Quote:
Originally Posted by TedRamAirII
I have a hard time with Rotella 15w40. Nowhere in their literature is Diesel Motor OIL rated for Gasoline Engines. They do list T6 5w30 Multi Use for gas engines. Oil companies stand behind their product. If you have a gas engine and have a lubrication failure, that turns out to be CJ or CK rated oil that you used, they are not going to help you. If Shell tells you not to use it, do you believe them, or the guy that says they don't know what they are talking about.
|
Delo 400 meets the current SN standard for gasoline engines, so it is absolutely usable. I believe Rotella used to meet the old SF standard, which is absolutely acceptable for any old flat tappet engine. It doesn't meet the current SN standard, most likely due to zinc content, but they couldn't care less about testing it to meet an obsolete standard. Do you think Rotella is really that different from Delo oil? Do you think they've gone backwards with the new variants of it?
You have to understand, oils have not gone backwards in terms of their engine protection capabilities. They have
advanced significantly over the years. However, they have also had to comply with ever more stringent emissions requirements, and in the case of diesel rated oils specifically, if you look at the different classifications, most of the changes are related to emissions. Consequently, the same has happened with gasoline engine oils. The oils with higher zinc content are not going to meet the current SN standard, and there is no point in testing or classifying new oils by old obsolete standards, and I suspect that is why Rotella is not gasoline engine rated any more. But if you look into all of this and what the ratings mean, you see pretty clearly that, just because an oil is not rated by the API for certain engine use to emissions requirements, that does not necessarily mean it is not perfectly acceptable for use in an old flat tappet engine.
And to address 68 461, I agree in some part about not blindly trusting what anyone has to say while they stand to gain from selling you a product. At the same time, they obviously have a wealth of knowledge, so getting info from them is certainly valuable, but you have to consider the source and seek out info elsewhere as well if you want to figure out what is definitively the truth.
Keep in mind that the oil companies will
NOT ever tell you to use something that violates emissions requirements, nor will they ever tell you to use an oil that is not rated for gasoline engine use in a gasoline engine. However, as many of us here know firsthand from extensive personal experience, many diesel engine oils are perfectly acceptable to use in many gasoline engines. The oil company may not necessarily lie to you, but they also will never tell you to use something that is not appropriate based on the API certs, and thus you are not at all being told the whole story. Hence, research. Simply calling Pennzoil for a recommendation is foolish, just as simply asking in this one forum would also be foolish. If you really want to know, you have to expand your research to every source you can reasonably find.