Which oil do you prefer?

Personaly I swear by Motul, a mate swears by Silkolene.......

Any thoughts?

And so the debate begins................

Dont you just love the red on the dipstick with the Silkolene :)???

No Luc, thats Lipstick ;)

I've just switched to MOTUL and my car (MY01) sounds much better from cold, i was running on 15/50 Mobil before and it was a tad louder on start up.

AS Performance are also doing a deal on Motul at the moment.

Zippy

Same on my MY96 too.. less tappet noise etc..

Never tried Silkolene in a car so cannot comment, but always been very good oil in my bikes..

JGM :)

I use Silkolene myself but may try Motul at the next oil change to see if it is any different.

Having raced bikes, I personally wouldn't put Silkolene in my lawnmower!!

LOL...

I have had no issues with in it my road bikes although only used Castrol in my current bike.

What problems did you see?

JGM :)

I think its been well documented on other threads that the Motul stuff is by far the best Oil to use

I have recently used motul to fry some chips and found the chips to taste nice and crispy ;)

Thats funny, coz I know of someone that put Mazola Cooking oil in a 3 wheeler, they acquired :D

Smelt like a chip shop.

Anyway is the Silkolene oil the same as the Turbolene GTI (ester based) they used to do?

I was advised by Bob Rawle that silkolene can go watery after heavy use/trackday - so I have changed to Motul 300v 15/50, bought from AS Performance as mentioned;)

It's not really correct/fair to say that the Motul stuff is "far" better than anything else. It's very good, but there are others (mainly Mobil 1 15w/50 and Castrol RS 10/60) that do just as good a job.

Mobil......................!

I'll stick with informed opinion

Changing the oil as frequently as we do why not try them out and see?

I tried Mobil 1 15W50 and the Motul and the difference was obvious..

I will not put Mobil 1 near the car now..

JGM :)

If Prodrive are happy enough recommending Mobil in WRC engines, there ain't that much wrong with it. ;)

Prodrive recommend Mobil in the WRC engines, can't see Motul being very happy with that seeing as tho they sponsor the team???

Tony.

i will only use redline or motul in my new engine
have only used mobil 15/50 once in the past, i will never use it again. i think some of the cheaper oils are even better than mobil

mikee

In fact the particular conversation I'm referring to went along the lines that either Motul or Mobil are known to be fine in the WRC engines, so in that respect SWRT's oil sponsor have nothing to worry about. The only reason I didn't mention this originally was as I was responding to JGM's comment about the Mobil not being up to snuff in some way.

As a general point though, I'd hope that what Prodrive staff recommend their customers use should be based on an honest technical appraisal of what does the best job, rather than simply "use this stuff because they pay us to say so". In these circumstances it's nice to know that they do genuinely use and recommend Motul 300V, and also handy to know that they think of Mobil 1 just as highly, as this tends to be easier to find.

I know of one F1 team not too long ago who were sponsored by oil company A, but actually used company B's products (poured into containers with A's logo all over them). Company A's stuff was, in the words of one senior engineer "w*nk", so it just goes to show you can't always trust the stickers that are on the cars. ;)

All that said.. Mobil 1 was better than the semi synthetic Shell Helix the dealer used to put in the car..

But the Motul was a couple of times better still than the Mobil 1..
less tappet noise, tickover smoother.. engine just feels freer..

This is in a modified 96 Turbo which has now done, gulp, 139,000miles.. :)

JGM :)

I think i maybe used the wrong words when i said sponsor, i believe they would be seen more as a technical partner. Which involves more than just slapping a sticker on the car.

So who was this F1 team? Spill the beans.

Tony.

Roger Clarke Motorsport only use Silkolene for engine, gearbox and diff.

Aren't they THE people in the know?

I currently use Castrol RS 10/60, but was thinking of moving over to Silkolene. This thread has cast some doubts in my mind though.

A lot of specialists use Silkolene.........though I think this will soon be called FUCHS........

It won't be the same asking for 5 litres of fuchs...

In my humble opinion, I would stick with an oil which is based on polyolester for both gearbox and engine. Which means that I stay away from diester, polyalphaolephin, hydrocrack etc. When tested properly on a rheometer, polyolester oils behave a lot better and are far more temperature stable (polyolester is made multigrade by nature, no need for viscosity improvers which are normally the weakest part of the oil).

As far as I am aware, there are only two makes that market these commercially. Red Line and Motul. Yes, I believe Shell, BP and the like do have polyolester based oils for high end motorsport, but do not sell them to the public. I have not looked at the Castrol SLX on the rheometer, but that may be polyolester based.

In high load/temp environment, polyolester is the only base oil that will do.

As for gearboxes, the shockproof oil from Red Line seems to keep the Subaru boxes working ok. From experience, it is the only gearoil that keeps Formula 3000, various GT cars and various Formula 1 gearboxes running.

regards,

Job

How often are Prodrive WRC cars rebuilt? Not a good example really ....

How would you define a better example? The oil is normally changed at the end of each leg and they're rebuilt every few hundred kilometres, sure, but they're also higher stressed than any roadcar engine would ever be.

In those circumstances, the ability (or otherwise) of the oil to protect the engine becomes even more important, and so IMO it's still a valid analogy.

Has anyone considered Royal Purple?

I have used it for a couple of years now, and swear by it. The peformance figures (flashpoint, viscosity at high temps) exceed that of Mobil 1 and castrol RS. And the film strength is almost unbeleivabley higer, 7-8 times at least, as I have seen this test done on a Phalix machine.

If Royal Purple suddenley became unavailable, I would go to Motul, as this was the second best performer in the extensive test that I carried out.

I have never seen the crews swapping engine oil at the end of a rally leg on the WRC, the same oil is used throughout the rally.

I find Motul 15/50 and Castrol RS 10/60 maintain the most stable oil presure under heavy use. The Castrol actually provides slightly higher oil presure when very hot, but just 0.2BAR or so. The other oils i have tried scare the hell out of me, especially Mobil, it's very poor at retaining good hot oil presure.

Gearbox wise, i use Red Line Heavy shockproof, it's incredible the diference this makes on track, brilliant stuff (run this slightly over filled on the dipstick to improve 3rd gear oiling). We also run this oil in the FG400 race gearbox in the Esprit.

Which one have you tried?

I think there are a few different types they do and I got all confused.. and went for Motul..

Simon

I originally tried the road oil (10w40 viscosity), but once I realised how good that was, I went onto their full racing oil (rp41) I simply wanted to find out if any of the "smaller name" oils were a better option the big brand stuff. Like I said, I have seen the technical figures for Royal Purple motor oil (they refuse to publish specs for the race oil...top secret technology apparentley) and they read very impressivley. It has to be said, Motul is a good oil also, as is NEO.
But I'll be staying with Royal Purple, having had excellent results.