sandwedge

Thank you both. Makes sense. How do you tell what the acidity level is in the oil?

sandwedge

Probably a safe bet. Having said that though, Porsche delivers factory new cars with a 4 year bumper to bumper warranty. I have to wonder if they would deliver new cars with inferior motor oil being on the hook for at least $25,000 (don't know how much a Turbo engine is) engine replacements over 4 years or 6 years if CPO is added. Especially having no idea how many miles a year the new owner will put on the car or how it will be driven. Again, I have no preference in terms of engine oil. Just curious why Porsche keeps using Mobil 1 if it's as bad as many say it is. But I think you answered that question.

Petza914

Do a few ppm more or less metal mater over the course of a short warranty, probably not. Do they matter over 200k miles - I'd say probably so.

For acidity, you have to send the oil for analysis and request athat the TAN and TBN br run. Once the Total Acid Number exceeds the Total Base Number the oil is acidic

TurboTime997

The oil debate is always an interesting one. Lots of speculation mixed with opinion and some objective numbers that often result in people feeling very strongly about their oil of choice. I've run M1 in several cars, including my 997. It's fine, IMO. I don't prefer it because I tended to consume more oil in the 997 when I used it, and in my track car, the engine ran hotter (and it's already hot to being with). What's interesting is people like to focus on all the components that go into motor oil and the incremental evidence of wear materials in their oil over time assessed via lab analysis. But I can't say I've ever heard of any engine failing exclusively because of the oil used in the car---assuming the owner follows the recommended OCI and uses the recommended oil type. We've all heard about engine sludge and internal engine damage from people in camrys (or similar) who go like 30k miles between oil changes. When we talk about engine failure in Porsche sports cars, 99% of the time it turns out to be some engineering or manufacturing issue with the vehicles, not the oil used. Albeit anecdotal, there's also this guy: https://marqued.com/editorial/7bDFV0...-and-adversity The owner of a 996 turbo with nearly 700k miles on it and only using Mobil 1 every 5k miles. There's several articles online about this guy's experience, but essentially the engine has been nearly flawless over that time with limited evidence of wear upon physical inspection.

Does this mean I'm going to switch back to Mobil 1? No. But I also don't think differences between oil (particularly that which is A40 rated) are nearly as impactful as many make it out to be. I think it's WAY more important to change the oil on time and get the oil up to operating temp when the car is taken out for a drive. So no 5 mile drives for me in any vehicle I care about.

Petza914

The Mezger engine is a completely different design and fantastic for durability and power potential. Most of us here don't have those....

What causes bore scoring? Contact of the piston with the cylinder wall with enough angle or force to gouge the wall metal. What prevents bore scoring - oil film strength that separates the metal to metal contact even at a microscopic level. So hot viscosity rating is extremely important.

You say,"I can't say I've ever heard of any engine failing exclusively because of the oil used in the car", but I bet you the large majority of scored 996 and 997 engines were running M1 oil. We don't have nearly enough data or a controlled tudy to show that using a different oil might have prevented the scoring from occurring, or kept it from progressing as quickly as it did to the point of a rebuild, but since M1 is the recommended oil from Porsche, I can only assume that's what was in most of the engine that FSI, LN, Slacker, Hartech, & Jarno have rebuilt. Would those engines have not scored if running something else - maybe, maybe not.... If Porsche builds their engines to such tight tolerances with a high level of consistency, what causes some engines to fail and others not to - climate, use, warm up protocol, etc and there's too many variables to pin it down to a single thing.

When you look at a UOA report and see higher metal PPM with M1 vs other oils, it's an indicator that it's not protecting the metal parts as well as the other oil is. If you compare the hot viscosity ratings and how quickly M1 shears to less than a hot 40 rated viscosity, you can make some assumptions even if you can't make conclusions.

So when you say, you've never heard of any engine failing because of the oil - I don't know that it's a valid statement... it's possible we've all heard of a lot of engines failing because of the oil and just never made the correlation.
What I'd like to know is how many scored 997 engines were running M1 vs other oils that have a higher hot viscosity - that would be a great survey for those owners that have had engine failures.

TurboTime997

I never said that oil type wasn't A contributing factor to an engine failure. As you point point out above, there are a lot of things that likely coalesce to result in an engine failure. What I wrote in my post is that I never heard of an engine failure strictly based on oil---unless it was due to poor use/maintenance by the owner. The other side of your point is that if we don't know how oil contributes to the whole bore scoring debacle, we don't really know if the various additives people love to talk about have any material benefit in any sort of scientific way. And your dismissal of the Metzger engine example is frankly bizarre. Yes, it is a different engine than what's in a Carrera. But like every ICE, oil is used as (among other things) a barrier to prevent metal-to-metal contact within the engine. And when someone puts extreme (relatively speaking, of course) miles on their car, you would expect some signs of wear when the engine is pulled apart if the oil wasn't very good. The guy commuted and tracked his car, so let's be honest with ourselves, if the M1 was complete garbage, the owner would have seen significant top end wear or engine failure at some point over 700k miles. Most people on this forum likely don't even have 100k miles (I don't!) on their cars. I think the issue is more about how people use their cars than the oil they put in it. But of course, that's just my opinion.

Petza914

997 Turbo engines have significantly lower compression than normally aspirated versions, which is a major factor and difference between the two. Now if Mezger based GT3 engines are also going 400-500k miles, then the compression difference isn't a factor, but I've not seen people post those kind of mileages from a GT3, possibly because they're not using those cars that way, like turbo owners are.

There is plenty of scientific evidence about how zinc and Phosphorous protects the vale train and also how too high levels of these damage catalytic converters.

TurboTime997

The stresses on a turbo car under boost are substantial (which is why the rods are forged in a turbo and titanium in the GT3), as is the associated heat from FI engines. So your comment about the differences in Metzger engines isn't very accurate. For the 3rd time (lol!): Dude put 700k miles on a 996 turbo with lots of highway and track miles. That's a lot of miles for ANY street car--and then add in the track use with the associated increases in heat and wear. You simply can't explain away the amazing experience the guy had using M1. And yes, I am fully aware that this person's story is a N of 1, so it's certainly not open and shut based on the one person's experience.

There's lots of lab data on all sorts of things, but it doesn't mean it holds true in real life where there are all sorts of variables not controlled for (or assessed) in such a setting. But I haven't seen any actual real world scientific evidence for the various additive. And when I've gone to various PCA events where Lake Speed and others talk about moly (for example), they only speak to the mechanism, not if said mechanism actually results in a material benefit. Can you point me to that information (RWE) if such data is available?

Petza914

The 997 oil thread spreadsheet shows lower metal wear with Driven oil that is high in moly and for the LM oils where people have added Ceratec or MoS2. LM without that shows higher metal wear. There's something like 40 samples compiled into that spreadsheet now.

Bruce In Philly

As I understand the function of oil, it is to prevent metal to metal contact. Not to lessen it, but to not allow it to happen. If this is true, then engines should run forever if your oil is always in specification. I suspect.... seriously, this is speculation... that these lower mile engines sitting for weeks/months at a time is what triggers the death spiral. This assumes, of course, there is no manufacturing or design defect from the outset, and frankly, I think the M96/M97 engines are sub-standard designs.

Now for my shameless plug for ceramic: The ceramic additive in Cera Tec supposedly sticks to metal and leaves behind this added slippery surface that does not drain off.

Peace
Bruce in Philly (now Atlanta)

Graufuchs

The design is fine, its the "ECO-FRIENDLY" sleeve lining that was used that unfortunately is an issue. That is why I think high Moly count is imperative for these motors, along with a correct warm up procedure.

The ceratec is a good additive also from what I have seen.

EVOMMM

Ok this oil thread is cyclical nonstop loop
1. use great oils appropriate weight Driven luqui Moly or Millers in that order
2. I alternate at every other oils service between Ceratec and Mos2
3. ALWAYS warm oils by light driving when hot hit it to REDLINE at every drive
4. drive your car often enjoy it
5. change your oil 2x a year unless over 4K miles in between

myltz400

Lol, I didn't gather that from this thread. At least not the first 2...

BTW not that I would follow or recommend his direction but it appears that L Speed Jr. uses Penzoil in his Porsche and factory oils in his other cars. According to his latest youtube channel.

EVOMMM

He also promoted Driven before but I’m sure more and info will come on oils
i haven’t researched penzoil but for my 997.2 and 996 I’m sticking with Driven till they change the formula
Driven has made my oil analysis my choice

Petza914

I've frankly lost interest in dabating this any further. I see what works the best in the 10 engines I own vs what I bought them with or what else I've tried in them. I'm going to stop spending my time tryng to share what I know about UOA and convince the nay-sayers - they can use whatever they'd like and are probably going to anyway. There are now literally hundreds of oil threads here for people to search up.

If anyone needs me to interpret the quantitative data from a report rather than the qualitative rosy description that Blackstone usually paints, feel free to tag me in your UOA post - otherwise, I'm going to ignore the oil posts and hand the baton to those that think they know better.