Choosing engine oil: bad habits can hurt.
Visiting many Porsche specialists in the past few weeks, I have been able to witness the devastating consequences that a wrong choice of oil could have on the cams of Porsche engines. I have also been made once again aware of the quasi-spiritual nature of “oil choice”. As the representative of a large oil and lubricant company, I found myself justifying the reasonable choices of the lubricant industry and realizing that most oil companies have given up on explaining their products, including to their distributors. The result is much mis-information, that I will try and address in this article.
Table comparing what I heard versus what I know:
Statements I heard or read:
Fact: The “government” is taking away the ZDTP from our engine oils, and the new oils do not protect old engines enough against cam wear.
The government is demanding longer warranties on catalytic converters of new cars. ILSAC, the oil standardization board for Domestic and Japanese cars, has set limits on the content in catalyst-polluting Sulfur and Phosphorus in their GF-3 and GF-4 standards. No European manufacturer recommend ILSAC GF-4 for any vehicle. European carmakers have their own oil standards (more below). In the field, many oil wholesalers ignore that information and focus their offering on the “high volume” market of Japanese and Domestic cars, still assuming that the needs of European cars will be “close enough”. That can be a problem not only for Porsche, but for any European car.
Fact : Since “they” took away the ZDTP, let us put it back in the form of after-market additives, or call Brand X who has sworn to not follow any third-party spec and make “the best lubricants possible”. Who needs oversight?
Protecting the cams against premature wear is only one of many more functions of a good engine lubricant. The oil must also cool the engine, prevent sludge, clean it, fight corrosion to mention only the main functions. Sludge has been a big problem in recent years.
Organizations like API, ILSAC, ACEA, as well as car manufacturers test as many of these properties that they can to serve a specific category of cars, while following a budget for testing and a maximum cost of finished product. For Porsche and European cars, this testing is longer and more expensive. Look for the “Porsche”, VW 502.00 or ACEA A3/B4 approvals, proof that the oil passed not only an appropriate cam wear test, but also a sludge and corrosion test, among others.
Aftermarket additives are an extra load to carry for the detergent chemistry of engine oils. Saturating those detergents is what creates sludge.
Fact : Diesel oils “are not API formulated”, have plenty of ZDTP and can safely be used in older Porsche.
Diesel oils are formulated for diesel heavy-duty trucks. They usually follow one of the latest API specifications: API CH-4, API CI-4 or now API CJ-4. This latest category CJ-4 is “backward compatible” but has, like the ILSAC spec, some limits on Sulfur and Phosphorus. These limits are higher than for the ILSAC spec, but expect newer diesel oils to have diminished amounts of ZDTP as well.
I am not trying to knock down the crutches that the Porsche community has been using to solve the very real problem of cam wear. Rather, I would want to make the case that if the way oil was chosen has failed, now may be a good time to re-examine the way we choose oil. In short, brands are just brands. Trying to second guess the chemists is more and more futile. Only improving our knowledge of the engine oil testing procedures, and checking what oil passed what test is the professional and safe way to choose engine oil.
Oil technology is complex and every sales guy has a good story, so let us sidestep technology for now.
Let us rather concentrate on the universe in which we, sales guys, operate: realities of the business world.
To make and distribute oil at a competitive price, a company must be able to manufacture or buy the components at a competitive price, and have enough of a market to pay for the development and manufacturing cost. That company has to be able to “be a player”. Once that company decides to “be a player”, say, in the Porsche market, then the sound and professional way to operate is to present the finished product to Porsche so they put it through the Porsche 996FL Engine test. This test will last 203 hours. The engine, and the oil, will go through:
4 times the simulation of 35 hours of summer driving,
4 times the simulation of 13.5 hours of winter driving,
40 cold starts,
5 times the simulation of 1-hour sessions on the “Nürburgring” racetrack,
3.5 hours of “running-in” program
Measurements on the engine and on the oil will be done at regular intervals, and the following parameter will be taken into account to grant the approval or not:
torque curve (internal friction),
oxidation of the oil,
Piston cleanliness and ring sticking,
Valve train wear protection. Cam & tappet wear must be less than 10 µm.
Engine cleanliness and sludge: after 203 hours, no deposits must be visible.
Bearing wear protection: visual rating according to Porsche in-house method.
Several mechanics told me that they were relying on “their own testing” to choose an oil. None of these mechanics showed me that their method came close to matching what Porsche does: running dozens of oils through the same 203-hour test, and comparing the results.
This test has been designed by Porsche to guarantee the availability of test-proven oils for all Porsche since model year 1973: the letter (attached) given to oil manufacturers specifies that date.
This oil testing procedure exists specifically to avoid the wear cam problems created by the ILSAC GF-4 fiasco. Why not use it to choose your oil?
All the large oil companies, including Mobil 1 of course, and many smaller companies, have one or several formulas that successfully passed this test. The “Porsche recommends Mobil 1” advertising is confusing: the most available Mobil 1 products found at Wal-mart or Jiffy Lube meet the ILSAC GF-4 spec and are NOT approved by Porsche. A clearer advertising statement would say “Porsche got money from ExxonMobil to tell you that Mobil 1 0W40 passed the Porsche engine test, but not enough money to also let you know that Mobil 1 5W30 is not approved”.
The problem for oil companies is to make their Porsche-approved formulas easily available and affordable to the Porsche community when many of their wholesalers care about volume (gallons) more than about oil technology. We have chosen to distribute our ELF Excellium NF 5W40 through German auto specialists who make that oil available to consumers at a price competitive with any fully synthetic oil.
Now, some oil companies claim they need no approval from Porsche because they found a better solution, at a cheaper cost, and they ask you to take their word for it. They are “opportunity players”: they claim that they saw a problem and decided to fix it. You may have tried their product, and found that they have a point. Now, if their story was true without any “side effect” to be expected later, if they found a real and durable solution, then they would do what the “players” do: they would get their products tested by the factory and gain access to the larger market. If, say, an industrial oil company can make the right product and venture into the Porsche market, good for them. They should let Porsche know! Why do they not do it? You may want a clear answer to that question.
If they say they’re “too small”, then they probably do not have a cheap access to the raw material in the first place, so how can they be competitive? If the company is large enough and still does not get the approval, you are probably listening to a particularly gifted regional salesman.
Porsche-approved oils are usually fully synthetic, not to claim “synthetic” on the label, but because the raw material that can withstand the Porsche testing happens to be synthetic. These oils may cost a few dollars more that the usual “shop oil”. I hope I explained why.
What’s next? I have been through similar explanations of factory oil specs in the past, like with Volkswagen in 2003-2004, and what followed was a flurry of claims saying “meets or exceeds the VW spec” on engine oil labels. The next step was for Volkswagen to release complete lists of the oils that actually met the spec, which of course did not please the oil company having a marketing deal with Volkswagen… This may happen with Porsche too, but here are the facts. Porsche of America has a list of approved oils, and each approved company should be able to display to you a letter similar to the one in attachment. This may not be a perfect solution, but to me, it sure beats thinking of Porsche engines like “Diesel engines” or believing the sales rep who tells me that his “proprietary” XXTZP999 additive prevents wear cam like no other…
Hervé Blanquart is a sales engineer for Total Lubricants USA, Inc. and supports the distribution of ELF engine oils in the Western United States. He can be reached at herve.blanquart@total-us.com .
