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"Steven P. Allen" <spallen@rolemail.ccis.edu> wrote:
> Concerning Lube specs:
> A friend of mine came up with the following analogy:
> If you were sick, would you limit your doctor to ONLY those medical
> techniques and drugs available as of the year you were born? Limiting your
> vehicle to what the manual recommends is a similar decision.
Thank you for helping to reinforce my point. The medical profession
must spend years in research to verify that new treatments are safe
for everybody, and/or determine who should not receive them, before
they can use those new treatments on me. When oil company X starts
marketing a new oil, they don't need to verify that it's a good oil to
use in, say, a White LDT-465-1C engine made in 1980, before they put
up the billboards. That's why I go by the specs in the most recent
version of the LO. If my particular engines are qualified to use a
different oil, and the LOs are updated to reflect the qualification,
then I may use the new oil. However, the latest LOs for both of my MVs
say to use SAE 30 under my weather conditions. My HMMWV LO is dated
1990 and is the version on the Army's own TM web site, so it was
issued after most of those advancements, and is the current LO for
that engine.
SAE 30 is commonly available, and is the oil that both of my engines
were designed to use. Some other oil might be better for my engines...
or it might be worse for my engines. SAE 30 is *definitely* an
appropriate oil for my engines. The point that I have been trying to
make all along is that truckers, individual mechanics, or marketing
guys at the oil company are not qualified to determine which oil(s)
are good for a particular kind of engine, and which ones are bad. They
don't conduct tests with a large number of engines operated under
identical conditions using various oils, measuring wear products in
the oil, microscopically examining bearings to find out where wear
occurs, and comparing to control groups to make sure that they're
*only* measuring the effects of changing to a different oil. The
engine manufacturer did do that at some point. If the engineers at
that engine company, who know their engines better than anybody else,
determine that oil X is great stuff in engine Y, and I have an engine
Y, I might use that oil. If a truck driver tells me "brand X runs real
good in my truck", I don't care. He's not qualified to make the
distinction, and he's probably not running the same kind of engine in
his commercial truck, anyway. He may not really know what's god for
his engine, and even if he does, that doesn't necessarily make it good
for mine, too. Brand Q 80-90W gear oil might be the best thing in the
world for your truck's transfer case... stick it in an M880's transfer
case (which wants regular engine oil), and you'll soon have a dead
M880, or stick it in a HMMWV's transfer case (which wants Dexron II or
equivalent), and you'll soon have a deal HMMWV.
> There have been massive strides in lube technology over the last
> couple of decades; refusing to take advange of the new tech may well
> be counterproductive. It's not wise to push an anology too far, but
> there is a reason that SI spec oil will satisfy SA requirements but
> not vice versa.
It may well be counterproductive. Or, it may be better to stick with
the older oil. Until somebody makes the necessary scientific
examination to determine that the new stuff is better in *my* engine,
I won't take the risk. Don't be fooled by ad campaigns. I've seen
dozens of ads touting the advantages of various lubricants and
additives... and scientific experiments have proven beyond doubt that
they're snake oil, and actually *increase* engine wear. Yet, people
still keep buying the junk. Don't trust an endorsement from somebody
not qualified to make the endorsement.
> MY humble 2 cents,
And mine, too.
-- Mark J. Blair, KE6MYK <mblair1@home.net> PGP 2.6.2 public key available from http://pgp.ai.mit.edu/ Web page: http://www.qsl.net/ke6myk/ DO NOT SEND ANY UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL TO THIS SITE
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