synthetics vs castor oil

[barneyrb]

In WWII (way before my time and I've been told this years ago by a man who said he was there) they used Castor oil either in the crankcase or as an additive for the P51 and other high performance fighter aircraft that had supercharging on them. He said you could tell how bad the fight was, how high the pilot had to turn up the boost, and how bad in general everything was by the amount of oil on the side of the aircraft and how bad the pilot got diarrhea. It seems that the amount of castor oil ingested by the pilot was directly related because of it being a laxative......I wasn't there just heard him tell that story many times.....

 

[wyk]

Anyone use Castrol A747 2T or PRO KR2?

 

[HuskStihl]

I've been running a 32:1 mix of E100 with hemp seed oil. Now that is some good ****. Never had a saw problem. At least none that I remember.

 

[056kid]

I also run castor 927 myself. I absolutely love it. As for being expensive, a 64 oz. bottle can be had off ebay for $35 with free shipping. Which is not to bad. I will pay a higher price for the added life of my saws. Smells good too.

$70.00 a gallon? That's really expensive!

 

[banana boat]

My local dealer wants 74.25 for a gal of stihl ultra......hey now that I think of it premix is waaaay to expensive, a gal of full synthetic car oil is $25! were getting ripped off

 

[056kid]

Its 60 something here, thats why im looking for an alternative. Amsoil dominator perhaps. Iv never run castor oil, wouldnt mind trying it out.

 

[BDM53ENT]

Gosh I love oil threads. The BEST oil ever made because I said so and have used it for so long now I forget when I started.
2T- drag bike, motocross bikes, chainsaws, mowers etc gets it. Never had a oil related failure. Let the oil fighting commence lol.

 

[treesmith]

Just got Mobil 1 racing 2t in Oz for $23L or $5L more than Stihl mineral

Sent from my GT-I9210T

 

[CR888]

w

Just got Mobil 1 racing 2t in Oz for $23L or $5L more than Stihl mineral

Sent from my GT-I9210T

where do you get your mobil 1 in oz? I'm not paying $36per liter for Hr1 belray anymore!

 

[MCW]

Matt
This ALCO ( Woodlandpro,Jakmax ) fully synthetic oil, what ever name it comes under,what is it and its base.
Cheers

Um it's full synthetic and bloody good oil It comes up to all the same specs as something like Castrol TTS but doesn't burn out your nostrils like TTS does. The best thing is that over 1000's of hours of modified saws in some pretty tough environments I've never, ever had a saw failure related to oil. This is why paying through the nose for high end oils on a stock or modified work saw is more about feeling good than actually protecting your saw. The ALCO oil is also 1/3rd the cost of TTS. Outside of racing chainsaw motors are not actually a highly stressed item compared to a dirt bike or kart.
I've pulled the top ends of a number of my work saws for regular inspections and there has always been plenty of oil in the bottom end and no sign of heat and/or wear.

 

[one.man.band]

the 927 is part syn, maybe a small part, who knows. kinda goes against the thread title a little bit.

-omb

 

[7sleeper]

So, you have a choice. Run the engine too lean and it gets too hot. The synthetic burns or simply vaporizes, but castor oil decomposes into a soft varnish and a series of ester groups that still have powerful lubricity.

In spite of all this, the synthetics are still excellent lubricants if you know their limitations and work within those limits. Used properly, engine life will be good with either product. Cooked on a lean run, castor oil will win every time. A mix of the two can give the best of both worlds.

Like most things in this old life, lubricants are always a compromise of good and bad properties. Synthetics yield a clean engine, while castor oil yields a dirty engine, but at least now you know why! "

Bert Striegler

Bert was the Sr. Research Eng'r. (ret.) at Conoco Oil Co.

Sure is funny how these topics come along in waves. I remember when the topic "varnish = evil for our engines" was popular. And I'm going to quote myself on this topic from another thread here because rewriting is kind of annoying. The criticism about the properites of full syntheic oil should be brought into perspective in that there is a reason for classification of 2 stroke oil made by the industry.

As I've said here to many times I don't care what name is one the bottle as long as it is

1. fullsynthetic for air cooled engines
2. fullfills the folowing norms API TC, JASO FC/FD, ISO L-EGD

Then it's ok for me. The above norms dictate

Spezifizierung nach ISO-L-Norm (european norm)
Class => Performance
ISO-L-EGB (Global GB) => middle(= JASO FB)
ISO-L-EGC (Global GC) => middle and smokeless (= JASO FC)
ISO-L-EGD (Global GD) => high performance and smokeless (> JASO FD)

Spezifizierung nach API-Norm (us norm)
Class => Performance
API-TA (TSC-1) => Mopeds
API-TB (TSC-2) => Motorscooters and Motorcycles
API-TC (TSC-3) => high performance engines
API-TD (TSC-4) => Outboardengines equivalent to NMMA TC-WII

Spezifizierung nach JASO-Norm (japanese norm)
Class => Performance
JASO (M345) FA => low
JASO (M345) FB => middle
JASO (M345) FC => middle and smokeless
JASO (M345) FD => high performance and smokeless

Translated by me from the german wikipedia page. http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmieröl

Stihl HP Ultra does NOT fullfill the top norms!
....

I get a generic fullsynthetic 2 stroke top norm oil (4l =>1.06gallons) at regular price for 45$ or on sale for 39$. Stihl HP Ultra goes here over ebay for 128$=4L!!! (actually they only sell 5 L for 160$! so I just recalculated, one litre bottles go for 33$). I am far away from MCW use but my experience is the same. Top dollar doesn't equal top performance. So I completly understand if people are unhappy with their oil if it is designed for low to medium performance.

the 927 is part syn, maybe a small part, who knows. kinda goes against the thread title a little bit.

-omb

Not to sure about that because as has often been mentioned full synthetic oil also has a high cleaning effect. So that might be the idea behind it to keep the residue at a minimum....

7

 

[Stihlman441]

Um it's full synthetic and bloody good oil It comes up to all the same specs as something like Castrol TTS but doesn't burn out your nostrils like TTS does. The best thing is that over 1000's of hours of modified saws in some pretty tough environments I've never, ever had a saw failure related to oil. This is why paying through the nose for high end oils on a stock or modified work saw is more about feeling good than actually protecting your saw. The ALCO oil is also 1/3rd the cost of TTS. Outside of racing chainsaw motors are not actually a highly stressed item compared to a dirt bike or kart.
I've pulled the top ends of a number of my work saws for regular inspections and there has always been plenty of oil in the bottom end and no sign of heat and/or wear.

Im on my last 4lt of Mobil 1 2T and finding it hard to get and only getting more expensive,but i must say i like it and are a little relucktant to change.

 

[Stihlman441]

w

where do you get your mobil 1 in oz? I'm not paying $36per liter for Hr1 belray anymore!

The last time i got Mobil 1 2T was at Moto Tech in Mercer st Geelong,if i recall it was $360 for 4 x 4ltrs.

 

[MCW]

Im on my last 4lt of Mobil 1 2T and finding it hard to get and only getting more expensive,but i must say i like it and are a little relucktant to change.

I can understand mate. 4 x 4L of the JakMax ALCO is less than half of what you pay for the Mobil synthetic. That is over 4 cartons of beer in working man terminology

 

[Andyshine77]

Castor oils have their place, but only in the most extreme race engines. However even then modern synthetic oils have additives that behave similar to castor based oils. IMHO ester based oils are superior in most everyway. I ran Klotz Super TechniPlate for a while. Besides making me sick, it left horrible deposits, but lubricate just fine.

 

[MCW]

Hi Andy

 

[shootingarts]

Specifications don't begin to tell the whole story. Kinda like "octane" defines one trait out of dozens gasoline can have but everyone pretty much only looks at octane. "Full synthetic" can be 100% highly processed dino oil, semi synthetic may be around 30% ester based. Which is better? No doubt depends on the oil. 30% ester and 70% crap probably isn't as good as highly refined dino oil, but is 30% ester and 70% dino oil that just misses the "highly refined" designation to call it synthetic better or worse than 30% or less ester semi-synthetic oil? The only truck I bought new and ran semi-synthetic 5w20 Motorcraft in until I sold it at 165,000 miles seemed like new mechanically when I sold it. That was a half ton that often towed over 12,000 pounds, tractor, equipment, and trailer, and was used as a working farm truck. It wasn't babied.

I'm not a full timer or anywhere close. My chainsaw use is just to support other activities. Some trim work and storm clean up, some heavy cutting and noodling, but when I add everything up I doubt my heaviest used saw will see a hundred hours a year in the cut, my trim saw less than half that. Hoping to stumble on another medium sized saw for noodling then I could split the hundred hours between saws. When a named storm comes through all bets are off and I may put a hundred hours a week on my saws for a few weeks or a month or more. I could probably get away with less quality in the gas and oil I use but peace of mind comes pretty cheap at $20 or $30 dollars difference a gallon of mix oil and almost a dollar a gallon difference on gas. It might cost me an extra five dollars on a busy day.

Seems like Bel-Ray has little or no interest in answering my questions concerning the difference between H1R and MC-1 oil. Jumping to conclusions but I think the silence may answer my question. I don't see any company jumping to advertise that any of their "synthetic" oil is highly refined dino oil. Seeing as how pretty much all dino oil sold in small quantities is "highly refined", us po' ignorant consumers might have a problem seeing why we should pay a big difference in price between "highly refined" dino oil labeled as dino oil and "highly refined" dino oil labeled as "full synthetic".

For my peace of mind I plan to go to ester based oil, probably H1R as it should be readily available locally. Funny thing, we started with bean oil for high performance which breaks down to esters essentially refining the oil in our engines. We went to dino oil, now we are going to synthetics that are ester based. Seems like the old boys a hunnert years ago are looking pretty smart now!

Hu

 

[7sleeper]

Well at least specifications have exact test criteria and are not products of myth, belief or rumor. Oils meet these test criteria or else they are not approved. That is a simple fact. And all oil producers can have their products tested and approved if they believe in their product.

As far as I have understood full synthetic is exactly that. If or how high the amount of none synthetic oil may be included is beyond my knowledge. As far as I have understood the mix of synthetic and dino is called semisynthetic. We can also get it here in 2 stroke oil form. The newest way of producing high quality oil is hydrocracking. It is obviously cheaper because you simply break down existing long chain hydrocarbons to short chain molecules. But all oil containing it should be markerd "HC oil". At least it is over here. I haven't seen any HC 2 stroke oil yet but I presume it will only take time for it come to the market.

But it would surely be interesting to see castor oils tested by the norms above and see, objectively, where it stands. Because we have no idea when the cited Bert Striegler wrote the above text. So this information could be 20-30 years old and I believe that even most yesteryears will admit that certain advances have been made in time.

7

 

[shootingarts]

Well at least specifications have exact test criteria and are not products of myth, belief or rummor. Oils meet these test criteria or else they are not approved. That is a simple fact. And all oil producers can have their products tested and approved if they believe in their product.

As far as I have understood full synthetic is exactly that. If or how high the amount of none synthetic oil may be included is beyond my knowledge. As far as I have understood the mix of synthetic and dino is called semisynthetic. We can also get it here in 2 stroke oil form. The newest way of producing high quality oil is hydrocracking. It is obviously cheaper because you simply break down existing long chain hydrocarbons to short chain molecules. But all oil containing it should be markerd "HC oil". At least it is over here. I haven't seen any HC 2 stroke oil yet but I presume it will only take time for it come to the market.

But it would surely be interesting to see castor oils tested by the norms above and see, objectively, where it stands. Because we have no idea when the cited Bert Striegler wrote the above text. So this information could be 20-30 years old and I believe that even most yesteryears will admit that certain advances have been made in time.

7

Here the oil companies claim it is totally acceptable to label an oil "full synthetic" when it is made from highly refined crude oil. They might even be right. We certainly have accepted the "synthetic" designation for cloth and many things made from oil. From working in Petro-Chem off and on for fifteen years I know that crude goes through anywhere from very few to very many steps to reach the final product. Is there any appreciable difference between an ester that was once a bean and once crude oil? My point is that the oil companies are using "full synthetic" and "semi synthetic" for marketing purposes. Since they have always advertised their oils as "highly refined" they have a perception problem if they now say that their full synthetics are a more highly, highly refined crude oil. Most customers aren't going to delve too deeply below the surface. I had a customer pick up a quart of straight thirty weight oil I was selling in one hand and a quart of straight fifty weight in the other. He hefted them a few times, "humph, feels the same to me!" Not somebody I was going to try to explain things to.

I have to admit I consider standards a starting point. Final word for me comes from the technicians that regularly tear down hard used equipment that has used only one oil or another. When an old tech with a lot of experience tells me something is good it carries more weight than anything a manufacturer or marketer can tell me. The old tech may be wrong but not very often plus he isn't seeking to mislead. Sometimes the others are.

Hu