Revenge of the Nerd - Nissan in the sump with diamonds?

So ... Nissan develops a spankin' engine and nowhere on the Monroney does Nissan disclose the engine's best performance is that with its own proprietary oil; no mention at closing by the brain-trust (or lack of) of dealership sales personnel; no mention of the above by Nissan in the 370Z's owners manual, only the following:

ENGINE OIL AND OIL FILTER RE- COMMENDATION
Selecting the correct oil

It is essential to choose the correct grade, quality, and viscosity engine oil to ensure satisfactory engine life and performance, see “CAPACITIES AND RECOMMENDED FUEL/ LUBRICANTS” earlier in this section. NISSAN recommends the use of an energy conserving oil in order to improve fuel economy.

Select only engine oils that meet the American Petroleum Institute (API) certification or International Lubricant Standardization and Approval Committee (ILSAC) certification and SAE vis- cosity standard. These oils have the API certification mark on the front of the container. Oils which do not have the specified quality label should not be used as they could cause engine damage.

Bloody wonderful, just bloody wonderful. Nissan, you gotta love 'em.

Hehehe MotoIQ ROCKS! Lots of new stuff unheard of from other places. Keep up the hard work.

interesting,

i would really like to try this oil...

I posted this in the thread on this topic, but it might have been lost in hustle of adding content to the new site:

PAO is not an ester. It is actually about as opposite from an ester as it gets, since polyalphaolefins are fully saturated hydrocarbons.

The patent application for suspended additives of a-C (H-free DLC) was filed back in 2005. The patent also references the results of friction testing done on DLC-coated lifters reported in the white paper, "Hydrogen-free DLC-Coated Engine Valve Lifter".

The white paper concluded that the use of a PAO base stock with a TMP ester (a common fatty acid ester, part of the polyolester group) had the lowest level of friction torque. The purpose of the paper was to demonstrate the friction reduction achieved with the a-C coating and a synthetic GF-4 engine oil which does not use high levels of phosphorous additives, such as ZDDP. Thus, the new a-C coatings and new grade engine oils offer better lubricity than the old-school ZDDP fortified oils which have been correlated to catalyst degradation.

A conventional oil with TMP esters was also evaluated with positive results, and Nissan now recommends a conventional base stock oil with an ester additive for VQ37VHR engines. There is nothing which suggests the oil sold by Nissan has suspended a-C nanoparticles as described by the 2005 patent application.

Interestingly enough, the VQ35HR also uses a-C coated lifters and never needed any special oil, which casts serious doubt that special oil is needed for the lifters in the VHR engine. The VVEL system is the most obvious change from the HR engine, and responsible for the "ticking" noise some owners hear. There is little doubt in my mind that the VVEL system would need careful selection of engine oil.

If one wanted a good oil with some esters in it, there are lots of oils which use TMP and other esters as additives to conventional and PAO base oils, and they cost a whole lot less than what Nissan is charging. As a matter of fact, the only specific brand and grade of oil Nissan recommends for any of its models is Mobil1 0W-40 for the GT-R, which is a PAO base oil which does use an ester additive.

Be careful when considering an ester base stock engine oil for your street car, as even Nissan found that a TMP concentration of over 3% had solubility and stability issues (as most esters are susceptible to hydrolysis) and a concentration of .4 to 1.5% was ideal.

Will

Will,

The Nissan white paper I am referring to which is on Nissan's global intranet reference the nano particles. A white paper on the VHR engine implies that the oil is needed due to really high contact stresses of the VVEL drivetrain when its at max lift and duration.

What do you know about Motul 300V that has a high ester content?

Motul 300V is an ester base oil. They, like Silkolene and some other boutique racing oils, have chosen to use certain Diesters as opposed to the more common Polyolesters for their base stock. I can't say that I blame them, as diesters typically have higher polarity and offer a higher viscosity index than equivalent polols. However, polyolesters typically resist oxidation at higher temperatures than diesters, but this is negated in most circumstances by the use of antioxidants. Using the correct blends with appropriate antioxidants to scavenge free radicals, the diesters will allow a more shear-stable end product without having to use as much viscosity index improver as an equivalent polyolester product. The main issue with using an ester base oil in anything other than a racing car, is that high amounts of ester are hydrolytically unstable, and form carboxylic acids with water vapor condensing in the crankcase. In addition, they are not compatible with a god number of seal material, especially silicone, and typically cause 10-20% swelling of Nitrile seals. This means the additive package must be mindful of the necessary buffers to mitigate these issues, which means less base stock and more additive. It's a catch-22, unless you have a racing engine where moisture isn't a problem, you have more control over seal type, and all you need is the most thermally stable product available. Otherwise, i don't like products like Motul 300V for anything other than a street car, especially since all the used oil analysis from street driven 350Z's has been horrible with the product.

Will

Do'h, should have proof-read that before posting. I meant to type,

"They are not compatible with a GOOD number of seal materials, especially silicone, ...."

and

"Otherwise I don't like products like Motul 300V for anything other than a RACE car, ...."

Will

300V seems to produce really low wear on my race cars in the bore, valvetrain and bearings. Did you do a typo and mean that 300V should only be used in a race car and its not suitable for a street car?

I tried redline at one point which used to be a Polyolester but i had wear issues and switched to mobile one which worked well, the believe the old formulation was a diester. When mobile one started to get cheapened out to become a blend (except for the zero 50 I think) I switched to motul which seems to work even better.

I also run 300V in my turbo modded street cars. What are the issues you have seen with oil analysis and 300V in street cars? Bearing issues from acids?

I think Motul 300V is a great RACE oil, but I wouldn't use it in a street driven car which sees time between oil changes, especially if it's not driven often.

For the 350Z, Cu, Fe, and Sn were all well above the standard deviation of wear measured from other used oil analysis for all three of the Motul 300V analysis that were run. Consider the following excerpt from Lubrication Fundamentals 2nd Edition(2001), which posts a table in regards to issues with ester base oils and modern engine oil formulations:

seal compatibility issues (which I already note)
hydrolytic stability issue (also already noted)
metal corrosion and anti-rust (this hasn't been mentioned by me, yet.)

Corrosion is the result of any chemical change to the surface of a metal, which polar molecules can do. In fact, the extreme pressure additives in your gear oil do this very thing to "harden" the metal surfaces and protect against wear. The result is they often pit softer yellow metals. Many esters will have corrosion affects with metal surfaces, and also produce iron oxides as a result of their chemical bonds with certain steels. Hence, they need to be carefully moderated in quantity and have suitable additives to buffer their undesirable properties. Of course, additives can fall out of suspension, which is why you don't see Motul being advertised for long oil change intervals like Amsoil does. Again, for a race car, that isn't an issue.

As for Mobil1, I don't use any of their products, but they have several good blends. All of them use a PAO base oil. The issue has become how much of it is PAO, By nature, all PAO oils must use a carrier oil to suspend the additives, and ideally the carrier oil would be an ester. Some of their grades use a Group 3 synthetic as carrier oil, and in pretty high concentration. There are those who don't consider G3 oils as true synthetics, and I wouldn't argue with them, and as such M1 has been the subject of a lot of internet scorn. They still make several grades which are mostly a PAO base with alkylated napthenic and ester additives, and M1 0W-40 is one of them, and so is their 5W-40 oil. They make some of the most heavily spec'd oils in the world, but for a race car, their OTS product isn't the best on the market. They do sell a racing oil now, in 0W-30, which if anything like their old M1-R oil, will be fantastic and very expensive.

Will

Since i change my oil frequently, is 300V still going to be an issue with my High Performance Turbo street cars?

The race cars get the oil changed every 5-6 hours. The do sit for months without being started or driven sometimes though. Wear is exceptionally low. For instance the Dog car had no measurable bore wear and leaked down less than 1% after 2 seasons of racing and the bearings were fine even though I had suffered a total loss of oil pressure due to a fractured oil pump gear when going down the infield straight at Fontana.

The gear failed at around 8k rpm and the engine went for several seconds with no oil pressure until I heard the exhaust note change as the HLA's collapsed. I tore down the motor to inspect it was was surprised to find no damage and little wear. I even reused the bearings and that motor is still in the car! One of my friends who races rotaries, told me that the apex seals last 4-5 times longer with 300V.

What do you think the best street car oil is? I change my 300V every 2000 miles or less in the turbo cars. On my daily drivers I run mobile one and change the oil every 3000-5000 depending how hectic work is.

Interestingly my new Tundra requires 0W20 for warranty reasons and that stuff is like water! I am not too comfortable running that in my tow truck but the oil fill cap says you must run it for the warranty! When I did my first oil change, the old oil ran out just like water. It was way thinner than oil at operating temp.

The polar affinity of esters, and their high-temp resistance to oxidation, are the two primary reasons they make for such a good base oil in racing use. Sounds like it served you well, especially since the polar affinity prevented the loss of oil film when you had zero oil pressure.

For street cars, I don't have a recommendation, other than to do your own UOA testing and see what it looks like for how you drive and your model of engine. In the Z, cars which sit for weeks between being driven and use high ester oils like motul or redline, have all had much higher tin and iron wear than when they used another brand. I imagine Pb wear would have been higher as well, if Nissan used more lead in their VQ bearings. As it is, there are a good number of oils which have provided MUCH better UOA results for this kind of duty, but the only one I can recall off the top of my head is Rotella T-Syn 5W-40.

Of course, if you're also changing the oil every 2k miles, I doubt you'll ever have a problem with your oil, no matter how hard you drive those cars. I wouldn't ever consider a long oil change interval using Motul 300V. It's just not the usage supported by the chemistry of that oil.

Will

Power Nissan in Torrance charges $90. for the 370z oil change. I don't know who's charging $300. but that is a complete rip off. I'm thinking about just heading down to Costco and loading up on Mobil 1 and doing it myself from now on.

If your going to go out and purchase your own oil might as well head down to Nissan and pick up a case of this new stuff...I am sure a high percentage of that $90 dollars is just labor/disposal fee's.

Good Read! I run the mobile one 0w-40 on my DD rotary and most likely will soon be switching to Motul if I was not selling for the new nismo 370z soon.

Will this sounded like a line a Korean women once gave me trying to sell me Gogi Juice in the supplement store I was running at the time.

"but this is negated in most circumstances by the use of antioxidants. Using the correct blends with appropriate antioxidants to scavenge free radicals" LOL made me laugh my butt off.

Is Nissan using Buckyballs in their oil?

Clear as mud to me, after all this. If we have 370Zs and we want to do a fair amount of enthusiastic driving, but short of actual racing, do we need to use Nissan's magic oil, or would Mobil 1 be OK, or Royal Purple (popular with rotaries)?

Thanks.