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Hoping someone can post a Blackstone history for using DT40 and making regular interval oil changes - at least 3 or more that can show a trend on engine wear.
Kevin (Ultimate Motor Werks) makes several salient points in this post:
"Saabin latest Blackstone Report shows the "holy grail" for any performance engine. As the miles increase, engine wear (metal) is reversed and in a downward trend. As owners and enthusiasts we should strive to find what works and gets these results. We all have our favorite oil brand and preference.
Note: I need to update my oil preferences as of 2018/2019 I do not recommend the heavy duty engine oils like Shell Rotella or Mobil Turbo diesel. The base formula in these oil have changed "drastically"
I am running Motul 5W50/5W40 in one of my 996TT, another 996TT has Mobil 0W40/5W50 blend. My go to oil blend recommendation is Redline 0W40/5W50 blend which I run in my 997TT and 991TTS.. Redline is owned by Connoco Phillips. A few things that I have noticed over the years is... My oil consumption has dropped to zero. I have virtually no oil startup smoke shows when the car sits for over two weeks. Valve train start up rattle does not exist. (in fairness if the cars sit over two weeks I pull the fuel pump fuses and self prime the engine). My wear metals are continue to trend down similar to Saabin posts. Redline oil tends to be quieter vs the Motul Sport oil (300V is louder as it sheers)… BTW, Motul oil generally are thinner out of the bottle.. Redline runs thick.
To sum it up. The perfect oil requires you testing the oil and watching the wear metal trend down. Having the wear metal stay the same OR increase is NOT the PERFECT oil. Personally, I like to see my ZDDP wear additives run close to 1100 when my oil is used up. Which brings me to this>> I get emails and PM's requesting my opinion on BRAND "X" oil. My answer is.. Can you find UOA reports on the internet from you a similar car? Can you see the wear trend going down? Is the oil sheering. The Porsche flat 6 turbo engine eats up oil, it is a meat grinder and shears OIL into a 30 weight!... Engine wear increase> the UOA reports go to $hit when we see the cST Viscosity values fall into the 11.XX and low 12's... Keep them in the 13's...minimum. High 14's and low 15's is GREAT... In the end, test your oil and get a baseline established over two or three oil changes and see what you oil wear trend looks like."
Here's a history from my wife's 2005 997 C2S. Best I have handy as I'm out of town at the Sharks in the Mountains 928 event. Note viscosity is better with the DT40 than the Motul and it gas more Zinc & Phosphorous remaining. I've since gone to a 5,000 mile change interval with this oil in this car with similar results.
Thanks Pete - I hope you're enjoying 'shark week'. When time is less valuable I am hoping you can comment or correct any of the below.
I am totally learning about all of this so please forgive any misinterpretations.
1. When you switched to DT40 there was a slight bump in wear metals. Any ideas why?
2. The B and Mo trends are interesting - DT40 has way less boron but shows a massive jump in moly from 2016 to 2017. They reformulated ?
3. The calcium score of DT40 is higher than a DFI engine should have according to the Driven paper on LSPI. Not a factor for this car but just noted for DT40.
4. Fuel dilution is good if I read that right - apparently you've educated your wife on proper driving habits. : )
5. The Zn and P levels are higher as you noted - anything else exceptional or extraordinary to validate DT40 ?
As an FYI - here is a report on unused DT40 from 2016 courtesy of bobistheoilguy.com
1. When you switched to DT40 there was a slight bump in wear metals. Any ideas why?
Because of cross- contamination, and the reaction between the additive packages of two different oils.
This is why it takes consistency usage of the same oil, and trend data to ascertain true results. We had a 4 hours online class on the topic of how to read UOA a couple months back, and spent a lot of time on this.
It takes at least 3 oil services using the same oil to get consistent results.
Also, wear metals are only used to tell the end of the story- we consider the other elements much, much more than wear metals. How one reads the report is everything, and as always, good luck with the (usually laughable) commentary from Blackstone.
Comments are "laughable" because they look through the rosiest color glasses of anyone I've seen and everything is always great, even when looking at just the numbers show it is not. I got one back from them where the TBN was lower than the TAN and they said I could run oil longer since there was still active additive left. The oil was already acidic by that point so it should not have been run any longer and I actually reduced my mileage change interval for that motor for future changes. Blackstone is fine as long as you know how to interpret the quantitative #s in the report and don't really listen to the commentary. Now if something is majorly wrong like aluminum wear in the 30 ppm or higher, they'll say that, but otherwise, they say there's usually nothing wrong.
Many of the questions below can be covered by what Jake states below - since you can't get all of the old oil out of the motor and pan during a change, the first couple changes have cross-contamination of the base stocks so the oil and results can be less effective and reliable until you get 3 in a row, even after doing a flush with a BR oil when switching to the Driven oils.
1. When you switched to DT40 there was a slight bump in wear metals. Any ideas why? I don't consider a 1ppm change to be significant, and although Copper and Chromium went up just a hare, the Copper came back down in the next sample and lead went down in both samples. 2. The B and Mo trends are interesting - DT40 has way less boron but shows a massive jump in moly from 2016 to 2017. They reformulated ? Pretty sure DT40 has never been reformulated, but not 100% sure of that. It's hard to explain the Moly change as all the DT40 analyses I've had done for DT40 show a lot of Moly - not sure why this first sample doesn't. Thought maybe I mislabeled it at the time, but the Zinc and Phosphorous levels don't look like that's the case. 3. The calcium score of DT40 is higher than a DFI engine should have according to the Driven paper on LSPI. Not a factor for this car but just noted for DT40. 4. Fuel dilution is good if I read that right - apparently you've educated your wife on proper driving habits. : ) 5. The Zn and P levels are higher as you noted - anything else exceptional or extraordinary to validate DT40 ? I'm running DT40 in my DFI Cayenne. We'll see how that goes with the higher Calcium levels, but I only have 2 oil changes on that car since purchasing it so not a good trend yet.
Being back at my PC, here's a more recent UOA report on the DT40 from that same car where the last 4 are the DT40 and the first 3 the same Motul xcess from the prior report. Unfortunately, the last 2 intervals on the DT40 are far longer than I normally run as when my wife stopped DD'ing her 997, I started paying less attention to the mileage and went way too long on this last one before realizing I had missed the 4,0000 interval until I looked back at my stored history reports. In any case, it's useful information for this community for those that think going beyond a 5,000 mile change interval or even a 10,000 mile interval is OK, as you can see that even at 5,250 miles, the oil is more acidic than basic and at 7,800 miles way more so. This is the report where I "laughed" at their commentary that it was OK, where clearly it was not. You can also see how wear metals, Zinc, Phosporous, and Viscosity are all negatively effected by the additional mileage. This car is going back to a 5,000 mile or annual change interval moving forward.
Again those moly and boron numbers really jumped - sent a PM.
Novice guess but acidity might be a function of time just as is with vinegar. ???
As expensive as it might be I am leaning towards the 6 month club vs mileage.
TAN/TBN analysis doesn't seem worth it for Porsche owners. We/re not worried about milking every last mile out of our oil but out of our engines.
Is there something I am missing about TAN/TBN? Especially, if I am changing oil on a regular time interval ?
I use the TAN and TBN numbers along with viscosity and wear metal numbers to determine what my oil change interval should be for a particular car and motor. That's how I determined that a 4,000 mile change interval is more appropriate for my supercharged 997 and a 5,000 mile interval for my wife's 997 C2S. If in the 6 month period where you're going to change the oil, you'll also have 4,000 miles or fewer, I'd say you can skip the TAN & TBN numbers or maybe do the first couple on that interval to validate the #s are where they should be and then skip future ones.
Again those moly and boron numbers really jumped - sent a PM....
He did not answer but I bet he added large amounts of moly (MoS2) on the side, as shown by the increase in Mo from 34 to 354 to 149. The 354 number is way high. I have been using MoS2 for years at the correct amount (5% per volume) and my numbers are in the 175 to 225 range. If he did not add Mo separately, those numbers look strange.
Re. the Blackstone report comments - they are just comments; the data is what matters.
Ok but the transition from 34 to 354 and back down to 149 makes no sense in that light. The 354 peak suggests added Mo, or if not, if it's strictly oil additive content, it indicates constant reformulations...
Last edited by ADias; 06-05-2019 at 12:18 PM.
Reason: Edited at the request of MexicoBlueTurboS removing his quote.
Ok but the transition from 34 to 354 and back down to 149 makes no sense in that light. The 354 peak suggests added Mo, or if not, if it's strictly oil additive content, it indicates constant reformulations...
The issue here is Blackstone. We would send known good samples in as controls and would see discrepancies in the results sent back. We stopped using them over a decade ago.
The only change to DT in the recent past is changing from Lubrizol to Afton as the additive supplier and extensive testing is carried out by Driven by Lake Speed Jr. when there are any formulation changes. The levels for Moly for the DT oils is indeed 600 ppm for virgin oil and 300 ppm for the DI oils.
To those of you who email me and I happily answer your technical questions, I would refer you to my signature which states the following:
Notice: This transmission is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain information that is confidential.
is the DT40 still the holy grail for the 997? (997.1)? I am using Motul for now, just because it is porsche approved and I have an extended warranty, and if I have an IMS or scoring issue, I don't want any reasons to decline a claim. The warranty expires in the fall, so I will have my IMS done at that point and thinking ill probably switch to DT40 if it is infact better than the Motul.
06-01-2019, 09:37 AM
Anyone have a Blackstone history using DT40 - 3 or more ?
