# Used oil results (Mobil1 vs. Valvoline)



## rajvosa71000 (Jun 9, 2004)

Found this in 2.0L technical forum, I thought it was interesting.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=2115738


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## shipo (Jan 3, 2006)

*Re: Used oil results (rajvosa71000)*

The first red flag that jumps out at me is the fuel dilution. My thinking is that the engine developed a fuel injector problem (stuck open maybe?) and that the fuel dilution is what caused the Mobil 1 do show such dismal results. Had the engine been suffering from the same fuel issue during the Valvoline portion of the tests, my bet it that it would have had similar problems with dilution and high wear as well.


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## rajvosa71000 (Jun 9, 2004)

*Re: Used oil results (shipo)*

Yeah but the car had less miles when tested with mobil 1....but anything is possible.


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## shipo (Jan 3, 2006)

*Re: Used oil results (rajvosa71000)*

Good point, I didn't realize that he didn't post them in chronological order.








That said, _something_ had to change besides the oil, because oil in and of itself will not cause a fuel dilution issue. Who knows, maybe a fuel injector was fixed at ~75,000 mile mark when he first introduced the Valvoline, or maybe he put some fuel injector cleaner in the tank at that oil change.
While I cannot say that I know for a fact that the owner did something else to his car besides changing the oil, I strongly suspect that his post isn't giving us all of the information that we need to see the whole picture.


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## saaber2 (Jul 15, 2008)

*Re: Used oil results (rajvosa71000)*

The first thing that struck me was that although fuel dilution and flash point were low on the 3 M1 samples, only one of the M1 samples showed Manganese (only 5ppm). I would have expected all three to show Manganese. 
The second thing is that wear metals look normal for M1 UOAs I have seen and don't look alarming to me. M1 seems to always have a little higher iron including in my own M1 0W40 UOAs.
I also noticed that RI-RS4 chimed in at the end and he is very knowledgable about audi and vw engines and had some good thoughts.
definitely more info. is needed and I wouldn't take UOAs from one engine only as a condemnation of M1 0W40, you have to look at it's performance over a lot of the particular engines (and over a long time interval) you are interested in to really evaluate it.
This is exactly why we need more UOAs posted here on Vortex I think. It is especially important due to the cam follower wear issue and also fuel dilution. 
Great find and I would love to see more UOAs you find for any oil!


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## vasillalov (Nov 5, 2003)

*Re: Used oil results (shipo)*

Gents,
The oil samples that you are discussing are mine. To give you some extra information:
1. No engine work has been done whatsoever.
2. No fuel injectors were broken/replaced
3. No fuel system problems were ever exhibited on this car
4. This engine now has 122K miles on it and the Valvoline Oil samples are consistent.
5. No oil/fuel additives have been used
Folks, I want to reiterate one more time: the thread that I created way back in time was just a case study and nothing more. I know for a fact now, that my engine runs best with Valvoline Synpower 5W-40. I've even extended the oil drain interval to 7K miles and I still get excellent results.


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## saaber2 (Jul 15, 2008)

*Re: Used oil results (vasillalov)*

This is good info vasillalov, have you ever thought about doing one more run with the M1 like some of the posters in the old thread suggested? 
I would imagine it would be painful to do knowing that you have found what sounds like a fanatstic oil for your car but that would really be valuable info. Just a thought. Thanks for posting this info.!


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## shipo (Jan 3, 2006)

*Re: Used oil results (vasillalov)*


_Quote, originally posted by *vasillalov* »_Gents,
The oil samples that you are discussing are mine. To give you some extra information:
1. No engine work has been done whatsoever.
2. No fuel injectors were broken/replaced
3. No fuel system problems were ever exhibited on this car
4. This engine now has 122K miles on it and the Valvoline Oil samples are consistent.
5. No oil/fuel additives have been used

Hmmm, still having a difficult time digesting this. Why? Because there is absolutely no way an oil can, in and of itself, cause high fuel dilution numbers. Said another way, something changed in your fuel system (regardless of whether you did it or whether it just "happened" say from a change in the formulation of your local gasoline).


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