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Oil analysis (finally)

991 Views 9 Replies 6 Participants Last post by  milq
OK, so I sent off a sample of our Triumph branded Mobil 1 R4T and a sample of the locally available Mobil 1 15W50 (approx. 1/2 the price) and asked that they be compared side by side for the definitive answer on them and that is exactly what I received (yeah right)

Anyway, now we actually do have some hard numbers and some comments from the testing facility at the very least.(very non-committal comments I might add.)

I am not going to type this into the box here, but will try to post it in the format I have it in........if this doesn't work, I'll ask Cata to take over the word docs that I have and post them up for all to see.

In short, I still don't know if one is any better than the other, maybe someone with more chemistry background can add something to this. I hope it helps.


edit: I tried to link to the documents but it didn't work out for me..........HELP Cata (please)
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ooooh, show and tell time. Whats it say....... :popcorn:
I don't know much about the chemistry but from the report it seems the testers liked the R4T better.
I know you want a LOW Moly #. Moly is what makes a cluch slip. Higher the number, more Moly. Not good. Looks like 4T is better there.
APtech77 said:
I know you want a LOW Moly #. Moly is what makes a cluch slip. Higher the number, more Moly. Not good. Looks like 4T is better there.
I've been running regular Mobile 1 15/50 since new. Never once has the clutch slipped. Put over 40,000 miles on my old Trident on good old Castrol Synthetic automotive oil, including 3 years of drag racing. Never any clutch slip and still on it's original clutch. (It pisses off the GSXR/Busa/ZX12 crowd. :violent1: )

There goes that theory... :horse:
Thanks for getting it posted Catahoula! I tried to cut and paste, etc but it looked horrible.

As far as the Moly goes, they are virtually identical. Remember we're dealing in Parts per million here; 78ppm vs. 87ppm seems trivial to me but again, I'm no chemist. The largest single spread seen on the elements portion is for Phosphorous, which is (per my phone conversation with the lab) incidental to the levels of zinc in the oil (both being anti-wear additives).

Of course, the gent on the phone said up front that they do not make oil recommendations. However, he did say that the differences (excepting viscosities) between these two oils were negligible and that either should be fine to run in moto applications. He did express curiosity concerning the SUS of 102 (approaching 60 weight oil) for the R4T oil and said he would like to see what it read after use, so I promised to send him a sample after the next oil change. His prediction is that it would look very similar to the other oil.
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Well hell, for half the price of the R4T, the other stuff is just as good?
J-Pip said:
Well hell, for half the price of the R4T, the other stuff is just as good?
This corn fed farm boy ain't sayin that..........I just wanted to share the results with everyone. The decision is still personal in my book, my personal choice will most likely be to change to the cheaper, locally available version once I use the bottle I recently purchased. Please remember that his opinion - although educated - is still an opinion, he merely said that if it were his, he felt that either oil would do the duty required.

I will send a used sample of R4T to them before June and then later I will switch to the cheaper version and send a sample of it as well. But it will be awhile before I get to that point.
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