what's your Oil

I use GTX diesel in my Defender (used to be Castrol GTD when it was launched), I get the 20 litre drums when they are on special. I use any 20w/50 in my Series vehicles, pretty much any oil meets the spec for Series vehicles (in fact even the cheapest oils exceed the spec.)
I buy a lot of oil from an independent blender in Bayswater, no advertising overheads so its a good price.

If you visit Australian Lubricants it's interesting to see all the different oil manufacturers containers coming off the lines....AL is run by BP & Caltex but you see Castrol containers there as well.

A while ago I spoke with a tech guy at Caltex regarding the wife's Delica because there were a lot of reports about sludging if the incorrect oil was used. One comment he made was that it's best to stick to one oil type and not change. Because of it's unknown history I went for Delo400 and 5 years later it was running OK when we sold it.
Another conversation with a Shell tech guy about straight 40 oil. I wanted a straight 40 for an old motorbike and couldn't find it easily, the tech guy put me onto the mower oil. It's listed as 30 but is at the top end of the spec for 30 (closer to 40). I didn't like the idea of mower oil in the bike so I got some straight 40 from the independent blender.

A lot of people seem to go for Penrite, must be all their advertising paying off.......



Colin

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Originally Posted by gromit

A lot of people seem to go for Penrite, must be all their advertising paying off.......



Colin

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Actually the stuff's pretty good.

A few years ago I was having some dodgy oil tests in a 300Tdi and my oil analyst advised me to dump my exxy full syn name brand HD diesel oil and use Penrite in the short term as he'd had nothing but stellar results from his customers using it.
Really surprised me at the time as I thought it was all advertising hype and chronically over-rated. He assured me otherwise, and that the oil I'd been using and that had been testing oh so well in two different engines was in fact over-rated and wasn't holding up as well as it had in the past.

He had no dog in the fight as he's based in the US ;)

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Originally Posted by gromit

A lot of people seem to go for Penrite, must be all their advertising paying off.......

Colin

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I haven't seen much advertising. I just read other peoples opinions online most of the time. Thing is there are not much choices in the 5w30 or 40 range. There are a few for the later eviro motors but after a fair amount of reading I found something about the enviro oil NOT having some particular lubricating component in it's make up. I cant remember what it was but oil with it doesnt work with diesel partical filters and the vehicles wont meet standards when they run old oil. Thing is the newer motors are built with different metals to compensate for the lack of this component in the oil. We have apparently reached a point where newer oils are not necesarily better. Newer oils actually offer less protections and lubrication. For a 15 year old TD5 we are better off to run an older standard of oil.

If it wasn't for the research I'd be running Castrol EDGE Professional Longlife III 5W-30 or something similar because it meets VW 507.00 specs which my Skoda needs.

I think I found more info when I was searching for VW stuff to run in my Skoda. There was something like the you cant run new 507 spec oil in old 505 spec VW engines because it doesn't have enough lubrication for the fuel pump. VW still sell older engines that specify 505 oil. Running the newer 507 spec oil in these vehicles will void the warranty. Some motors have broken down, the oil has been tested and VW have refused to pay for the repairs. Thats the guts of it anyway.

There are planty of older 5w-30 oils but not for diesels. Diesels require more detergent then petrols so I'm not prepared to run a petrol spec oil either.

High or newer specs don't exceed older or lower specs these days. it did in the old days but now it just means different spec.

Happy Days.

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Originally Posted by joel0407

I haven't seen much advertising. I just read other peoples opinions online most of the time. Thing is there are not much choices in the 5w30 or 40 range. There are a few for the later eviro motors but after a fair amount of reading I found something about the enviro oil NOT having some particular lubricating component in it's make up. I cant remember what it was but oil with it doesnt work with diesel partical filters and the vehicles wont meet standards when they run old oil. Thing is the newer motors are built with different metals to compensate for the lack of this component in the oil. We have apparently reached a point where newer oils are not necesarily better. Newer oils actually offer less protections and lubrication. For a 15 year old TD5 we are better off to run an older standard of oil.

If it wasn't for the research I'd be running Castrol EDGE Professional Longlife III 5W-30 or something similar because it meets VW 507.00 specs which my Skoda needs.

I think I found more info when I was searching for VW stuff to run in my Skoda. There was something like the you cant run new 507 spec oil in old 505 spec VW engines because it doesn't have enough lubrication for the fuel pump. VW still sell older engines that specify 505 oil. Running the newer 507 spec oil in these vehicles will void the warranty. Some motors have broken down, the oil has been tested and VW have refused to pay for the repairs. Thats the guts of it anyway.

There are planty of older 5w-30 oils but not for diesels. Diesels require more detergent then petrols so I'm not prepared to run a petrol spec oil either.

High or newer specs don't exceed older or lower specs these days. it did in the old days but now it just means different spec.

Happy Days.

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VW oil specs are a world unto themselves and have no relevance here.

Generally only use an ACEA 'C' rated oil in an engine requiring it too, they really are engine specific oils, D3/4 and TDci Defender owners know all about these oils by now, however;

In terms of diesel oils an API CJ-4 or ACEA E9 oil delivers at least as much wear protection, and usually more, than an older CI-4+ or ACEA E7 oil and with much higher soot handling capabilities than older oils.
With ACEA spec oils look for an E4/E6 rating too, and you'll have the best oil ever developed for HD Euro diesels.

Case in point, Penrite's Enviro+ 10W-40 is an ACEA E4/6/9 oil capable of lasting for over 100,000km in a large Euro truck engine with bore polish and wear protection levels as good as they've ever been if not better, yet with ZDDP levels below 1000PPM.
The additive pack is totally changed as the additives function is synergistic, the whole is greater than the sum of their parts and additives are used that are just more expensive than ZDDP to achieve this with reduced ZDDP levels.
Modern engines also use roller cam followers, etc with revised metallurgy to reduce the reliance on extreme pressure additives to save things like cam lobes.
FWIW additives like Boron based additives are used that function extremely well at colder oil/engine temps, our good old ZDDP wasn't activated until high temps/high loads anyway so wear could be experienced until things got really hot, something that can take a good 10-20km of run time.

Use an oil like Mobil 1 10W-30 in a TD5, an old spec oil that sports an API CF diesel rating and you stand a chance of doing your injector lobes in, it just doesn't have high enough anti-wear/EP additive levels for our use as it's formulated to meet the ILSAC GF-4/GF-5 fuel economy standard, yet a modern Chev V8 will run happily on it for years.

Zinc and phosphorous have never been the best anti-wear additives, just easily the most cost effective, it was impossible to beat their performance/cost ratio.
Now that diesel exhaust after treatment is common other additives needed to be utilised that don't poison/block the cat/DPF/whatever.

I too have been using penrite for many years, well before any major advertising was happening, and have always had good results.

Steve

All very confusing especially when the stealers service foreman says any good synthetic will do the job. I checked on the Castrol website for recommendations for Transits with the 2.4 Tdci and at the bottom it said something like "If you can't get (whatever they really recommend) use an A3/B4 oil".
I really can't imagine a load of builders oiks or couriers who bomb all over the UK/Europe at 100mph bothering to read all that tiny writing on an oil bottle to make sure they get the completely right stuff and will grab anything synthetic like Edge or Mobil and bung it in.
I'm using Edge 5W 30 and was told it's good enough.
AlanH.

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Originally Posted by joel0407

After a lot of reading this is what I settled on for the TD5

Happy Days

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That's what I use!