andy-gts

hmmmmmmm

I will stay with torco per doc brown

DeWolf

I thought the Alpina oil specs were 0W30? At least that what a friends E39 Alpina states in the manual. Just sayin'....Might be different in Europe.

docmirror

Except there is no such thing as a real synthetic oil in the US. They are all petroleum base, with some ester additives, usually less than 10% by volume. Unless one goes to the commercial grade of industrial lubricants, that are not well suited to engines.

BC

It’s intriguing to see when people speak of manufacturing specifications on oils when the car was designed 40 years ago.

The technology in use today from beating clearances and materials, to running temps and oil ring tensions are so vastly different from what was normal in 1978...

and in in most cases, even though I buy into some of the hype, even conventional parts store pop would be fine for what is actually happening in these motors.

Strosek Ultra

This is what Alpina say (Google translation from German):

"From today's point of view, it is best to use a motor oil of the specification BMW Longlife 98 or Longlife 01 with the viscosity 5W40.
You can also use the BMW Motorsport Castrol EDGE Professional TWS 10W60 oil.
The 0Wx oils are too thin for this engine, especially with advanced mileage."

I have now changed to 10W60 oil.
Åke

Strosek Ultra

The engine has been completely taken apart. No abnormal wear could be found but oil sludge everywhere especially in the cylinder heads, the hydraulic lifters were all clogged by sludge. The CCV system has always been working properly. However it has now been replaced as I saw some hairline cracks in the membrane. Better replace before it starts leaking.
The car has never seen any short trips and never been driven during wintertime.
The 300V 15W50 is the oil highly recommended by Motul for my 928 cars as well all my BMW cars. I have never used any other oil in these cars except for very many years ago. Started to use Motul oil in the late 1990s.
If my memory serves me well, the oil used in the Alpina causing the severe sludge was the last oil from a 60 liter container. Remember it looked a little bit out of the ordinary having some kind of lumps?
Åke

Strosek Ultra

I once saw specs about the ZDDP content of the Motul 300V 15W50 oil. I do not remember the exact figure but it was much lower than 1300 ppm. High ZDDP is said to be important for reducing cam lobe wear especially when we are talking about modified engines.
Åke

DeWolf

I had an E46 M3 and the BMW guy here said they were using the 10W60 because of bearing clearance issues on the M engines. I had my bearings changed under a recall and they started to use 5w30. A guy here in the club races an E39 M5 and reckons he'd never use 10W60 ever again after his engine grenading. He's been using 5W40 for years now and the engine has held up well. Like everything I guess. Change the oil regularly if you're driving it hard I suppose. My old 928 doesn't see anything fancier that Castrol 20W50 Dino oil. I change it every 5000kms. At $15.00 for 5L it's cheap.
That B10 is a very nice car indeed. Extremely rare here in Oz.

FredR

Åke,

That is quite a profound comment. When one normally uses lube oil one does so in relatively small containers such as the 4 litre units of Shell Helix 20W50 I use in my motor. It is a long time since I worked on the lube oil plant my principals built but one of the things I seem to remember is that lube oils do not like long term storage and when contained in drums on a rack the drums are rotated to keep the additive package evenly dispersed over time- to be clear I have no idea whether oils like this particular brew require such.

Assuming that an oil change takes 8 litres a 60 litre container will suffice at least 7 oil changes. No idea how many cars you have but if you have 4 cars and they sit unused over winter months it is quite conceivable that between when you opened the container and when you used the last oil in it a period of time up to 3 years may have expired. When you open the container and empty some oil the volume is displaced by air. How moist is the air in your environment? As a general note base stocks tend to be hygroscopic [to some extent at least] and with time the lube can degrade. How pertinent such is to the lube you used I do not know.

When in use lube oils typically some quite quickly can and do look "black". The reason for this is the oil tends to pick up microscopic particles of carbon or whatever else is floating around in the combustion chamber. The oil contains detergents to keep this particulate matter in suspension. If that mechanism fails then I would think that it is quite conceivable that such particulate matter will form a gel with cold oil and dump in the bottom of the sump - particularly so in cold climates- how cold does it get in your garage?

Doubtless our new friend from Motul will be able to expand on such concerns noting that some specialist [Racing?] lubes have some exceptional properties but such often come at the expense of other characteristics.

When I purchase my lube oil containers I look at the blending date and reject the purchase it if it is more than 6 months old. I work on the premise that our mid eighties designed engines were designed for 20W50 lube oils and change them after 1 year or 5k miles.* Last time I looked at my cams the lobes were perfect and the walls of the casing were very clean. My oil always looks blackish. My 928 rarely if ever sees a temperature less than 20C.

Kindest regards

Fred R

Thom

FWIW I saw a similar thing happened with an Audi 20V engine running on Liqui Moly, while the exact same oil gave good results on several others 944/951.
The Motul 300V is one of the oils I have run succesfully in my two 944s and never had any problem, as many friends around.
I would guess you ran through bad luck with an engine that just did not like this oil.

kurt_1

_______Thread Hijack alert______

to Nick:
I have been using 300v for many years (10+) since it turned out to be the only oil to survive the combustion process - covering the "butt" of my car with oil instead of soot. Fortunately, the Shark X-Vent CVS solved that problem once and for all but I kept using the 300V.

A bit more of background info:
- my car is a garage queen, sees maybe 3000 km per year,
- "cold start" is at room temps,
- no trip below 50km, usually 100-200 kms
- no stop and go
- cruises can be either of the relaxed sort (on country roads), or a bit more serious on the autobahn, occasionally, 30-60 minutes at around 4500U/min at temps up to 30degC.
- UOA after 1 and 2 years each said that the oil is fine to go on using (no degradation in VI, no unusual contamination with fuel or coolant, BI still almost like new , I am now on my third year (with a really bad conscience!).

One more factoid: I could never make my mind for either 15W15 and 20W60 so I always "blended" them 50:50 (call me what you want

I used to change to oil every year but since some friend came to use my old oil as "new", that made me wonder...


So my questions:
- is there a downside to mixing the two weights (15W15 and 20W60) or fo which should I go?
- Is there anything that a normal UOA wouldn't capture? I really don't mind changing the oil every year but I hate waste ...:
- Is the 300V the right sort of oil to use for my usage?

Any information would be greatly appreciated!

Kurt
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90 S4 satin black metallic
928 OC charter member


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