Damn...new oil thread. Rotella T6 full synthetic NOT for use in automobiles per Shell

[BMW540san]

Any manufacturer recommended oil is just a business deal. Sure, it meets the specs and it's usually high quality but any perception that somehow if you use equivalent quality and specs somehow your engine is slowly starting to wear faster is absurd.
I've picked one company 10+ years ago and I'm sticking with it with great results. Just about every single fluid in all of my 3 cars comes from them:
http://www.liqui-moly.us/

[Jason5driver]

Still waiting to see some oil analysis'.

[Talonboost]

Still waiting to see some oil analysis'.

There is one here from a couple years ago: http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/sh...otella-T6-5W40
This was on T6 that was in the car for 12,500 miles. The car had 213,000 miles on the odo.

[Hubjeep]

Still waiting to see some oil analysis'.

Old, but still relevant thread. Here is my S52 oil analysis using Rotella T6, 6,000 miles over two years.

Attached below.

[dk500]

Is rotella fine if you yank the cats?

[tptrsn]

Just FWIW, I run it in everything, and everything seems to love it...

[philly98540]

I think its only an issue if you have sort of high oil consumption as the additives can foul catalytic converters. If you oil consumption "Normal", it's not an issue from what I read.

[XAlt]

I use it, but it's mixed with Castrol and Moly Premium 5w40. My cats haven't exploded either, but I wonder how it holds up in an M54.

Seriously, oil warriors will go straight for the cat arguments to justify 20 year old LL-01 as the only solution.

[Hoover2003530i]

The Shell Rotella T6 has been one of the favored oils on the Concours Owners Group (COG) site for awhile now. This site is exclusively for Kawasaki Concours C10 and C14 owners who ride these sport tourer bikes. There are members who only use the T6 and several have over 100K miles and a few are approaching 200K miles on their bikes. These bike have much higher redlines and motorcycles are WAY tougher on oil than you guys here thinking you are driving a "performance" machine. Trust me if it's ok for these bikes it will be fine in your vehicles!

[Mannyf540]

I think its only an issue if you have sort of high oil consumption as the additives can foul catalytic converters. If you oil consumption "Normal", it's not an issue from what I read.

I'd never use anything less than the BMW LL-01 certification along with the API Certification. Dunno that's just me.... all oil comes comes from the motherland.if it does not meet those stringent standards of quality it's not going in my car. Considering the Alisuil Special piston coating in it as well.

[tptrsn]

You have to do what feels right for you, but I think the cams/followers are the much bigger issue for the M62 than the alusil cylinders and applicable piston skirt coatings are. Personally I've only ever lost engines to oil issues when the oil loses its viscosity for some reason. Never had a problem with Rotella T6, but I have with the mineral version of Rotella. The 15w40 stuff, whatever T that is... T4?

[XAlt]

You have to do what feels right for you, but I think the cams/followers are the much bigger issue for the M62 than the alusil cylinders and applicable piston skirt coatings are. Personally I've only ever lost engines to oil issues when the oil loses its viscosity for some reason. Never had a problem with Rotella T6, but I have with the mineral version of Rotella. The 15w40 stuff, whatever T that is... T4?

My friend uses Dino 15w40 Rotella in his salvage title E46 M3 that we abuse daily. Why, because he wants to piss kids off. Rod bearings were fixed, so he has no fear of them going.

Changed every 2-3k miles, Filter every 6-8.

[tptrsn]

I think that stuff (15w40) is generally fine, but I was really cooking the crap out of it with a hard working turbo and it surprisingly didn't hold viscosity real well when super hot. Eventually I lost a rod bearing one day when I was thrashing it and took out the crank. That engine also didn't really love the vaunted Mobil 1 0w40 or whatever it is... That stuff does not seem to enjoy thermal abuse.

REALLY liked Redline Racing Oil 50w though. Nothing I've tried holds oil pressure as steady when hot as that stuff does. Not very relevant to this thread though, since it also has too much zinc phosphate or whatever that zinc compound is that makes it "not converter friendly" if you're burning oil.

[dk500]

Diesel oil not holding up to a hot turbo? Weird...

[tptrsn]

That's what I thought!

[dk500]

I wonder why massive tractor trailers are not dying left and right then

[tptrsn]

Dunno. Maybe there is a reason that they are different like more oil capacity/coolers, or maybe it's something altogether unrelated that misled me.

[Hubjeep]

My friend uses Dino 15w40 Rotella in his salvage title E46 M3...

Changed every 2-3k miles, Filter every 6-8.

My main concern would be cold temperature start up. The 15W will not flow as well in the cold as a 5W for example, think of the W as "winter".

Here is a simple video, I was surprised at the flow difference at 13*F, which I see some nights here in NY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV75UbsZ4ec

Fast Forward to 5:30 to see a visual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYkg0oDUXs8

[XAlt]

My main concern would be cold temperature start up. The 15W will not flow as well in the cold as a 5W for example, think of the W as "winter".

Here is a simple video, I was surprised at the flow difference at 13*F, which I see some nights here in NY.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV75UbsZ4ec

Fast Forward to 5:30 to see a visual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYkg0oDUXs8

Well, at least he has a heated garage. I'll convince him to get TWS one of these days.

I wonder about the viability of 0w40 in the S54 or other high revving engines. I don't like the fact it flows like water when cold and when the P.O. ran it in my M62, VANOS was a lot louder. But there's a lot of hype surrounding it too.

I'm also forced to keep stocking it for our 955 CS that suffers from cylinder scoring due to to oil starvation.

[geargrinder]

Diesel oil not holding up to a hot turbo? Weird...

Yeah makes sense to me... most diesels are thermostat'd a notch below gas motors (witness the diesel 'stat we're all running in our 540's now...), and even though diesel turbos tend to be oil-only, no water jackets, diesel EGT's are fair bit cooler than gas normally. Thads thrashing redline on a hyped up turbo gas motor for sure would stress the oil more than some big ol' Cummins pickitup truck chugging along hauling a trailer or whatever.

The oil cooler point is good one too. Big ass fat oil coolers on those things often also.

- - - Updated - - -

BTW, on the Rotella, while we're zombie-reviving the topic - FWIW I used to run T6 in my fairly hard-run Audi. Went fine but then again my cat clogged at some point (almost definitely not because of the T6) and so it was de-catted. I would say this, it ate a lot of oil using the T6, the currrent owner of that car switched to some LubriMoly magic mojo oil and has nearly zero oil consumption. And it ain't cuz he doesn't mat the thing properly either.

[tptrsn]

I would say this, it ate a lot of oil using the T6, the currrent owner of that car switched to some LubriMoly magic mojo oil and has nearly zero oil consumption. And it ain't cuz he doesn't mat the thing properly either.

That's an interesting data point to me. Do you know much about the characteristics of that LubriMoly oil, such as viscocity and degree of "synthetic-ness"? I found the more "truly-synthetic" an oil was supposed to be in terms of claimed fancy base stock and all that, the more stable the oil pressure stayed between fully cold and fully hot. Also, it has always seemed to be (anecdotally) that higher viscosity oils (higher hot oil pressure) seem to be consumed more slowly than oils with lower hot oil pressure.

Mobil 1 0w40 had low cold and hot oil pressure in my engine, and that oil quickly turned into a glitter factory. Good bye rod bearings. When I had the problem with the 15w40 it was different. That oil had quite high cold oil pressure, but when I really railed on it like mad (only four quarts of oil in that pan), the oil pressure would plummet. Good bye rod bearings and crank.

So to be fair, it's impossible for me to say which came first, low oil pressure, or damaged rod bearings. Going by sound and feel it **seemed** to me that the plummeting oil pressure from expected oil temp gain took out the bearings.

An extra thousandth of rod bearing clearance and the nice consistent oil pressure from Redline Racing Oil 50w made everything happy. But I never really got to see what happened with oil consumption with that setup I guess. It seems like shortly after I got everything nicely sorted with that setup I sold it... The guy I sold it to has really enjoyed it, haha.

I'm not married to Rotella T6 or anything, but for a nice cheap option, it has worked well for me, especially in a car with a much greater oil volume like the 540. Good to hear some similar data from you GG.

[XAlt]

Liqui Moly 5w40 Premium I believe is a Group 3, but it takes a dunk on LL-01 Castrol 5w40 (which is basically on par with M1 in shearing). Hi Tech is Group IV

It doesn't burn in my B5 1.8T, whereas Castrol would be a quart every 4k.

[geargrinder]

So T, I run the LM also in the wife's car which has the "VAG 2.0T PCV oil burning curse". Or at least it did until we switched to this crap.
Wife used to carry around quarts of M1 and while under CPO warranty dealer was like "yeah its fine to run until the low oil light shows in the dash then top off" (uh NO IT IS NOT OK to do that...) and she'd be doing top offs regularly (I can always hear when that car is low on oil WELL before the light comes on... what does that say about the A-hole dealers advice? ) Now its unusual for her to have to add any at all between changes.

The LM product range is extremely confusing and hard to sort out... (they have some places where they categorize into "semi-syn", "syn", and "FULL syn"... uh like whats the Syn vs semi mean if there's then "FULL Syn" above that? OK OK yeah sure it has to do w/ Group 3 vs 4 and PAO content etc. and the "fully fully really SYN" is prob 100% PAO base but anyway it couldnt be more confusing for a layman...) and in typical oil co practice they seem to brand same products differently on different continents, but this is the stuff we're talking about here...

https://pim.liqui-moly.de/pidoc/P000...40-23.0-en.pdf

And this is their LL-01 version, for people to whom that matters:
https://pim.liqui-moly.de/pidoc/P003...40-17.0-us.pdf

But I'm led to understand the LL-01 differences are mainly about long-change interval crap that most of us around here aren't really concerned by, aka we're never going to those OCI's so we don't care as much about how it holds up after 10k miles as we do how it works when its nice and fresh...

[tptrsn]

Thanks, that is interesting stuff!

[f355spider]

I use it, but it's mixed with Castrol and Moly Premium 5w40. My cats haven't exploded either, but I wonder how it holds up in an M54.

Seriously, oil warriors will go straight for the cat arguments to justify 20 year old LL-01 as the only solution.

Cat argument to justify LL-01?...hardly. Now I realize I'm speaking with someone that is "home brewing" his own formulation; but for most of us, the default process for oil selection is the owners manual, and current manufacturer recommendations. That leads one to an LL-01 specification oil. LL-01 oils tend to have a relatively high HTHS for their viscosity rating, and meet BMW's strict long oil change intervals without breaking down. While most enthusiasts change their oil much sooner, it is nice to have the assurance of an oil that can go the distance if required. I was impressed with a thread (bobistheoilguy?) where a E46 owner did proscribed 15k oil changes using factory BMW 5w-30 high performance synthetic oil right up to 105k miles, then pulled the valve cover and posted pictures. Nice golden varnish (to be expected)...otherwise unremarkable. No carbon, no sludge, nothing...looked just fine.

I'm pretty confident you can use any synthetic oil you want and if changed at reasonable intervals, it would work out fine. But when making a recommendation to a stranger, I'm going to always recommend one follow the manufacturers recommendation, as that carries the least amount of risk. The catalyst thing is not to be ignored, especially with the cost of catalyst replacement, but not my first or over riding concern.