My Polo 1.9 Sdi (direct injected) is due it's 15K service. I plan to keep this car a bit longer than nomal ( a year and a half is the current record ) and am wondering what oil to use. It is serviced every 5K ( by a dealer ) so is it worth putting a different grade of oil in it, or just leave them put standard diesel oil in ? I am also considering using an oil additive, will it effect my warranty status ?
Any info would be grately appreciated !
Ash.
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It will not effect your warranty but also it will do no good either only empty your wallet.all modern oils contain all the additives an engine requires.In fact the engine runs on the additives the mineral oil or sythetic oil are just used as a soluble suspension and adding unknown chemicals can destroy the balance and effectiveness of the oil.just use a good quality mineral oil with the correct filter and all will be fine.
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Absolutely correct, Andy.
If anyone doubts the advice that using additives is likely to upset the chemical balance of lubricating oil, they should take a look at the following website, written by a chemical engineer who knows his stuff. Lots of other oil-related topics of interest here too.
www.unofficialbmw.com/all/misc/all_oilfaq.html
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I've seen a demonstration of an additive (some years ago - it was then called Gedol) that dramatically reduced metal-to-metal contact in a rig designed to create the maximum wear. It was so tenacious that it all had to be cleaned off with with Genklene to repeat the demonstration. And what about the semi-permanent treatments, like Moly and Slick?
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Andrew, you said that "dramatically reduced metal-to-metal contact" had been demonstrated. Unless there is something drastically wrong (and probably terminal) there will never be metal-to-metal contact between the critical working surfaces in the engine.
The engine design industry has seen umpteen of these magic potions come and go over the years and I have yet to see any benefits demonstrated under properly controlled back-to-back testing. The company I worked for didn't recommend the use of any additives during my 42 years there (with the sole exception of a diesel anti-waxing additive for extremes of cold ambient temperature) and their engines were extremely long lasting.
I would save your money -- and possibly your engine.
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Surely if there's no metal-to-metal contact, engines wouldn't wear out? I appreciate it's not meant to happen, and only does so in extremis or during start-up, but that's where some additives score, by taking longer to drain off and hence protecting (a bit) during those first few turns of the crank. Anyone who has tried to empty a whole tin of STP into their oil filler will testify to its adhesive properties...
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James, I'm sorry I omitted to explain what I meant by 'critical working surfaces'.
What I was trying to say was that the surfaces that *critically* rely on lubrication, such as crankshaft bearings, must be held apart by a film of oil at all times. Even when an engine is newly assembled, the bearings are oiled to make sure that the surfaces don't make metal-to-metal contact when the engine is started, so additives that claim to reduce this non-existent contact are pointless.
There are some surfaces where there MUST be direct contact, e.g. valves on their seats, and there are other parts such as piston rings which require a small and very tightly controlled level of lubrication, and it is these parts which can wear out first. In my opinion, there is nothing to be gained here by adding cocktails of chemicals to the oil that the engine was designed to run with. All that is required is to change the oil at the proper intervals and to make sure that it is of the correct type and viscosity.
I would make one concession -- if it is likely that an engine will lose all of its oil during a journey, then an additive just *might* save it from destruction by leaving a film of molybdenum disulphide on the sliding surfaces. This is the scenario that the additive marketers play on but it is most unlikely to occur in a lifetime of driving.
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David - I bow to your superior knowledge here. It does beg the question, though, of whether differences between oil formulations are that significant. I sometimes wonder if oil changes with expensive synthetics at manufacturers' (increasingly long) intervals are any better than more frequent changes with, say, GTX.
I seem to remember that someone had invented a filter that was so much better than normal that he was immediately bought out (urban myth, maybe, but it's the sort of thing that would happen).
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Hang on, are we talking of a suspension or a solution? (I take it the additives, whatever they are, are dissolved or suspended in the oil.) And what exactly is the difference between a mineral and a synthetic oil anyway?
I do know about vegetable oil, Castrol R put an end to my bike engine explosions; and oh, that lovely scent! (I used to put a little into the petrol tank of an Austin 8, which puzzled the enlightened within noseshot.) Only stuff that let rotary engines work, too.
Can you still get it, it could be the thing for turbos?
R, of course, should not be mixed with lesser lubricants.
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Wasn't Castrol R used by racing motorbikes decades ago?
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It was mostly used for two-strokes, but sadly replaced by synthetics, which don't smell nearly as nice. A few people added a small amount to the petrol of 4-strokes, ostensibly as an upper-cylinder lubricant...
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Although you are completely correct Andy Bairstow what you said is absolute heresy. Wait for the howls of protest.
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Friend of Roland ,You have commited heresy you put a w on my name.
Best regards Andy
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"I seem to remember that someone had invented a filter that was so much better than normal that he was immediately bought out (urban myth, maybe, but it's the sort of thing that would happen)."
I personally know of someone who developed and started marketing something in competition to a big monopoly player and very quickly was made an offer he couldn't refuse (purely financial as far as I'm aware!) to shut up shop and destroy everything.
In less scrupulous markets the offer might be even less refusable !:-(
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Yes, it's me again! I obviously know nothing of the instances quoted where an inventor has been 'bought out' but I am aware of examples of where and why this *appears* to have happened. I cannot go into any detail for reasons of confidentiality but will give a generalisation ...
It is not uncommon for an inventor to ask a manufacturer to take a licence on his invention. The manufacturer will almost always insist that a 'priority patent application' be filed for it, before they even look at the invention, to protect both the inventor and themselves from any future misunderstanding as to 'who brought what to the party' (i.e. the patent application will record exactly what is being claimed as the invention).
If the invention appears to have potential, the manufacturer is likely to offer to buy it outright so that they have full control of it in order that there can be no arguments over who pays for patenting prosecution, which foreign countries it is to be patented in, what any licence agreement would need to include (which can be largely unknown at this stage), what royalties should be paid, etc.
Having bought the invention, the manufacturer then starts to test and develop it and, as with a great many promising ideas (in-house ones as well as from outside), technical or commercial problems may be found which lead to the invention having to be abandoned. The inventor, who of course has the utmost faith in his own invention, then very commonly but erroneously believes that he has been bought out so that he will offer no competition. He sometimes then shouts this to the world, perhaps in a court of law.
Examples like the above imply that the manufacturers are absolutely fair when it comes to dealing with unsolicited inventions, yet we hear of so many allegations of 'no interest because it was not-invented-here'. Obviously I don't know the situation with all companies but in the 8 or 9 years that I was receiving unsolicited inventions for the company I worked for, I always tried my hardest to find a way forward (e.g. suggesting improvements to the invention and/or its description before I involved other more expert engineers in its assessment), and if it was not accepted I tried to explain to the inventor in some detail as to why this was and whether he/she should try to market it elsewhere or simply abandon it. I also set myself very short timescales for assessing the invention and responding to the inventor. I was truly sorry when I had to give bad news to the inventor.
Apart from anything else, all this was good for public relations because the inventors were often users of the company products (diesel and gas engines) or involved in servicing them. In most cases the inventor accepted my findings without question, and several sent letters of gratitude to myself and/or the company in respect of the help I had given them; but conversely there were those who were convinced that their invention would save the world and could not see the blatant and often fundamental flaws in it and would accuse me of the 'not-invented-here' syndrome. And 'yes' I regularly received the well-known 'perpetual motion' inventions that defied all the laws of physics, usually from the nicest of people who needed bring down to earth very very gently!
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I've just remembered that Simca (and maybe others) used a centrifugal oil filter in their 1000/1100 model years ago. It was a hollow disc on the end of the crankshaft, and you were expected to take the lid off and scrape out the crud every so often. It struck me as a typically French solution, and to judge from the crud (a friend had one) it worked rather well - does anyone know any more about this?
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Why do you think Detroit used every method they could to bankrupt Tucker?
There are many other examples,RR and Napier,for instance.
Back to oil.
I do think you should insist on an oil with at least a B2 rating for your diesel,but that is still dirt cheap.Even the dealers use B3 these days,at a price,they then charge you more to dispose of the old oil than a can of the new stuff would cost...........
PLEASE DONT PUT CASTROL R IN ANY MODERN ENGINE!
or in the petrol,unless you have a free replacement catalyst thats in your way.
It gums up everything in no time flat and is not stable at current engine temperatures and pressures.It was only once good because all else was worse.
I notice that you can buy modern vegetable lube oil in France,called,i think,Tournesol,and ,yes I should have bought some for analysis.
Anyone know more about it?
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Robin, I didn't claim that all manufacturers were fair to inventors, just that I knew my company was and that I was aware of the reasons behind SOME claims of buying out of inventors.
I CAN say that in my hundreds of meetings and communications with patent attorneys and with patent depts of several other manufacturing companies (which often included discussions on handling unsolicited inventions) I never picked up the slightest indication of any maltreatment of inventors.
I don't know of the RR and other examples you skimpingly referred to but I DO know that an employee of Rolls-Royce Aero came up with an invention that his employers decided not to lay claim to (which they had every right to under his Conditions of Employment) but instead they gave him a huge amount of assistance to set up his own company to manufacture and market the invention - which he did very successfully. This was related by an assistant director of the UK Patent Office at a series of seminars that I attended so I'm sure that it is factual.
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The examples i referred to were about corporate suppression of compettitors.
If you listen to rumour then there are wonder fuels out there that oil companies bought the rights to and forgot,wonder tyres that never wear out,not to mention oil that never needs changing.
But I doubt it,i really do.
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