i am going with burns cleaner... the smoot factor drops by ~ 75%...

and i use rp and change at 5k miles... but when i change i get out 6qts..

beers

 

swoope... this is the final question for me on this... has Royal purple themselves, or any other company test the renesis with synthetic for the long term?? I am thinking of switching to mobil 1 or royal purple, but still unsure of the long term effects

 

you are going to make me find this again??? you bastard..

wait i think i know a thread that will cover it....

thanks for getting my screen name right this time..:D

give me a bit and i will pm you the link...

beers

 

ok,

for all to see again..

https://www.rx8club.com/showthread.p...ht=oil+threads

you have to read the whole thing and read the links...

commit. if not skip it all...

beers

 

LOL.. thanx man.. I will read through all of that thread..

 

I believe the thread is about engine oil - and the only one Ferrari recommends is Shell Helix Ultra 5W-40.

Royal Purple is not mentioned, anywhere.

...and if you want to buy any Helix oil, the only places that have it are Ferrari dealerships, they import it in drums, still costs over $60 a litre.


S

 

OK, just read 21 fricking pages. Am I in the club now?

Had commited earlier last week to switch my '05 Ti to Synthetic...I bought the car with 29K and I have no idea when the last oil change was, or what's in it... but I really wanted to up the viscosity, as here in AZ, I just don't believe 5W20 is thick enough... hell, it's already 90+
degrees when I make my drive to work in the morning... but to me Syn makes just as much sense as the dino oils... So I went to hte Autozone to see what they had (found later that my PepBoys did indeed carry the RP, but only the motor oil, not the tranny and diff I was also looking for). SO, I got 4 quarts of 10W30 Penzoil Platinum at like $7 a quart... after reading this long assed thread and not seeing it mentioned, I looked it up on the web and found this wonderful marketing link for the stuff:

Pennzoil Platinum full syn oil link

Maybe you all saw the intruiging ad on TV where the molocules break apart and re-form.... hmmmm..... Anyways I fell for the marketing scheme... I will let you all know if my motor blows up..... Really looking forward to the RP driveline change-out too...... OH, and I also got some Castrol Syn 2-stroke oil for some pre-mixing fun... 2 ounces per tank, 4oz, 8 oz, what to use?

Oh my fricking eyes and brain hurt.

-C

 

pm me for a good rp link...

and why are you premixing do you have problems???

beers

 

No probs, just highly recommended by a long time rotary bud..he uses marvel mystery oil in his premix, but I wanted to use the 2 cycle syn.... plus I am playing around with my new car pc alot with engine at idle, and I don't have the S flash yet... figured it couldn't hurt... need to get an Optima yellow too

BTW, I am looking at the Pennzoil flash web page I linked too, and I just about burst out laughing when I got to Page 16, where it says in fine print regarding factory warranties, *the only exception is for Mazda Rotary engines which have special unique lubricating requirements and this oil should not be used... (not the exact wording used but...you get the point).

PM coming swoop

-C

 

that doesn't really mean much though.

I have seen it before with companies where as long as al the products are meeting at least a specific standard then the one that either cost them the least or the one that makes them the most money is the one they use.

 

If you saw how much money Shell throws at Ferrari each year, you'd know why Ferrari recommends their oil. Interestingly enough, Ferrari does recommend a different manufacturer's transmission fluid (gear oil) for hot climates and a visit to Ferrari in Italy can verify this by looking at one of the tags that is on new transmissions before they get installed in new cars. It's Royal Purple! Incidentally, Royal Purple's largest client is Shell Oil!

 

This isn't merely a marketing scheme. It's real. It is called hydrocracking and it is very possible. To make this explanation very over simplified I'll just use numbers. Please understand that it isn't quite this simple but I don't have enough time to try to get into balancing chamistry formulas here as that is what it is.

As a very crude example lets say we have an oil made up of 3 different molecular chains. One of the chains has 8 molecules, another has 4, and the last has 2. Since each has a different number of molecules, each is a different compound. Again this is very overly simplified so don't get on me for accuracy. It's just an example. Through hydrocracking we put this conglomerate (as that's what crude oil is) under high pressure and temperatures. Yes there is a set amount for each. Through hydrocracking we can break down the 8 chain into a 4 (2 of them) or even a 2 (4 of them). Now we have molecular chains all of the same length. What if we took a heavier oil such as diesel and broke it down into a simpler fluid such as gasoline? Now we've got an entirely different compound so the logical conclusion is that hydrocracking an oil no longer makes it an oil but instead makes it something else. That's where reforumlation comes in. Now we can take our even sized chains and add them together to form more complex ones. In the process some compounds will have been hydrocracked out and then removed rather than reforumlated. That's how you get all the impurities out. The aromatics are simpler molecules and you can either dump them entirely or crack them apart and reformulate the useful parts into what you need. It's not terribly efficient but it is pure. Hopefully this is getting the point across. I'd really need to sit down and draw out many chamistry formulas but anyone who had chemistry and stayed awake in it should understand balancing equations when rearranging molecules. That's what is essentially happening here.

Crude oil is distilled into it's multiple chemicals. Each component has a different boiling point so it's not too hard to set up a fraction still to be set at different temperatures along the way where only certain chamicals will reach different levels. The problem with this which is the reason why we have "contaminants" is that although the boiling points are different for each compound, it doesn't mean that you still can't have any evaporation at lower temperatures. Distilling alcohol from a mash is the same way. You shoot for 180*F as the sweet spot to collect the most ethanol but water is evaporating along with it so you are also collecting water as well. In this case the water would be the contaminant and redistilling will be in order to get it more pure.

Since fractioning towers work this way, it is inaccurate to say that diesel fuel is less processed than gasoline or any other petroleum byproduct. That isn't quite true. For the most part they go through the same process just at different temperatures. A Group I "conventional" oil has had less total distillation to separate out other chemicals. A Group II would be more highly refined which gets out more contaminants. Contaminants aren't neccessarily things like dirt or dust. They are anything other than the base chemical that we are trying to make pure. These are typically called aromatics as most of them fall into a certain category but are primarily lighter chamicals that have lower boiling points.

Group III gets into hydrocracking. This is where they take the oil and crack it down into simpler chemicals through a simple process taught in chemistry class. Reformulation lets them put back what they want and leave out the rest. This makes the final product pure. Because the process used to obtain the final product wasn't a naturally occuring process, it is termed "synthetic". That's right, it may in fact be the same stuff but the process to get it is what made it different! It's pure. Group IV and V synthetics started out as chemicals that weren't the same base stock as Group I-III oils. This doesn't mean that they didn't start out from a petroleum product though. Some do and others don't such as Castor oil and such. Through hydrocracking and reformulation, they create the final product. While this product may be a naturally occuring substance, remember it was how it was formed that matters. This is why the term "synthetic" is a little inaccurate. The process was not natural but the final product was. What makes it better? It's more pure. Purity affects strength and overall performance under extreme conditions as well as resistance to breakdown.'

There is plenty of good information on hydrocracking and reformulation on the internet. It's actually pretty interesting. Of course if you didn't enjoy Chemisty in school, you probably won't find this any more appealing but it is a real technique that isn't just marketing.

 

good stuff R-god-
I already have a really good handle on what you are talking about, after watching a very informative History channel episode on the way gasoline is produced... they explained the fractioning tower pretty well.

So are you saying hydrocracking and reforming is going on in the engine, so the oil keeps it's properties longer and doesn't permantly break down under stress like regular oils?

As for the platinum syn, my car has yet to receive it's dosage since it is still at the dealer for the recal (6 days and counting now, they probably haven't touched it yet).

-C

 

Hydrocracking is a little more than just breaking down each molecule into a different substance. Many times an added chemical is used as in the breakdown process certain parts of it's molecules may be needed. It's too complicated to explain on a forum but as I said there are plenty of good webistes that explain it and it's not that complicated.

When an oil breaks down in an engine, it is the molecular chains that are breaking down. When a molecule made up of many atoms breaks down, it becomes a different (several) compound altogether. The "chain" is broken. If we take one compound and rearrange it's molecules to make up 2 or more other molecules, each is know a totally different substance from the original and they will each have different properties that relate to lubrication and further breakdown. You don't just have molecules dissolve into nothing. They are all still there but through breakdown they get rearranged into something else.

The contaminants in oil are usually simpler compunds that are easier to breakdown than the main base oil. As they do, your oil's effectiveness becomes less and less. A motor oil is the sum of it's parts and all of them have to work properly. It's just like a car. Think of how many small things can cause the car not to run. The more contaminants in the oil, the faster it will breakdown and the less tolerance it has to extreme heat and cold. There is more to it than that but this is a part of it. This is why I stress using a higher grade of oil. A simple Group I oil has the most comtaminants, a Group II has less. Groups III-V have all gone through hydrocracking although startgin with a different base stock. They have been made far more pure. The higher the oil temperatures and pressures, the faster the oil will breakdown. The rotary runs hotter oil temps than most engines as well as higher oil pressures than most engines.

Now while the base stock is extremely important, what is added to it is equally as important. Some manufacturers will try to use more of certain aditives to counter the less pure base stocks. Every one takes a slightly different approach. You may see more friction reducers added to a synthetic than a conventional as a synthetic has no sulfur. Conventionals do and while sulfur does contribute to lubrication, it also is a contaminant that affects breakdown. There are many things that are done to all oils that are decisions based on what is the lesser of 2 evils if you get what I mean.

There is just too much to describe about oils. Many things are far more simple than many people think they are.

 

Yea, we just wish the decision to switch to syn in our rotaries was as simple!

Well, dealer just called, car is ready, just got re-flashed.

SO, now it is my decision to put the platinum syn in this weekend, which I am planinng to do, save for a Mazda coming out with some official banning of the oil in the 13B Ren.

-C

 

That's called politics and it's typically only the simple minds and not the simple processes which dominate.

 

As some one who works for mazda let me say, All our training modules on the RX8's specifically say that Mazda does not recomend the use of synthetic oils. Let me look for a bit to see if if I can post the actual page for you all.

 

Here it is, from the RX8 training manual, page, IG-19

 

funny you picked out just part of the letter... it is europe only.

beers

 

I think another member here from down under posted a simillar document from Mazda saying different...

Point being, we all want to know WHY Mazda feels high performance syn oils are bad for the Renesis... We aren't the kind of generation that takes a simple "Not Recommended" response for face value and leaves it at that!

Has Mazda (or a third party) done complete and extensive testing with these oils in the Renesis? What were the conclusions? Were there any noted benefits?

We have guys on this board running syn for the full life of their cars, some that just started, and I don't think there is any one documented problem that has been traced to the use of these products.

All we are asking is that Mazda test these oils (or better yet a 3rd party) completely, and stop using the "syn oil=bad" line as back pocket scape-goat cards to play whenever needed...

Plus, if Mazda finds that there are documentable issue(s) that arise during testing syn oil, I (we) can shut the hell up, and this thread can finally die!

-C

 

How can you believe a company that tells all of us in the USA to only use 5W/20?
Ridiculious.
I can tell you all the(good) syn's lube better, run cooler,have a higher shear tolerance and leave less buildup.
olddragger

 

it is that time again. two new people are starting the same stuff...

for those running syn. would you check this out?

https://www.rx8club.com/rx-8-discussion-3/syn-oil-how-many-miles-99495/

beers

 

I'm not saying its bad persay to use synthetic, but simple logic would be that if oil is needed to burn off inside of the rotor housing because it is directly injected into the combustion chambers then an oil with a significant increase in resistance to "burn off" would not meet the manufacturers design. Using something other than what is recomened could void your warranty. Speaking as a mechanic that works at a mazda dealership if there is something that an owner was not doing properly (ie using the wrong oil, not showing documentation of oil changes and services), I would exploit that to its fullest. Now please don't jump down my throat on this. I took the time to pull up the training module that all technitions for mazda has to go through and, yes, took out the big warning in the american module i had to go through to show everyone. Its your car treat it as you see fit and I'll do the same to mine. I'm not saying I do but I probably have better access to information on our cars then the next guy. I believe that the renisis was designed to use a certain oil for a reason and that is what should be used

 

Synthetics in general burn much cleaner than conventional oils so it isn't a problem of type. It is a problem of who made it. There is at least one but maybe more synthetics on the market that have additives in them that do not burn away cleanly. It has nothing to do with conventionals or synthetics. It is just easier for them to say what they did.

 

Here's my thought on this, Using the thinner oil will help your fuel economy, its an old trick. Everybody wants great gas milage and everone knows or at least should know that these cars drink lots of gas. EPA says these car get what 18 and 24. Mine hits right in their. Toss a thicker oil in and wa-la less than advertised fuel economy... leads to legal issues... bla bla bla, so on and so forth. I'm not sure but I dont think their are EPA standards in foriegn countries so it wouldn't really matter if they used a thicker oil due to design differances, tuning differances emmission control differances, etc.