How To Choose The Right Viscosity Motor Oil - A Certified Lubrication Specialist Explains

hey folks lake speed junior i'm back again with my buddy david chamberlain glad to be here we're here driven racing oil and you know david one of the things that we come across pretty regular total seal and i'm sure you guys here are driven see the same thing too that you know viscosity and what people use for viscosity tends to be one of those big misconceptions yeah it's like a creature of habit it's like oh well i always use 2050 so that's what i will continue to use i haven't had a problem right haven't had a problem yeah we see that a lot but as opposed to using data in science to figure out viscosity again it's it's a creature of habit which again i understand why that comes into play if you haven't had a problem you haven't had a failure there's not a lot of motivation to make a big change and to feel that risk if you will but one of the things that you guys have here at driven which i love and refer to people quite regularly is a chart that actually allows you to make a choice without risk correct because there's lots of science built into this because one of the things that people don't understand about viscosity is that it changes with temperature correct so i'm going to tell a little story here as part of the engine performance expo we were doing a dyno work some done at work at ben streeter's place at efi university and you know normally when we out there we're running endurance tests you know you know more longer term several hours with the testing so the engine has plenty of time to get up the temperature and then stabilize so we're running all that test at high temperature which we already know okay bearing clearance oil viscosity with temperature we got it all mapped out what's interesting is that same viscosity oil that you would run at that high temperature test say 200 degrees water temperature test but now you run it at 120 degrees water temperature now i know i'm talking about water temperature not oil temperature but when you have a hotter engine higher water temperature the oil temperature is going to rise up to that point and if you run it it's going to pass it right because it's the longer you run the more heat gets drawn into the oil but at a short duration low water temperature or temperature is way down well viscosity is actually way up right so don't get confused my hand signals there i'm directly dyslexic anyway just ask my wife she'll tell you so yes at low engine temperature viscosity is much higher it's a whole different oil at that time whole different lubricant at that time you know me for a long time i would have never believed you could have seen a 25 horsepower difference right i'm like no because i've never done low yeah temperature oil testing everything is at high temperature because we're trying to stress the oil out of the max and you either have a drag race application that's going to run at low temperature or you have endurance racing or you know from the nascar days it's going to be running 280 290 degrees or above right and so we're always going lower in viscosity when we're doing like drag racing dyno work right and you're making small changes because you don't want to go too thin yeah so we in this case we went higher in viscosity 40 the 40 centistoke number becomes much more important the 100 centistoke number yeah doesn't even matter right so we're talking about 40 100 celsius by the way so that's 100 degrees fahrenheit 212 degrees uh fahrenheit is a those are numbers but the key thing was we went higher in viscosity because we were going to put boost to it later so we were trying to get ready for boost just to make sure everything was good and oh my it was mind-blowing to see the oh you know pressure went up a little bit but we lost so much power because we missed on viscosity and i kicked myself later because i'm like dummy there was a chart right here that could have told you that literally well i did but literally this chart spells out what the it's a guy it's a guideline right it's not the ideal yeah but it's a good safe start place yes based on your bearing clearance based on your oil temperature so that you're not 25 horsepower off yeah so again you can do it to yourself even when you know better yeah which we did but it's a good lesson i thought that you know viscosity is something people need to think a little bit more about because think about it as something that's dynamic because again back to you know you've done some earlier teaching on viscosity is relative to temperature right and all oils thin out in relation to temperature that's a great thing so so in this case you know i was talking about the the the 40 degree celsius sinister number in in that case that was the important number right where sometimes as oil guys we're looking sometimes at the 100 celsius centistoke number and and and we'll look at the 40 but we're not too concerned because we're like we're going to move past that because it's going to be running yeah you're going to run and you're going up to 220 240 degrees you know so we're not we're not worried about that but in this case you really needed to be because that back to that dynamic statement was the great right word for that it's kind of viscosity increases as temperature decreases viscosity decreases as temperature increases so it goes both ways so just because we always know running a higher temperature we need a little bit more viscosity to compensate for that the flip side of that is true as well and how that relates to piston rings is ordering tension because the higher that viscosity is the more oil ring tension you have to have to scrape it off the seal so it seals that because you don't want oil in the combustion chamber right you want to keep the oil in the crankcase not on top of the piston it is never a good day if you've got oily exhaust ports so um and you get all the fuel in your oil too that's not a never good thing we want it to seal up right and being sealed means oil's in the bottom not in the top uh or there's a porsche a flat engine you know oil is not out there you want oil in there depending upon what orientation your engine is so the point being is that that oil ring tension also plays into this that if i'm going to run an engine at a low operating temperature and i'm running boost where i need a higher viscosity oil you're probably going to need more oil ring tension to properly control the oil but if i'm running a high temperature engine my oil is going to be thinner exactly which is free horsepower by the way so these are all these things to consider you know it's really robbing yourself if you could run you know you're running a higher temp uh tension ring at the low temperature stuff and where you could pick up power is by running a thinner oil right we could have run if we could have run a thinner oil then we could got that 25 horsepower back right well in this case we happen to know we ended up making 1300 horsepower on the engine and we looked at the bearings and we made the right choice in viscosity we had the proper viscosity for the bearings there were no witness marks of anything being out of line that's the balance there that's the that's the stride that curve so don't forget right don't forget about the hydrodynamic lubrication right because we put that oil in there for boost wrong oil for naturally aspirated right oil for boost which is hey that's part of what this chart talks about is that there it's not just bearing clearance and oil temperature there's also factors here if you're running e85 or you're running boost how to adjust for that because those are variables you have to compensate you know calculate into your decision so that you can make an educated choice in viscosity as opposed to just relying on hearsay or habit right because why are you going up in viscosity with something like e85 or methanol higher yep more fuel dilution yep just going to thin the oil out yup so and wash off the cylinder walls but your piston rings hate that by the way right they like to be lubricated snowballs that's a bad thing you want you want to avoid that so again use this chart from the guys at driven to make your choice uh this is on the pdf catalog on our website if you want to check it out that's right you can go to drivenrace.com and this there's a catalog link somewhere catalog link uh somewhere there on the home page page 36 yeah age 36. so yeah i hope you enjoyed this video thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Total Seal Piston Rings

Views: 173,325

Keywords: Engines, Engine Power, Turbocharged, Nitrous, pistons, piston rings, tribology, friction, Efficiency, friction reduction, increased horsepower, race fuel, car guy, lake speed, total seal, motor oil, synthetic, Viscosity, engine oil, synthetic oil, oil weight, Tribology, oil rings, oil ring tension, oil consumption, oil viscosity explained, lake speed jr, oil viscosity, engine oil viscosity explained, oil weight explained, lake speed jr oil, total seal piston rings, 20w50 engine oil

Id: DpTlgDbUINc

Length: 8min 55sec (535 seconds)

Published: Fri May 20 2022