Lets discuss (fight, moan, argue semantics, cuss, etc......) oils

We see milk oil on NG and propane gens, I think some depends on the propane source and their moisture content.

All those lil air cooled home jobs that run a 5-15 min unloaded exercise are never going to get the oil warmed up enough to boil out any condensate. We've seen it on larger standbys too that never got any loaded exercise or load bank action tho too.

These are 15 or 20 minutes a week, depending on date of manufacture. There is a lot of water created by burning propane, but only way to get into oil is blow by. I'm not sure the source of water, nor am I sure how much water volume I'm seeing. Would a tablespoon of water make 1.8 quarts of oil look milky?
For now, we change oil frequently.

I stopped buy the shop and was told that a Rotella factory burnt down. They also were told it wasnt getting rebuilt.

The units I had some experience with were for cell towers and micro wave repeaters. What I had seen when the boom in building cell towers was going strong was the back up generators were put in heated buildings at the base of the towers. The issue wasn't protection for the equipment so much as it was mitigating the noise of the gensets lighting off for their weekly run time. Most of these units ran on some type of gas, propane I think, and many were V8 Chevy engines with large cooling fans. The buildings were sealed up like bank vaults. I went to one unit where the water pump was leaking and found the coolant and engine oil had never been replaced. There was no drain cock on the cooling system and I had to cut out the bottom radiator hose and let the coolant drain onto the floor of the building. A shop vac, a mop and bucket was required to clear the moisture and the door was left open with a fan blowing out the smell and trying to dry out the insides. I pitched a service to those people of doing monthly checks and service work and they didn't care a lick about any of it. There is only so much money allowed and maintenance has no budget at all. I think you should feel good that your customer will at least pay for the oil change.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in generator gear and they won't send anybody up there to change the oil or look at it a couple times a year. Figures.

Well did they have any oil change related failures?

I saw a couple last year. Generators that had run unattended and unloved for days on end. Until they burned the oil down into a sludge resembling chewing gum or molasses.

I wouldn’t know about failures. Made the pitch for the work and moved on. I usually only got calls in those years when people wanted a disinterested third party that had no reason to lie to them.

I try and stay away from the little resi jobs but most of the oil failures I've seen were actually from leaks, especially those plastic oil quick drains. A couple had sludge or bad water contamination but also probably had never been changed judging on the filters.

Old Doug said:

I stopped buy the shop and was told that a Rotella factory burnt down. They also were told it wasnt getting rebuilt.

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Oh no! I guess it's delo moving fwd then.

We run Citgo 10x30 & 15x40----zero issues never had a issue and the oil distributor says there's plenty of it.

That was the Shell NORCO Louisiana Refinery, I believe. Nothing to do with lube oil.

Bumpsteer said:

At my day job l do processing on GM cranks, updated ones for current production engines and new ones for upcoming engines.
If it says to use 5-w20 oil in your new car.....DO IT! Modern manufacturing equipment can hold tolerances tighter than you can imagine. +/- .003 microns is standard tolerance on bearing journals and bearings are matched to the exact size for a closer fit.

Fwiw...how, you ask is this done without hours of hand fitting? Technology. Parts are 100% gaged for journal diameter. This is laser etched in a pun code area on the flange. An automated reader in assy scans it and sequences in the proper size bearings to meet up with the crank as it gets installed in the block.

The film thickness on heavier weight oils doesn't play well with the small running clearances in todays engines.

Use the recommended oil.

Ed

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I keep going back and forth on this with my Hemi. It uses a lot of oil between changes, no leaks just burning it, it's under Dodge's max allowed of 1 litre per 1,000 miles but still seems like a lot. A lot of people say the oil consumption goes down or even away with a heavier oil. I keep going back and forth between what is the least evil, burning that much oil, or running heavier oil then manufacture recommends?

suladas said:

I keep going back and forth on this with my Hemi. It uses a lot of oil between changes, no leaks just burning it, it's under Dodge's max allowed of 1 litre per 1,000 miles but still seems like a lot. A lot of people say the oil consumption goes down or even away with a heavier oil. I keep going back and forth between what is the least evil, burning that much oil, or running heavier oil then manufacture recommends?

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I worry a heavier oil won't find its way to every corner of the engine.

Not familiar with your HEMI, or how you built it. On a similar note, something that grinds my gears is the latest trend of low friction/low tension piston rings. CAFE Standard mandate silliness. We have the science of piston rings figured out. Various manufacturers go low tension and there is a plethora of engines with oil consumption issues. Subaru 2.0, Ford 5.0 Coyote, Hyundai, Kia.....

So, it saves a fraction of a percent of fuel consumption, but now we are killing catalytic converters, adding 2-3 quarts of oil between LoF intervals, higher HC exhaust emissions, multiple TSBs, recalls, warranty engines, labor and misery to the consumer.

I have no great affection for any of the mucky-mucks in the high castle, but when discussions like these come up, it makes me wonder if the previous one had used his pen, which he had the power to do, to cross out some of these silly rules, if we could get back to the way things were about 1999, maybe he would have made enough happy to still be in said exalted edifice, and we would have better and simpler cars with engines that still work.

In my charger w MDS I used Valvoline synth blend 5w20 for high milers. In my ram w/o MDS I used 5w30 in winter, never lost oil in either. I do drive aggressively though. Kinda treat the throttle pedal like an on-off switch.
You need the low vis oil in the MDS because it acts like hydraulic oil for the cylinder deactivation.

Coaldust said:

That was the Shell NORCO Louisiana Refinery, I believe. Nothing to do with lube oil.

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They have a pallet in the storage building and the boss is saving it for his stuff. They are going to use Delo in the company trucks. The supplyers say they cant get any. Maybe just a local problem.

Shell Rotella is hard to source everywhere. Especially, T6. I’ve been talking about it in the lube price increase thread. It’s a base-stock issue.

It's only gonna get worse with reduced oil production. Can't get lead, oil is drying up, some other commodities are getting scarce. You don't have to talk politics to see the writing on the wall. Global economy, phooey