jokerdev

Interested to know opinions/thoughts on the new Pennzoil Platinum
Full Synthetic with Pure Plus Technology, and if anyone is using it? It is Dexos 1 certified. I know there are quite a few experienced members here.

New oil from Shell made from Natural Gas

LDB

In other posts, I’ve described the three types of synthetic base oils, group 3 being hydrocracked, group 4 being poly alpha olefin, and group 5 being esters. Most would say that group 3 is by a narrow margin, a bit lower quality than the other two. It is very severely processed, and has mostly isoparaffins, the best of the hydrocarbon base stocks. But it still has some lower quality naphthenes, and traces of nitrogen and sulfur. Even the premium priced full synthetics like Amsoil and Redline contain a nontrivial amount of group 3 base.

Over the last few years, a few companies such as Shell and their subsidiaries Pennzoil and Quaker State have started marketing synthetics made from gas to liquids (GTL) technology rather than hydrocracking. They are still group 3, but when made by GTL rather than hydrocracking, they are pure isoparaffin, with zero naphthenes, nitrogen, and sulfur. This makes them pretty much equal in quality to groups 4 and 5. Thus, while not an official designation, I’ve been referring to GTL group 3 oils as group 3+. But it is not clear from their ads whether oils advertising GTL base stock are pure group 3+, or whether like the other synthetics, they also have some standard group 3 base.

In a sense, none of the above matters much any more anyway. Additives are always improving, and the overall performance of the oil is just as much, if not more a function of the additive packages than of the exact mix of base stock. A critical part of developing a great oil is long term testing in real engines. Trouble is, that is very expensive. You have to run a real engine in a test cell under controlled conditions for at least 50,000 miles, then tear the engine down and inspect it for wear. Since it’s so expensive, I tend to go with oils from the big companies, with big budgets for such testing. The difficulty with a boutique oil from a small company is that it depends more on seat of the pants expertise from a few skilled blending guys, with less backup from actual engine testing. As long as your blending guys are skilled, that may be ok, but I feel more comfortable knowing the oil is backed up by real testing. On the other hand, some feel just the opposite, namely, they’d rather rely on a good seat of the pants human.

I think the bottom line is that any full synthetic from a reputable maker is going to give you good service. There are passionate debates about the relative merits of Mobil 1, Amsoil, Redline, Pennzoil, etc, but little real data that’s public, so can be cited to prove anything. Such and such an oil drain test, or so and so a wear test, don’t mean much. Only the very expensive long term engine tests in real engines give reliable data, and you can be certain none of the companies that run those will share full details of those data sets. They will cherry pick a few aspects of the long term tests where their oil did best, and brag about them, not bothering to admit that they weren’t the best in some other aspect. For example, maybe #1 in bearing wear, but only #2 in valve lifter wear. But the nice thing about going with the big guys is you can be confident that all the testing their budgets allow, means that their oils don’t have any serious weak spots.

JerryU

Very interesting info! I’m not an oil expert but this ad sounds similar to what the old “synthetics” advertised, like Mobile 1 and Amsoil. They were made from pure molecules of uniform size not “dino oil” as some call the stuff that comes from the ground, which as this ad says has various impurities! However the oil companies say, although they no longer make the old synthetics, they specially refine the “dino oil” to make it “similar.”
The concern I was looking at is the issue with direct injection since there is no longer gasoline with additives to remove the residue from the back of the intake valves caused by the PCV system as there was with port injection. The only thing that passes the valve with DI is air and PCV oil residue! The old synthetics (before they could call blends “full synthetic" starting in about 2000) apparently had less residuals or as this add says, like coming from a muddy river!
The only hard data I have found is published by Amsoil: http://www.amsoil.com/lit/g3115.pdf
They compare 10 oils in a number of tests including a total deposit test. The report is from February 2013 so this new Pennzoil oil is not shown. They show Pennzoil Ultra having a residual of 9 mg, their Amsoil Signature Series had 5 mg and the lowest was Castrol Edge with Titanium having only 4 mg. They show Mobile 1 Extended Performance having 23 mg, one of the highest! There is an upper limit of 30 mg to meet an API specification. I was concerned about the high level of Mobil 1 since that is what I use!
Would be neat to know what this new oil does in a test like that. Perhaps they will compare in some actual tests not just say it is 25% less dirty than Mobil 1 as they did in the ad!

DAC17

All good info. Thanks. At the end of the day, if the oil meets the Dexos 1 specs, it should be plenty good for street and occasional track use.

LDB

I wouldn’t worry much about PCV fouling intake valves on direct injection engines. On a percentage basis, there are more detergents in oil than in gasoline, and they should prevent any buildup on intake valve stems from the small amount of PCV oil mist. Bench tests like total residuals aren’t very indicative of what will actually deposit onto engine surfaces.

You also have to be a bit careful about what you call synthetic blend. “Dino oil” is group 2. Full synthetics cannot have any group 2. They must be blends of groups 3, 4, and 5. Oils labeled “synthetic blends” like the GM’s own brand of Dexos spec oil can have up to 50% group 2. But once you go to a full synthetic with no group 2, even old style group 3 full synthetics made by hydrocracking have the vast majority of bad actors removed.

JerryU

Hope you’re correct. Guess since I was an early adopter of Mobile 1, for my 260Z, I always paid a premium and used it in all my cars. Just learned when getting the C7 why in ~2000 those motor oils made from what was a polyalphaolefin base, truly synthetic, man made molecules switched to a “highly refined” “dino oil.” Best article I found was by Car & Driver (http://www.caranddriver.com/columns/...mantics-column) I liked his initial comment, referring to the Clinton "is:" “Now that the meaning of "is" has gotten so slippery you need to grab it with both hands, we'd better keep an eye on longer words, too. One's already gone squirmy on us -- "synthetic," as in synthetic motor oil.” Good read! I wondered why “My Mobile 1” price cut in half shortly after! Then I read Ferrari, BMW and Porsche info where they were concerned about residual build-up on DI engines. They have been using DI for some time. Then I read the 2013 Amsoil tech paper http://www.amsoil.com/lit/g3115.pdf where they compare 10 oils in a number of tests. In a total deposit test, Amsoil Signature Series had 5 mg residual and Castrol Edge with Titanium only 4 mg. "My Mobile 1" had 23 mg, one of the highest!
There is a lot of info on the net and elsewhere about installing catch cans to reduce the amount of PCV oil going back into the intake, in fact I am about to install mine.
Will be interesting to see what this Pennzoil new oil presents in the way of actual test comparison data. Won’t take much for me to switch to a product that has less of this issue!

Glen e

I went thru my "get the best oil" phase and realized I was throwing money away changing at 9 month intervals as I'm a low miler...

Off to Walmart in a month or so to see which syn oil is on sale, that will be the one.....

JerryU

Probably find what I and others report, Mobil 1 at Walmart, which meets dexos 1, was the cheapest “full synthetic” accept that does not mean what it did 10 years ago! $25 for a 5 quart jug! Interesting, as it has been for some time a single quart cost significantly more like $7.50! The 5 quart jugs are $10 more than at AutoZone etc, at least in our area.

LDB

As a reality check on risk of intake valve fouling with direct injection, diesels have always been direct injection, have more blowby than gas engines due to higher working pressures, and do not commonly have serious fouling issues related to PCV. As another reality check, catch cans would be very cheap if installed on the assembly line, so if this was a serious problem, you’d expect to see at least some doing it, especially with diesels, but nobody does. As a final reality check, bench scale tests like the Amsoil test you keep mentioning are notoriously unreliable for predicting actual engine performance. If they were reliable, nobody would do the vastly more expensive engine testing. Even Consumers Reports finally figured that out after publishing some oil rankings several years ago based on such bench tests. They pretty much reversed the order of actual oil excellence.

I’m not suggesting you put any old crap in your crankcase. Sure, use a full synthetic from a reputable maker. But don’t get all paranoid about some specific bench test or issue. Odds are very high that any such test or issue was cherry picked by that company’s advertising group as being something that makes their oil look good. There simply is not enough publically available info to know which oil is best on an overall basis, so the best you can do is play the odds. The best way to play the odds in my book is to stick with full synthetics from the big boys, who you know have big enough budgets to run the very expensive engine test programs when developing their oils. If you do that, you can be confident that your oil doesn’t have any glaring weaknesses. Others might argue that the boutique oils are even better, but I saw a lot of actual engine test results over my career. Not only did I never see any evidence of that being the case, I saw occasional examples of that most decidedly not being the case.

JerryU

I can assure you, I’m not losing any sleep over the issue! However have always followed the Andy Grove philosophy as stated in his book “Only the Paranoid Survive.” It pays to understand possible negative situations and if they come true have a plan to handle them or if inexpensive enough to install a preventative solution, do so. A catch can is that inexpensive insurance. Lots of cars installing these, even in Europe where apparently you can still buy polyolefin based oils like the old Mobile 1! They apparently didn’t let the oil companies make a switch to a cheaper product and keep the same “synthetic label!” I may have the chemical names wrong, I’m not a petrochemical engineer, but I do feel we have been hoodwinked with this “change in product” keeping the synthetic or “full synthetic” name. As Patrick Bedard states in his opening lines of the Car & Driver article mentioned in my above post: "Now that the meaning of "is" has gotten so slippery (refering to Clinton from that time period) you need to grab it with both hands, we'd better keep an eye on longer words, too.
One's already gone squirmy on us -- "synthetic," as in synthetic motor oil."
I can also understand why the car companies would not install catch cans when many folks don’t have the minimum maintenance followed.
It’s also fun to speculate, I enjoy the dialog!

RidgebackKing

So does this mean you're not using GM's 2 year maintenance free portion of your C7 purchase?

jokerdev

Most are using it, some will take their own oil and have the dealer use that. Some, such as Jerry, would prefer to do their own oil changes so they know for sure everything is being done to their satisfaction.

Some really great info posted, thanks!

JerryU

Yes, I did my own. If I was having the dealer do it, if a Z51 think I would ask for them to leave it a 1/2 quart low, then check yourself when the oil was hot. In fact I am leaving mine about 1/2 quart low-just will check often. Unless you know the dealer be sure they use a lift with ramps or use jack pads it they have to use a post lift. Pays to ask.

stevebz06

I switched from Mobil 1 to Pennzoil in my LS6 and what I think I have noticed is less noise on start up. Pennzoil also claims better cleaning than Mobil 1. I am considering switching again to Red Line. I remember somebody telling me about a conversation with somebody with a racing team who admitted that they were getting best wear resistance from Red Line on the dyno even though they were Mobil 1 sponsored.

As far as the intake valve build-up problem on DI engines, I have seen writing from trained GM techs that there is a maintenance protocol for these engines which involves spraying a mist of solvent into the intake while the engine is running about once every 12,000 miles.

I tried using Sea Foam spray on my Ecotec engine and it made a considerable difference so I have decided to make this a normal procedure about once every 9,000 miles.