Thread: Nulon in Engine Oil

I worked for a major transport company some years ago and were convinced that this product would be very beneficial in reducing engine wear and increasing fuel economy.
Tried it in naturally aspirated and turbocharged diesels with the result that it glazed up the bores and oil consumption went through the roof. Couldn't get rid of it fast enough! Agree with other posters, good oil will have all the additives required.
I am old enough to be around when the expensive "fad" additives such as Wynns and STP were the be all and end all.
They may have had some benefit in final drives but very risky in engines...just my 2 yuan.

Originally Posted by PhilipA

First up I now do not use engine oil additives.

HOWEVER when I was a Trade Commissioner in KL I was involved with helping NULON to launch their product in Malaysia.

They drove an 85 Commodore from Singapore to KL with no oil in the engine but pre dosed with Nulon.
They had to fit solid tappets , but that was it.

It overheated while waiting at the Customs checkpoint and blew a radiator hose off. They refilled it with water and continued.

I was there to greet it at the KL High Commission . It was very clunky and noisy but it made the 350KM? from Singapore to KL on the pre motorway roads.

So my conclusion was that the Nulon did something to enable the engine to keep running without seizing.

Really the main benefit appears to be that the engine will be saved if the oil system is breached. Maybe some D2 and D3 owners would be saved in that moment of oil pump failure or bearing spinning.
Regards Philip A

I remember those anecdotes in the 80's. I used to run the nulon additive in my old Hilux and there was a difference in performance characteristics (it didn't run as hot and was a bit quieter), but I mainly ran it as an insurance against a hole in the sump or a gearbox breach.
I have been to the Nulon "plant" in sydney a few years back and not being a chemist, my understanding of the science behind it was fairly limited, but some of what they said sounded reasonably sound at the time.
Every oil you buy with a brand name has some kind of additives in it, that is their claim of being better than the opposition, because it has a new improved formula containing more polly-mectins.
I use Nulon oil in my old V8 Yoot and it definitely runs cooler and quieter.

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

I had four line haul trucks with Detroit 8V92TA engines. I enrolled in the Detroit Diesel oil analysis programme. Considerable savings were made by not changing oil on a distance travelled basis but but by waiting until when Detroit Diesel told me to change the oil.

Yep, condemnation limits are usually based on TBN, TAN and soot with Fe and other wear metals plus sodium (coolant) being secondary.

Soot is the primary wear driver in diesel, carbon is pretty bloody hard but it still amazes me that in the big trucks you can run up to near 3% before it really starts impacting wear.
Small diesels like we run with limited sump volumes you don't really want to get anywhere near 1% soot levels.

A good synthetic heavy duty diesel oil is capable of exceeding 100,000km in a big diesel doing interstate runs.
Even good mineral oils can go 30,000km without too much effort.
I used to go to 20,000km in the ex's Patrol easily, and the oil had plenty of life still.
That was back in the 500ppm sulphur in diesel days too.

Originally Posted by rapserv

Wow ...what a response to a simple question ... which nobody answered by the way!!
For anybody wanting to know ...Nulon Oil and Additives have a particle size from sub-micron to several microns. The D2 centrigufal filter will take out particle sizes of 3 - 15 microns ... so some particles will be removed.

As for the question to use or not ...

In the early '80s and having an engineering background, when I came across a relatively new and inovative product called 'Nulon' I thought I would try it out and dosed up the vehicle I had at the time, a Series 3 SWB running a Terrier V8 . A couple of weeks after I started using the additive I was towing a fully loaded 18' tandem trailer near Lake Nillahcootie (Vic) when the landy lost all oil pressure due to a mechanical failure. After a short while on the side of the road, I decided to push on with the trip back to Melbourne in the hope that I wouldn't sustain too much damage ... in the back of my mind was the Nulon test conducted by RACV with a test vehicle treated with Nulon, oil completely drained and driven from Mildura to Melbourne, then stripped down by RACV only to find no significant damage to the internal components.
Needless to say, I felt pretty uneasy during the trip back, especially tackling the Toolangi hills between Yea and Yarra Glen. I arrived back OK and over the following couple of weeks, pulled the engine down and was surprised to say the least, found no damage whatsoever. Still...it may have been just luck though.

Unlike the Teflon coating on a frying pan, which is applied by basically a spray painting process, Nulon (PFTE, Teflon) particles carried by the oil are deposited into the microscopic pores of an engine or drive train and fixed in place by the action of heat and compression via friction. It does not line the entire oil delivery system as some posts have stated ... it occurs where friction takes place. As with oil, a microscopically thin layer of teflon between rubbing surfaces reduces the coefficient of friction to a level of .04 and as a consequence ... less heat is generated (great thing for engines), far less wear takes place and all this means reduced engine strain.
One post states that oil doesn't wear out it just gets dirty (soot,etc) looses its efficiency and needs to be replaced. The reality is oil does wear out! The oil molecule has been likened to millions of microscopic ball bearings, but is in fact, typically like a wet noodles ...around 12 times longer than they are wide, and when ruptured under intense pressures can leave a surface momentarily unprotected. These ruptures and consequential wear points are on a miniscule scale but over time can lead to wear ... hence fine metal particles in your old oil or picked up by the magnet sitting in the sump. With regard to friction and wear, the simple fact is water is a better lubicant than none, oil is better than water and teflon is better than oil. If internal engine parts were coated in teflon (as with the frying pan example) the coating would be removed in no time... so instead, fine microscopic teflon particles are suspended in and constantly delivered via the medium of oil ... as particles become dislodged they are instantly replaced by other particles coming through and once again fixed into position by frictional forces.

Since my Series 3 incident, I have been leaning towards the use of Teflon being advantageous and since that time I have never had a mechanical failure of any engine or drive train components in any of the vehicles I (or my wife) have owned. Still...it may have been just luck though.

My current vehicle, a 2001 Disco2 TD5 with Stage 1 upgrade and weighing in at 3 tonnes (car & tools) has been hauling a 3 Tonne caravan around Australia on a continous basis since 2010 and I have never had a mechanical failure within the engine or drive train. Still...it may be just luck though.

That being said, I did have the transmission overhauled last year after I blew the transmission hoses off a couple of times (thanks to those great 'quick-connect' fittings) ... dumping tranny fluid everywhere. Even though it was towing OK still, I felt like something had changed and decided to have the transmission rebuilt to be on the safe side as we often go fairly remote. The mileage at the time was 280,000km and I understand that it would have been expected at around 250,000km, give ot take, so I wonder how long it would have continued to provide faithfull service if it were not for those 'quick-connects'. I ran Nulon Multivehicle ATF (fully synthetic) in the vehicle and found it was a vast improvement over what had previous been used prior to my purchasing the vehicle

I can't ...or in fact, don't particularly want to go out of my way to prove the benefits of using Teflon treatment to others ..... I just feel it's better to have an extra layer of protection than not. A bit like insurance. When you're in the middle of nowhere ... it can make all the difference. If that's what some want to call a 'placebo effect' .... so be it.

As for all of the 'official reports' one can find on the internet .... I would just say that there are a lot of vested interests out there. For oil companies to come out now and start selling Teflon treated oil's would mean that they would have to admit that they have been wrong all along. I think most of us know how trustworthy Oil Companies are.

For those choosing to use additives, for sound technical reasons, keep on keeping on ... and those who think its WOFTAM, well that's an opinion that you are fully entitled to have ... but it's just that ... an opinion.

Dave

there are several regimes involved in lubrication.

Hydrodynamic.
Elastohydrodynamic
Mixed/boundary layer.

Hydrodynamic is..Oh **** it.

Read the next issue of Loaded4x4, (coming out soon!! ) I go into it in more detail (but not complete as I'm limited to 1100 words) there in my lube column.

Basically oils already have additives to combat mixed and boundary layer conditions, and the extreme pressure additives used are better than PTFE!

Originally Posted by 4bee

As an aside, a specialist I used gave me medication & likened it to lining my arteries & blood vessels with Teflon/Slick 50.. Works for me.

Hey Des!

How are you?

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

One interesting thing in his articles was that he says there are only four refineries in the USA making lubricating oils. The four make and package for all and sundry. Like the big battery factory in Carol Park. No difference in the batteries just the labels applied at the end of the line.

I think that's a bit over simplified and overstated. The fact that something comes out of the same factory does not necessarily mean it is the same. E.g. if one of those refineries supplies Castrol, it doesnt mean that both the Castrol mineral and synthetic oils are the same even if they came out of the same refinery. A single brand also has a few variants of mineral, synthetic and semi oils - it's likely that the refinery produces the oil in accordance with the brands recipe and specifications. There is no reason why a single refinery cannot make numerous brands and varieties of their oils all to their own unique specifications.

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

No fun in the game anymore. Dealer's Licences were introduced. Dealers have to give warranty. You have to have premises approved by the local authority for sale and display. Stock needs a Safety Certificate. Can't just buy a few at auction and put them on a vacant lot with a few signs and streamers and, Hey! Presto, you were a car dealer.

Can't understand why they changed that...

Originally Posted by RoverOne

I'm not particularly very technical I've owned cars & Land Rovers since 1966, my first Landy 1969, I went to a motor show at the old Show Ground Sydney and visited a stand displaying STP motor oil addative. They had two motors on display, they poured a can of STP into one, ran the motors for 10 minutes, dropped both oils out, then started the motors and let them run at idle, after a prescribed time the engine without STP seized to a grinding halt, the STP motor kept going hours after before being turned off without any known problems.

Who would have thought a demonstration conducted by the product manufacturer/seller showed their product to be superior!?! How do we know the two motors were even equal to begin with? If the motor with the STP additive could go for hours afterwards, why do they even both putting oil with the additive?

Originally Posted by techron

As far as I understand, oils consist of a generic base stock, either mineral or synthetic, to which the various oil companies add additives. Some additives are expensive, others cheaper and that gives the range of oils available at significantly differing prices off the shelf. All oils must work for all consumers out of the container and be just as suitable for a motor that has just been rebuilt as one that has done 200k km.

Well, that's clearly not right. Look at all the different specifications for oils and the fact that there are specific ones for specific motors (e.g. try finding oil to suit the Puma motor). There are also specific generic high mileage oils, LPG oils, etc. So it's clearly not a case of all oils suitable for all motors...