if you have Mobil 1....and if you're like me and like my cars running like a top do yourself a favor and switch at your next oil change. I tune standalone ECU's on the side so I've grown a sense of feeling when an engine feels stronger with incremental changes.

 

Motul's business is lubricants, and the company has been in existence since the 1850s. Motul racing oils - namely their 300V line - are at the very top of the pecking order when it comes to engine protection. Motul generally uses group V ester base stocks, which are arguably the best when it comes to high-temperature stability (which is why jet engine oils are ester-based... and the blower on my old E55 calls for Mobil Jet Oil II), and most ester molecules are also polar so they tend to adhere to each other and the metal. So - purely from a performance perspective (I am leaving cost out of the equation as esters are about twice as expensive to manufacture as group IV PAO stocks and about 20 times as expensive as group III hydrocracked stocks, but the performance diifferences are not 2x or 20x greater), for a pure racing oil Motul 300V would be among my top choices. As I previously mentioned, there are many synthetic oils - even from smaller companies like AMSOIL, Red Line and several others - that are very good and suitable for racing.

However, when it comes to oils that are suitable for street use, things start to go south very quickly. Racing oils have a very different set of requirements from street oils as essentially they only need to perform for a very short time at high shear and high thearmal loads without regard for anything else. Street oils on the other hand need to work at a much greater temperature range for a much longer period of time, deal with moisture and acids, as well as preserve catalytic converters and provide a certain level of fuel efficiency. This necessiates the use of various additives, which by their very design are mostly incompatible with each other. For example, a street oil needs to contain detergents to combat deposits, but these detergents are by defintion also going to clean and strip the anti-wear additves that would otherwise adhere to the metal. So - this is where the real "black magic" happens, and millions of dollars are beingh spent on R & D to allow us to both have (most of) our cake and eat it too, by creating very specific base stocks and additives that will do what they need to do in the engine without counteracting other desirable properties of the base stock and other additives that perform a different and very often conflicting function. This is where the smaller players can't compete with the ExxonMobils and Shells of this world, who spend more on R & D annually than the other smaller players' gross sales volumes combined. Even ExxonMobil and Shell share expenditures in this area. They have created Infineum, who is the at the bleeding edge of oil and fuel additive formulation, R & D and production. For a quick read on the differences between racing and street oils, see http://www.drivenracingoil.com/news/...treet-machine/ and http://www.enginelabs.com/engine-tec...e-differences/ - there's obviously a marketing pitch in both of them, but the principles discussed are true.

Someone else mentioned Liqui Moly and/or one of their additives. Their claim to fame is the addition of molybdenum disulphide (MoS2), or moly. Moly is an excellent DRY lubricant and often used in various greases that retain their lubricity when the oily carrier completely evaporates and/or in high vacuum applications, and moly is also added to various low friction polymers and plastics like nylon and Teflon (PTFE). Now, moly - like PTFE - is a solid. Moly particle size should always be matched to the surface roughness for a particular application, as particles that are too large will actually act as an abrasive while particles that are too small will only increase oxidation. While there is some truth in the claim that moly will bond to metal surfaces under high pressures (and therefore should never be used in anythign that contais a clutch), the problem here is that (1) the particle size - about 2 to 5 um in the additive - is not matched to any specific surface and is usually on the small size, so the problem is the same as that in the previous paragraph, namely that the additives in a good oil are very finely balanced in the way they interact with each other and when you add somethign extra you more often than not end up upsetting the chemical balance in such a way that the resulting mixture is worse off than what you started with. The very fine moly particles oxidize much more rapidly than the oil would on its own, which overpowers the detergents and anti-oxidants and the oil gets acidic rather quickly... which is very defnitely not good for the engine. Several years ago there were a number of reported incidents with Royal Purple oil attacking and destroying copper and brass parts in some engines after only 7,000 miles or so. The culprit? Too much moly that oxidized the oil until it becamne quite acidic. Most of the oils today - including those made by Liqui Moly themselves - no longer contain it.

As for Ceratec - it is yet another oil additive made by Liqui Moly (that allegedly does exactly the same thing as the moly additive - which on its own speaks volumes about how effective either one of them is)... and guess what? Ceratec has a higher molybdenium content that Liqui Moly's own "moly" additive. It is actually molybdenum and hexagonal boron nitride, which is comonly known as white graphite (thus the ceramic). Yet another solid *DRY* lubricant like MoS2 - with some ZDDP (TBN booster) added so the oil doesn't turn into acid in three months. The hBN particles are about 1 um in size, so again much too small to actually form any kind of coating that will fill any voids in the metal surfaces.. but certainly not too small to turn the oil acidic in a rather short period of time. Don't get me wrong - both MoS2 and graphite are realy great lubricants when properly used in applications that call for them, just like Teflon (PTFE) is also a very good slippery, thermally stable and non-reactive stuff when used in applications that call for it... like frying pans and coating pipes for reactive and corrosive chemicals. I have yet to see or hear of any factual evidence that either additive does anything beneficial to an engine when it is simply added to a motor oil. Everything so far is anecdotal evidence ("this stuff is great and my engine hasn't blown up yet") and often contradictory marketing speak by Liqui Moly staff, who say that you should not use MoS2 if you have used Ceratec but then contradict themselves by saying (to someone else) that after an initial Ceratec treatment you could use MoS2 as it is cheaper... and so it goes. Until I see some conclusive proof to the contrary, my belief is that both of the OTC additives are about as effective as PTFE / Slick 50 is.

Lastly, Mazspeed's question about the differences between the various motor oils is indeed a very good one, and the answer here may surprise most people. ALL oils that have received MB 229.5 approval have by definition passed all of MB's tests required for said approval, so they are ALL GOOD ENOUGH to provide the proper lubrication and protection to any engine where they are specified. The differences between the various approved oils - from the worst to the best in any one particular area (and no oil is "the best" for everything) - are maybe 2-3%. That's it. In contrast, a "worn" oil can deteriorate by as much as 50% or more if left in for too long. Or put another way, you're better off running the crappiest and cheapest semi-synthetic blend you can find and changing it every 2,000 miles instead of getting the best, most expensive oil made from unobtanium and changing it every 10,000 miles.

 

Great writeup, I would add that if you are still inclined to play with additives or switch oils, just pay blackstone and get some real data to ensure all is good, otherwise it might feel great - 2 stokes feel very very strong as they lean out, most people say they never felt so fast right before they went boom, better to know the oil is doing it's job than hoping - just pay for the analysis.

 

There has been so many oil threads but I thought someone already posted a UOA with the Motul 8100/moly combo?

Edit: My bad. Was M1 0W40 and MoS2 -->https://mbworld.org/forums/c63-amg-w...y-mos-2-a.html

 

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​​​​​​besides what I've quoted we have included more in depth detail of Motul and LiquiMoly throughout this thread. just because something is recommended by the factory doesn't mean it's the best.

 

Words fail me watching the buttlickers congregate online.

 

snake oil! if it isn't factory I won't run it!

yaaa these are the same people that still believe that run the smallest exhaust piping possible and you have the more torque across the powerband. this is fact just because someone once said it...even though it's been dyno proven to be false time and time again.

this is what you call internet racer, behind doors racer, stick up their *** racer. here say...and last, real racers call them bench racers.

sorry it's proven...if you don't believe us, then don't. the world ended at y2k. move along.

before and after running MoS2 I literally scoured the internet for ANY and I mean ANY single person that ran MoS2 and had a negative experience. I could not find a single thread or posting.

 

Where do you pull this **** out of, your ***? Let your sheeple following take this crap to heart LOL.

 

haha haha seems this guy knows nothing about engine building, clearances, etc etc.

ALL engines have a different requirement for oil change interval, and "worn" sure can mean 2k on one engine, but 10k on another. Additionally the more quarts of oil available for an engine the longer the OCI will be. bhamg as well as I agree we try for ourselves through personal "closed testing procedural clinical trials". We determined the engine drained from our own engines can safely run for many more miles in our own engines. bhamg has even submitted for oil analysis reports to confirm his assessment of the oil drained from his own engines. Again for everybody else, we haven't pushed those OCI's onto anybody but nearly shared our experiences in the matter of OCI.

Sure engine oils break down...nobody is saying they don't. We have and do simply state in our own validation we feel the OCI of Motul 8100 and LiquiMoly MoS2 may very well surpass factory recommendation. I personally won't and haven't ever pushed Mobil 1 to anywhere near 8k OCI...that oil simply lost power something in the range of 500 miles after change.

Do as you may... we're not telling anybody to do anything besides have a healthier better performing engine.

 

so Diabolis, Liquid Moly is not good for us?

 

I don't think he said that. What he said was that he had "yet to see or hear of any factual evidence that either additive does anything beneficial to an engine when it is simply added to a motor oil" and that until he sees conclusive proof, then this is just the most recent iteration of Slick50 et al. And that's totally reasonable and fair enough. Even on BITOG there is no firm proof that either Mos2 or Ceratec do anything that proper oil and changes don't. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence such as what we have posted and experienced (smoother running, quieter, etc), but there has been zero proof that little voids in the pistons are filled, or friction is less, or the extra moly is doing anything other than just sitting in the bottom of the oil pan, etc etc. There are VOAs and UOAs showing that there's a butt-load of moly in the oil, and that wear metals are low (which could just be a result of a properly maintained engine, who really knows), but no analysis shows that it definitively creates a frictionless bond etc etc etc.

So while I respect his knowledge - and I challenge you to find anyone here with more oil knowledge than Diabolis - at the same time my humble experience has shown that my engine seems to like the treatments so I'm going to keep doing it as long as I don't see or hear or find any evidence that it's harmful to my engine. Is it doing anything? That remains to be seen, I still have some miles to go before taking a sample for UOA...

 

yeah it was a little disheartening to read all of that because I've had my 08 for a year now and I switched over immediately bc my father used to swear by it and I saw it on the 229.5(1)? list and so far it's been great. I don't burn any and I've yet to have to top it off between 5k mi changes.

 

The problem is you have no "before" baseline. So now you will have a "snapshot" as well as a new baseline with MOS2. The next "after' UOA following your current fill will be interesting to compare with the first. When I get a new car I generally test fills #1,3 and 5. This is what I'm hoping to see from the lab like I got for this car: "You've got a nice trend started here. Looks like a really nice engine!"

And BTW, on Mobil 1 ESP 5W-40 my first dealer fill on the low-SAPS ESP came at 8k miles. I then got dyno-tuned at 10k miles. 61 pulls later I drove the 600 miles back home and tested that short-duration fill. I expected Fe levels around at least 20-30ppm. They were an unexpectedly low 10ppm, with no bearing wear metals whatsoever (consistent with the mid-SAPS oils that I starting using later). That is also consistent with what the BITOGers have found, that there apparently are some organic friction-modifiers that don't show on traditional lab test which really work. Low SAPS oils in general seem to be performing well overall compared to mid+-SAPS oils. So, things are not so etched in stone in the world of motor oils as one might have been led - or misled - to believe.

 

Courtesy of MoleKule (a BITOG guru):

The ability to reduce friction and sometimes wear, over and above that provided by the base lubricant’s viscosity, has been called “oiliness” or “lubricity.” However, both of the latter terms are now considered obsolete. Early experimenters found that the ability of animal or vegetable fats and acids strengthened the tenacity of the oil films when incorporated in lubricating oils. These experimenters later found that the esters of vegetable or animal esters could be synthesized and produced from alcohols and acids of basic chemical compounds; what we call today as “Group V” lubricants.
Their effectiveness was often rated in terms of “film strength,” an expression that still remains in use.

Much confusion has abounded in the relationship between Anti-Wear (AW) or Extreme Pressure properties, and Friction Modifiers (FM). Both friction modifiers and Anti-Wear compounds both operate in the Boundary lubrication regime. AW additives are among the type of compounds that provide good boundary lubrication. Such materials as ZDDP, sulfurized fats and esters, organometallic compounds (such as Molybdenum dithiophosphates, Molybdenum dithiocarbamates, Antimony dithiocarbamates) have shown their ability to build and maintain strong boundary lubrication films under severe load conditions and heat. However, with the exception of second-generation gear oils, the older first-generation AW additives had little FM capabilities.

The critical difference between AW/EP additive films and FM films is in their mechanical properties. AW/EP films are semiplastic deposits which are hard to shear off. Thus, under shearing conditions, their coefficient of friction is moderately to high. The exceptions are the organometallic compounds listed above. Friction modification films consist of orderly, close-packed arrays of multimolecular “whiskers,” loosely adhering to each other. The outer layers are sheared-off easily, allowing for low coefficient of friction. The phenomena can be described as a deck of plastic coated playing cards lying on the table and sliding off the top card easily.

Conversely, AW/EP films work by protecting the mating metal surfaces from asperities physically gouging the opposite surface. When a hydrodynamic film of oil is ruptured, this layer of AW/EP material protects the mating surfaces from catastrophic failure.

For some sense of scale, here are some further analogies:
1. The Coefficient of Friction (CF) of unlubricated surfaces is 0.5 and higher. In physical simulation, the process resembles the resistance of dragging an irregular rock over irregular rocky ground.
2. The CF for of friction of W/EP films is about 0.1 to 0.2. In simulation, it would resemble dragging a more or less flat stone over a flat rock.
3. The CF for a friction-modified film is about 0.01 to 0.02, compared to ice skating.
4. The CF of fully fluid films in hydrodynamic lubrication is about 0.001 to 0.006 or less. It can be compared to hydroplaning.

The preferred film is of course the hydrodynamic film. This is to followed by the friction-modified mode of operation, followed by an AW/EP regime. When high speeds or low loads are present, it is easy to maintain the hydrodynamic regime. When the speed falls, however, or the load rises above a critical point, the hydrodynamic regime breaks down and then it would be very desirable to be able to glide smoothly into a friction modification mode of operation. If no friction modification has been provided, the system defaults to a AW/EP regime. So friction modification and AW/EP is a logical method to widen the range of effectiveness of the lubricating film. Friction Modification depends much on the mechanism of contact (geometry) and molecular construction of the FM.

 

Link to post? I'd like to read the thread if there's more learning material.

 

I have MANY baselines. I have about 6 UOAs sealed up and sitting in my closet ready to go to Blackstone when I get around to it.

 

I can't search BITOG since I'm not registered. There was a really good thread I followed links to that I read a while back where the professionals discussed this in greater detail, but I couldn't find it via Google. I did find this though and the rest of it is here.

https://bobistheoilguy.com/friction-...-aw-additives/

 

Sorry, I just see no baselines but rather many samples of used oil, perhaps the only one of any real use now being the last one. But if you're going to get around to sending them all in now, please do report back with anything of interest you see.

 

What's your issue here man. I don't give a **** if you "don't see any baselines". I have them and that's all that matters. I already said I have about 6 samples sealed up and ready to go, with the miles each was taken at. The oil is not going to "go bad" or the samples be contaminated or degrade in any way. Back the **** off dude and relax. I'll do it when I do it, for my own information, and share here if I feel like it.

 

bhamg & hachiroku... if you don't like the $h!t coming out of my a$$, please feel free to remove your face from it. I am more than happy to discuss oils, but unless you actually have a logical argument and are able to present it in a mature way instead of acting like a third-grader, I have better things to do.

As for the small, tiny little bit of actually relevant material that did manage to come out of you... yes, MoleKule knows his stuff. However, if you can get past your own vanity and actually think about what he is saying, you will realize that the post you quoted deals specifically with friction modifiers and anti-wear additives, which no one is disputing... so why did you regurgitate something that we already all agree to? The argument is not whether a particular FM or AW additive works or not. The argument is that (1) a street oil has to do so many other things in addition to provide the best engine protection for a 300 miles, and (2) whether the application of moly or ceratec CONSUMER additives - as in ones that you could pour in your crankase and mix with another pre-made oil, not the kind of additive that has been blended into the oil during the manufacturing process and whose other additives - detergents and dispoerants) will not simply wash it off even if some of it has somehow managed to bind to any surface and keep the particles suspendesd and floating around without binding to anything. So - if you can take a pill, calm down and wish to continue the debate in a logical weay, great. If not, I really have nothing more to say on the subject. Oh - and as for your little low-SAPS oil bleat earlier, I have absoutley no idea wither why you brought it up as it has no relevance here, but it's actually wrong. The ONLY advantage low SAPS oils offer are protection of emission components, namely DPFs in diesels and to a lesser extent, catalytic converters, and the M1 5W-40 ESP (whch BTW is a pretty crappy oil and not even approved for use in the M156 with our high sulfulr fuels - it's MB 229.51 (diesel) approved, not 229.5 (gasoline) - these are not software revisions, they are totally different specs). Ask your own 'experts' at Liqui Moly if you don't believe me... tell them you have a mostly street driven, flat-tappet gasoline engine and would they recommend you using a low-SAPS oil vs. a mid-SAPS one... please?

 

The Liqui Moly 0W-40 oil is not bad - except that THERE IS NO MOLY IN IT. The AF additive is mostly boron. And, just for reference, M1 0W-40 has about has 70 times as much moly as Liqui Moly (https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forum...Number=2377569 and https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forum...Number=1722539), as well as having double the boron (http://www.ccsenet.org/journal/index...icle/view/2399 - the analyses are in the PDF).



P.S. As has been said many times before (and not just by me) - 229.51 is a DIESEL oil spec that has to protect the DPFs. It does NOT supercede 229.5, which is the GASOLINE oil spec.

 

Gents - ABSOLUTELY NO ONE is disputing the usefulness of eithe MoS2 or boron nitride (graphite) as an AW agent. The only point that I am trying to make is that there is ZERO evidence to suggest that adding either one in a colloidal suspension by the end user to an existing oil that has other additives in it whose function is to prevent various particles (including said moly or BN particles) from adhering to various surfaces results in any measurabe benefit.

As for the oil wearing out, both the TBN (and thus the ability of the oil to protect from acids, which are arguably the biggest enemy in a street-driven car), as well as permanent viscosity damage resulting from exposure to high shear - that what the KO test measures - Google for shear stability index (SSI) or see here for a quick primer https://www.oronite.com/paratone/calcviscosity.aspx, and MB insists that the oil has to pass a KO90 for MB 229.5 approval) do degrade, so I respectfully disagree with bhamg's suggestion that I am pulling this $h!t out of my a$$. As for the OCI, all other things being equal in a street car the oil with the highest TBN will be able to go the longest (you'll turn the oil to acid way before you manage to shear it). The moly and possibly ceratec can actually make things worse not in the shear department but rather in the oil acidity as the fine moly particles in the Liqui Moly additive will oxidize faster. Read the botton of page 4 and top of page 5 here - http://www.nlgi-india.org/images/PDF...20Ephsteyn.pdf (and there are many such research papers on the subject).

 

I've been using Liqui Moly 2332 Leichtlauf High Tech 5W-40 for a year now. Perhaps I should send this stuff into Blackstone for a UOA. Maybe I'll just switch to Motul and call it good.

 

That's a decent, MB 229.5 approved oil and you could do a lot worse, so there is absolutely no need to switch to a different oil unless you are either (1) using your car as a race car, or (2) you go with a very long OCI. Just change it regularly. Just because a bunch of us are having a fight about an aftermerket additive, it doesn't mean that you should change your oil to somethign else. Moly (MoS2) is NOT the answer to everything... that's the whole point of my argument. Even though the majority of Liqui Moly oils have no moly in them, they use boron nitride (which is what Liqui Moly puts in their Ceratec additive), and when it is *PROPERLY* blended and sythesized in the oil itself, it is in fact much more likely to actually do some good in the motor.


P.S. A UOA is indeed a very useful tool when you want to see how a particual oil works in a particular motor... but at the end of the day, it only tells us ordinary mortals when it is time to change the oil. Unless you are Molacule, my friend (and apparently Molacule's colleague as they know each other professionally) or another tribologist with both chemical and mechanical engineering knowledge working in the lubricant industry and you can perform the same test hundreds of times varying one variable at a time and looking for a specific change, a single UOA won't tell you anythign about whether one brand of oil is better at protecting your engine than another.

 

BOOM. I like learning. Learning is fun.