to lubricate an engine almost indefinitely. Perhaps you would feel better knowing that airlines, trucking companies and fleets all over the country who are concerned with engine reliability, have been successfully using re-refined oils for a very long time.
04-27-2005, 11:09 PM
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Pretty good info that covers the basics. I like how he refers to himself in the third person. However, this is geared towards scooters not cars so some of the info is irrelevant.
04-28-2005, 03:06 PM
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what does everyone think about Quaker State Q
Synthetic Blend for High Horsepower Engines: Engines with higher horsepower tend to rev higher and run hotter than other vehicles. They need Quaker State® Synthetic Blend for High Horsepower Engines. This oil has been fine-tuned to provide high heat protection and help oil from boiling away.
I saw an ad in the most recent sport compact car. Has anyone used it?
Synthetic Blend for High Horsepower Engines: Engines with higher horsepower tend to rev higher and run hotter than other vehicles. They need Quaker State® Synthetic Blend for High Horsepower Engines. This oil has been fine-tuned to provide high heat protection and help oil from boiling away.
I saw an ad in the most recent sport compact car. Has anyone used it?
04-29-2005, 08:09 PM
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I haven't ever used quaker state. So far I've used Mobil 1, which is too thick for a 5W-30. And Royal Purple, which is absolutely perfect. For the filter I use a Purolator pure-one.
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