General FCP Euro and my new oil

[FlyingTexan]

If you can't tell by my other thread I'm a bit of a nut when it comes to maintenance. BMW went 0w20 for CAFE and that 3% fleet efficiency increase. I've been running both Pennzoil Euro and QuakerState Euro as of late. Highly recommended. Both have LL01 ratings so a HTHS min of 3.5. The Pennzoil is a heavy 5w30 and the QS is a light 5w40 they're basically neck and neck. The QS I've ordered from Walmart for $22 a 5l and had shipped to the house.

Then I started to get the itch and keep doing more reading. Decided to look at LiquiMolly and what FCPEuro but the more I researched LiquiMolly the more I didn't like it. Seemed a lot more advertisement than anything else. Decided to start digging into Redline and can't find anything against. The Ram guys with the Hemis treat it like it's liquid gold. Review after review kept giving it a big thumbs up so I went with their 5w30. It's a very heavy 5w30 with a HTHS of 3.7. Their 5w40 was even crazier and exceeds the B58's max HTHS of 4.1.

With FCPeuro you get lifetime supply you just have to package up and send your old oil back. Literally fill the cans back up and send them back. They'll give a store credit. With the QS Euro being so good it wasn't worth it to do it for any other oil but Redline. Given it's high cost it should be worth it. Cost me about $18-$20 an oil change moving forward. I do them every 5k just to keep the engine forever. Will see what happens. But I encourage people to look at the oil analysis of redline and do their own reading on it.

 

[archerwolf]

wow the lifetime replacement warranty on engine oil sounds too good to be true!! You are literally sending used oil back to them and they give you full credit?

 

[FlyingTexan]

wow the lifetime replacement warranty on engine oil sounds too good to be true!! You are literally sending used oil back to them and they give you full credit?

Yea and as far as I can tell you "should" be able to put all 7 qts and filter in a large USPS flat rate box which I think is like $18. Wish they had a 5L jug but didn't so I'll just drain into my pan and fill the bottles one at a time. One take but a sec anyway.

 

[NQ94]

It would be interesting to see oil analysis for new product from each brand to see the additive package differences. General consumer oil analysis tests will only do the V40 V100 tests and don't do the HTHS test as it is costly. Our workshop sent several different brands new 0W-30 and 5W-30 oils straight from the container to get some base information to compare against used oils for a project (not BMW engine related). It was interesting to see some of the differences in additive packages and viscosities for essentially interchangeable oils and you could see why not changing brands every service is actually a good idea.

 

[FlyingTexan]

It would be interesting to see oil analysis for new product from each brand to see the additive package differences. General consumer oil analysis tests will only do the V40 V100 tests and don't do the HTHS test as it is costly. Our workshop sent several different brands new 0W-30 and 5W-30 oils straight from the container to get some base information to compare against used oils for a project (not BMW engine related). It was interesting to see some of the differences in additive packages and viscosities for essentially interchangeable oils and you could see why not changing brands every service is actually a good idea.

That's exactly what I'm doing. I ordered 4 kits from Hot Shot's which with a discount code were about $22 each after taxes. I'm going with the Redline 5w30 as it's a HTHS of 3.7 and everything I've read on it has said it's nothing short of fantastic to the point it's not worth the money because other oils will hold up till OCI as well. I honestly figured I'd play the FCP Euro game and looked at all their available oils then looked at the virgin oil analysis and started there. The 5w30 is superb and when asked "If it was all free" it was the one guys picked over everything. Warranted or needed, no, but since it's there I was going to go with either Redline, Motul, or Liqui Moly Molygen. While the Molygen on paper isn't the best (falls out of grade faster due to it's base stocks) if doing 5k oil changes it didn't really matter and B58 owners swear it runs smooth on it. So that would have been my number 2. But looking at all the Redline oils from the 0w20/30/40 to the 5w oils the 5w30 looks like the perfect everything and if all it's going to do is cost me an $18 shipping box I'll change it every 5k and keep is sparkling clean. I already have to haul my oil to autozone so this isn't really any different and I installed one of these plugs which makes it super easy. Sure I'm eating around $200 total up front but I'll really like what's in my motor. I had no issues with QS Euro 5w40 at 3.88 HTHS and would very highly recommend it. Engine seems to love it based on analysis. Just the endless oil through FCP made me want to accept the challenge lol.

 

[CRH]

Does unused oil deteriorate

 

[FlyingTexan]

Does unused oil deteriorate

I mean you can have fallout but you just shake the bottle.

 

[CRH]

I mean you can have fallout but you just shake the bottle.

Thanks, we all keep top up oil in garage for years. Always wondered if it deteriorated. 1 of our vehicles has lots of the 1ltr top up oil bottles from the services, I wondered if it could be used instead of new oil for an oil change?

 

[NQ94]

I mean you can have fallout but you just shake the bottle.

I found that doesn't work well. I recently had new stock 14 month old diff and trans oil that had drop out hand shaking didn't do much. A paint can shaker may work better. Also had a car we did UOA on after the oil only done 1400km and 12 months with no issues with the oil.
Does the oil lab you use do HTHS as part of the testing? I use Caterpillar labs and another company for work and they are currently not doing HTHS as part of standard testing.

 

[FlyingTexan]

Thanks, we all keep top up oil in garage for years. Always wondered if it deteriorated. 1 of our vehicles has lots of the 1ltr top up oil bottles from the services, I wondered if it could be used instead of new oil for an oil change?

I've only seen it be an issue with the Pennzoil Platinum Euro L. I honestly do go around looking for it but someone else did a youtube on it.

 

[FlyingTexan]

I found that doesn't work well. I recently had new stock 14 month old diff and trans oil that had drop out hand shaking didn't do much. A paint can shaker may work better. Also had a car we did UOA on after the oil only done 1400km and 12 months with no issues with the oil.
Does the oil lab you use do HTHS as part of the testing? I use Caterpillar labs and another company for work and they are currently not doing HTHS as part of standard testing.

They didn't HTHS on any of my samples. My info came from the pdf spec sheets published so to that degree I'm taking them at their word. I'd think if hand shaking didn't get it blending that it would once it's in the engine and brought to temp with it making a few cycles through all the quickly moving parts. I've only seen fallout mentioned on the Pennzoil Euro L back when I had my Discovery TD6 and that was on someone's video. I haven't noticed it anywhere else. I hadn't looked that hard as I've never heard it as a reported problem. Oils are blended in the first place so flying all over an engine I'd imagine would blend it more!

I've been looking for tests to get and ordered several from Hot Shot's last night. Price wasn't too bad and looked promising. Then today they emailed me saying they couldn't fulfill the order and were crediting me back. I wouldn't be surprised if it's because I had a discount code I applied. Seems shady. I don't know where to get anything now that's reasonably priced. I don't want to pay $50/$60 for a UOA.

I've seen random kits on ebay for Schaeffer's and thought I'd give them a try but when you go to Schaeffer's web site they say to contact your rep to get setup so I'm not sure if they care about someone with one vehicle. Anyone you recommend? I want to get a half doze or so from the same place so I can trend monitor. Blackstone keeps upping their pricing and wants another $10 for TBN. Everyone on BITOG is complaining about how slow their services are. Can't seem to catch a break on finding something reasonable.

 

[NQ94]

They didn't HTHS on any of my samples. My info came from the pdf spec sheets published so to that degree I'm taking them at their word. I'd think if hand shaking didn't get it blending that it would once it's in the engine and brought to temp with it making a few cycles through all the quickly moving parts. I've only seen fallout mentioned on the Pennzoil Euro L back when I had my Discovery TD6 and that was on someone's video. I haven't noticed it anywhere else. I hadn't looked that hard as I've never heard it as a reported problem. Oils are blended in the first place so flying all over an engine I'd imagine would blend it more!

I've been looking for tests to get and ordered several from Hot Shot's last night. Price wasn't too bad and looked promising. Then today they emailed me saying they couldn't fulfill the order and were crediting me back. I wouldn't be surprised if it's because I had a discount code I applied. Seems shady. I don't know where to get anything now that's reasonably priced. I don't want to pay $50/$60 for a UOA.

I've seen random kits on ebay for Schaeffer's and thought I'd give them a try but when you go to Schaeffer's web site they say to contact your rep to get setup so I'm not sure if they care about someone with one vehicle. Anyone you recommend? I want to get a half doze or so from the same place so I can trend monitor. Blackstone keeps upping their pricing and wants another $10 for TBN. Everyone on BITOG is complaining about how slow their services are. Can't seem to catch a break on finding something reasonable.

Cut the oil bottles open and look at the bottom. Drop out is more noticeable in gear oils in some brands that have long storage times. Engine oils seem to have less drop out.
I use Cat SOS for samples but the standard kit is about $50 aud and work up in price to about $100 aud for particle count premium test. Other companies are ALS and Komatsu and a few other smaller companies in AU with most of the basic sample kits are around $40 to $50. Cat was easy with lots of info and just an oil lab portal account. Most major labs will be a bit slower for results for the low volume customers.

 

[Clark Kent]

Cut the oil bottles open and look at the bottom. Drop out is more noticeable in gear oils in some brands that have long storage times. Engine oils seem to have less drop out.
I use Cat SOS for samples but the standard kit is about $50 aud and work up in price to about $100 aud for particle count premium test. Other companies are ALS and Komatsu and a few other smaller companies in AU with most of the basic sample kits are around $40 to $50. Cat was easy with lots of info and just an oil lab portal account. Most major labs will be a bit slower for results for the low volume customers.

Small world. When I was working I used to send helicopter turbine engine and gearbox oil samples to HD (Cat) in Archerfield for particulates and water, and hydraulic fluid samples to ALS in Sydney for particulates, water and chlorine (via x-ray fluorescence). Both were very good labs. I could pick up the phone any time and get help.

 

[NQ94]

Small world. When I was working I used to send helicopter turbine engine and gearbox oil samples to HD (Cat) in Archerfield for particulates and water, and hydraulic fluid samples to ALS in Sydney for particulates, water and chlorine (via x-ray fluorescence). Both were very good labs. I could pick up the phone any time and get help.

Cat and ALS Oil analysis has saved us from some big dollar failures and system contamination. I went on a tour of the lab at Arcerfield years ago. It was pretty impressive what they could test.