Diesel RVs: Re: [diesel_mercedes] Re: Oil choices

I don't bet my life on Wicki, but they do provide good general overviews at times. The oil discussions pop up every 12 months or so. Check out the wicki article on Synthetic oils at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_oil for some historical perspective. I was intrigued by the word "sued" that popped up every now and then by "big" oil.

brian from laverne, ca
Mary (195K) Martha (280K)
1983 w123 300d's

From: briankk <briankk@att.net>
To: diesel_mercedes@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2012 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: [diesel_mercedes] Re: Oil choices

Back when synthetic oil was becoming popular, it was actually synthetic, i.e. PAO or glycol based, and was demonstrably so superior to dead dinos that gearheads started using it near exclusively, in spite of it's costing $7/qt, in '70s dollars. I have stories about just how good this stuff was, I'll spare you the time...

Presently, the owners of holes in the ground noticed that this was a trend that could cost them dearly downstream, and started producing what are now called "synthetic hydrocarbons" by which the mean dead dino oil buried under a ton of advertising and lawyers, got the court to rule that "Synthetic" was a term or advertising art.

Now if you buy a can of oil marketed as "Synthetic" that will contain some kind of oily substance, but whether it actually contains synthetic oil depends on whether is says it's a PAO or glycol based oil. Most aren't.

Harumph, harumph...

bk

--- On Sat, 3/17/12, Jerome Kimberlin <kimberln@comcast.net> wrote:

From: Jerome Kimberlin <kimberln@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [diesel_mercedes] Re: Oil choices
To: diesel_mercedes@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, March 17, 2012, 1:21 PM

On 3/17/2012 9:56 AM, max_stemple wrote:
> what is synthetic oil made from?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_oil

In any case, you have to have a base oil to start with in blending motor
oil. Across the street from my house is the Chevron Richmond Refinery.
Back when I was working there we began a small pilot plant to make base
oil at Chevron Research. This was then scaled up and called RLOP,
Richmond Lube Oil Project which produced a small amount of base oil
every day it ran. I did some environmental testing on that plant. The
plant finally got lined out and parameters solidified and the RLOP was
scaled up to a full sized plant.

Before I retired, the Chevron Lube oil plant was making the best base
oil in the USA. The product was sold to others who used it for their
oil offerings too. Can't tell you who buys it......... At the time I
retired, there were only a handful of base oil producers in the USA.

JerryK
Richmond, CA