More applicably then you think. Aircraft engines are far from extreme high
performance. Reliability is paramount with aircraft engines, not performance.
Most of them are very mild actually, so that they can run reliably and
flawlessly in the sky. They also sit parked for weeks on end; something many
Spitfires do during the winter.
I found the dichotomy of the article and the lawsuit vs the automotive hype
quite interesting. Much of the lauding of synthetics for cars I've known to be
false already. Claims like their having super detergent additives (not allowed
by law), never having viscosity breakdown (they all break down) and such.
The lack of cleaning or suspending contamination I've long suspected from my
own experiences. In the jet engines, one always found sludge. In the piston
engines I've used it with I've never seen it remove any sludge that was in the
engine prior to its use. I'd also noticed how the oil would seem to drop
particles out of suspension, while regular dino juice wouldn't. On the jets,
if you let them sit for a while and checked the oil level, the oil would always
be clear, no matter how many hours were on it. Run the engine though, and now
the oil would be darkened. Similar with my cars. Check the oil after driving
and it would look murky. Let the car set for few days, and the oil would look
clearer.
The one thing I hadn't considered much was the draining off of synthetic oils
from surfaces like cam lobes and cylinder walls when the engine sits for weeks.
This certainly is very applicable to many Spitfires, particularly during the
winter when many sit in the garage for months on end. I had never put it
together, but I've noticed many hot rodders who run synthetic oils tend to have
oddly premature (to me) internal engine wear. These hot rods tend to sit for
long periods of time. This drain off may well be the cause of this premature
wear, or at least contribute to it.
I know lots of people like to post antidotal evidence of the wonders of
synthetic oils by claiming they've gotten hundreds of thousands of miles out of
an engine. It's meaningless though. Many people get hundreds of thousands of
miles out of engines running non-synthetic oils. In fact, I'd expect more
people get high miles running non-synthetic then those that do run synthetic
just because of the cost difference.
Certainly there are times when synthetic oils are called for. This article and
lawsuit me suspect that the instances are even less then I'd thought before.
>>> "Michael F. Papirtis" <papirtis@erols.com> 06/21 11:24 PM >>>
Interesting article, but it pertains to extremely high performance engines,
operating with leaded, 100 octane av-gas. Not sure I'll ever get either of my
Spits going fast
enough to reach VR speed, much less keeping them airborne after that point.
I've been using sythetics in my vehicles for about 15 years without any
failures.
Thanks for the reading : )
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