Rotella oil,and others

I see frequently that guys here seem to recommend Rotella oil quite often. In fact,it is by far the most popular. I will only use Rotella Why? Is it really that much better? Is it
because it seems to be available everywhere?Is it because OTR truckers seem to use it?I was once told by a retired petroleum engineer that it's basicly all about the same. It all
comes out of the same 'hole'. There are only a few refineries that make/'lable' oil for many brands.I have used several different brands over the last 40+ years,from
JohnDeere,Phillips;conoco;NAPA... For the lat several years,I have been useing TSC oils. 15/40 fleet diesel in all. Have never had an oil related failure.All my tractors are old,high
hour machines that dont seem to have suffered with 'inferior' oil.Oil consumption is little to none.However,I do regular oil changes. I think keeping clean oil is more important than
'brand'. Just thinkin'......

I believe that it is mostly the advertising. When I had my truck and changed the oil every twenty thousand I bought a drum of Mobil Delvac 15-40. I couldn't find any difference in the ratings and the local oil dealer had a good price on it.

There's been lots of oil discussions here over the years.

Facts:

1) Oils made today are far better in nearly every aspect then the oils that were available back when most of our older tractors were made. Even the cheaper oils. Provided the SAE ratings are in line.

2) Heavier oils will hold better oil pressures in a somewhat worn engine.

3) In my 10 years surfing this site, I've never read where someone bought an old tractor, put in a detergent oil, then wrecked the engine loosening up any sludge.

4) In my 10 years surfing this site, I've never read where some one used a particular oil and it wrecked an engine.

Most of our antiques suffer more wear from not being used, rather than over using the oils. Oil choice is too over-thought.

My 3 cents (adjusted for inflation)

Pete

Hey there Steve, your post However, I do regular oil changes. I think keeping clean oil is more important than 'brand'. Just thinkin'...... WILL LIKELY DRAW A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT OPINIONS so I may as well go first lol

I tend to agree keeping oil clean may be more important than brand BUT I WILL ADD PROVIDED YOU COMPARE APPLES TO APPLES AND USING SIMILAR QUALITY OILS NOTTTTTTTTT some el cheapo or re processed or filtered and cleaned or whatever or low grade/quality etc inferior products !!!!

There are several quality brands out there and I doubt anyone here has all the data and detailed scientific test results to prove or disprove quality brand A is better or worse then equal quality brand B BUT HEY WE CAN ALL STILL HAVE OUR OPINIONS AND SHARE OUR EXPERIENCES.

Its my opinion the choice of oil for use in an older worn out farm tractor IS NOT AS CRITICAL OR IMPORTANT AS THE OIL USED IN A MODERN AUTOMOBILE.

FWIW (same as others opinions not much lol) in my modern automotive/truck engines I still change oil maybe 3000 to 4000 miles even if others may not as often, since I consider it CHEAP maintenance. I also use Full Synthetic and the grade called for in the owners manual. If an old worn out farm tractor I use cheaper oil.

Soooooooo no way to prove or disprove any of this, its ONLY one opinion and it will be fun to hear other opinions which Im sure you will get to any best brand of oil type of question.....

PS I will proudly admit Ive used Mobil 1 and Castrol Magnatek Full Synthetic oils (talking modern machines here) and they worked fine and bet others have used different oils which also worked fine and are best in their opinion....

John T God Bless America where we are free to have different opinions (for now at least lol)

Yes it all comes from the same hole yes its all made by a few doesnt mean it all has the same additives and characteristics but for the most part it is the same

The one experience i had, was i hauled gravel for a guy for three years, he had a semi's and used Schaffers oil in the trucks with Cat engiens,he had the one i drove overhauled one winter,had Schaffers in it, used oil, talked to represenitive,and said give it some time, nothing changed until he went to Shell 15/40, the same weight he always used, then it quit, why or what happened we never did figure it out, but it was a good engine, pulled good! But that Schaffer's oil is high priced !

A lot of truckers in my part of the country have quit using Rotella and started using Delvac. I had one customer that runs a CAT said his truck was using 2 gals between changes with Rotella, changed to Delvac and it went down to 1/2 gal between changes. We keep Rotella- Delvac and Valvoline in stock. All new engines we rebuild gets Valvoline and Lucas break-in additive and goes on the Dyno for break-in.The Valvoline costs me about 4 bucks a gallon less than Rotella. The customer can put whatever he wants in it after it leaves my shop.

My tractor works 50 times harder than an automobile and it a thousand times worse conditions if anything can run cheap oil its the car

Around 30 years ago Shell marketed the Rotella really hard, and they did have a great additive package at the time that was somewhat cutting edge to speak of. It has had a great following since. It is still a great oil today. My equipment and truck tractors get Mobil Delvac Xtreme these days, and Im seeing minimums of 26,000 hours on the engines before I am needing to rebuild them. My only real requirements for oil are that it is made from a number one paraffin base stock, and has a good additive package. After sampling Mobil, Shell, Chevron, and a couple of boutique small companies oil in 2013, I settled with Mobil and have no regrets. Of the 219 truck tractors, 88 15 liter Cummins industrial engines, 12 50L Cummins engines, 96 V3800 Kubota engines, and 126 F-350 diesel pickups I take care of, I have had to rebuild three of the 15L Detroits in the truck tractors, and four of the Kubotas that didnt make the expected life of 20,000 hours. They were also abused in different ways. I will tell anyone that regular oil changes with any name brand oil will keep them out of trouble. I ran Rotella and Delo for a couple of 3-4 year runs prior to Mobil and had great results as well.

John ..... back in the 80's I used to subscribe to several motorcycle magazines, and those writers knew their bikes. They did an experiment with two brand new Kawasaki 4-cylinder street bikes. Both bikes were ridden by all members of the test group over the period of a year or two and ridden under all conditions and ridden both hard and easy. One bike had regular oil and filter changes, whatever was recommended by the manufacturer. The other kept the original oil and filter. Both bikes received regular other maintenance and small fixes to keep them on the road and of course, had the oil topped up a bit when needed. At the end of the test and maybe 50,000 miles, they tore both engines down and did all sorts of measurements for wear. Bottom line is that there was not a whole lot of difference between the engines in the two bikes. I'd love to track that article down.

Meanwhile, some of the claims that people make about oil are off the charts. This oil is great andthis one is crap is nonsense if they have the same basic rating IMHO. Sometimes a person will tell us that a differrent oil changed an oil-guzzling monster into one that never used a drop of oil. Some claim they ruined six engines and then switched brands and never had a probem again. I'm very sceptical about those kinds of claims, I just flat out refuse to believe it.

back before all the oil companies combined and merged...

Chevron delo oils would meet the new oil specs at up to a year earlier than Mobil or Shell. Chevron developed and patented a method for hydro treating group II dinos oils to purify them to create the ultra pure molecule for the group III oils. And they had their own additive group that led the industry. Bad news was... that when you went to buy chevron delo, its was the first one to be sold out at wally world, and most other stores as the truckers always bought it first.
Post mergers.... all that stuff was sold off and most everyone buys the additive package from one or two suppliers now and use the appropriate base oil so the oils are more alike than not.

AND particulate filters, and cats in the diesels have cause a reduction in extreme pressure additives so that now the oil is has to be a less protective in some areas as not to foul up the catalytic converters... High levels of moly and zinc are attracted to heat and will actually bond to a cat and render it useless. Shell does however market the t4,t5,t6 blends that give you great choices as to move from a group III base to a group5 base... For those who operate in the very very cold regions. And there is the push on modern engines to run a 15w-30 or 5w20 to try to improve mpg by lessening the oil drag. This is fine balance between protection and disaster by using wider bearings to support a thinner layer of film, and a pump with more capacity to account for wear over time.

Yo CH, I agree with you I'm very sceptical about those kinds of claims Thats in line with what I noted that I doubt anyone here can prove or disprove one quality brand is better then another, but hey no shortage of opinions which is fine, I have mine..

Take care, Happy Easter

John T

I agree a tractor works plenty harddddddddd

John T

There is counterfeit oil on the market , just as there is counterfeit fasteners and filters . All in pails or boxes that look identical to the real product .
Take your chances on possibly straight hydraulic mineral oil into a tractor that needs additives to meet GL-4 and wet clutch specs .
Just because the oil comes from the same refinery does not make all the all from that refinery identical . Every batch is blended to spec for the particular customer .

It's silly to talk about 'Rotella' without specifying which particular product you're talking about. Most stores carry three different Rotella oils: conventional T4, semi-synthetic T5 and full-synthetic T6. They're quite different and meet different specifications. And there are other products marketed under the Rotella brand, although most are not readily available.

One of the more interesting oil specs is JASO MA, which means the oil is approved for use in motorcycles with wet clutches. (Which is to say virtually every non-BMW bike on the road.) Shell says Rotella T4 and T6 meet JASO MA and MA2, but they don't make the same claim for Rotella T5. Go figure. At any rate, Rotella T6 is a pretty cost-effective substitute for synthetic motorcycle oils like Mobil 1 Racing 4T, which runs about ten bucks a quart.

A friend of mine who was a powertrain engineer for a major OEM told me they were having piston ring problems with conventional oils a few years back. Those problems disappeared when they tested with Mobil 1. Which explains why more and more OEMs are specifying full or semi synthetic engine oils. Not all oils are the same.

They say tractor oil is different than truck oil I dont know though

I tried the Rotella 15-40 for a short while. Thought it was just over priced compared to some other options available. I have not been back to it since. I know the guy doing the overheads on my truck told me the one oil I was using had a lot more crude in the top end of it. I have since changed to another oil. I guess I will see what it looks like the next time I have the overhead run. I it's about time for it again.

What I understand is tractor oil should have zinc and modern car oil should not, and that's why you shouldn't run modern car oil in an old gas tractor, use diesel engine oil.

Thats kinda what Ive heard

Back in the day farmers bot oil from their bulk distributors that delivered gas and diesel to the farm. I remember Standard, Mobil, and Coop and there may have been others. Coop's used to do big business but not so much anymore. A lot of farmers used Coop oil and today it would be considered off brand like TSC and Orscheln by a bunch of guys here. I knew the Mobil dealer and he stocked a lot of drums of oil in his warehouse. I remember the Standard dealer had lost a finger. He was standing on the side of a wheat truck holding on to the top. Jumped down and his wedding ring caught on the top edge of the bed. His weight and momentum left his ring finger stuck to the top edge.

Had been studying breakin oils. Saw where you can buy a 5 gallon bucket of Lucas breakin oil for 94 bux on Amazing. The deal is that engines with flat tappets need a high amount of zinc phosphate additive (around 1600 ppm) for breakin oil so you don't wear the cam lobes flat and also without all the other slick additives to get the rings to wear into and seat in the cylinders so they don't glaze over (not a problem with aluminum engines). Read a few studies, some with Richard Childress racing and Joe Gibbs racing, where they say you still need at least 1200 ppm of zinc phosphate for the life of the engine to avoid wear on the cam, etc. Gibbs says zinc phosphate works best for long running engines.

They came out with Molybdenum disulfide years ago as a lube additive for engines but it didn't stay in suspension with the oil as it came out in the filter. Then they came up with Molybdenum carbamate which does stay in suspension. Gibbs says this stuff works better for stop and start engines.

Today's modern car engine oils don't have the zinc phosphate additive because it cooks the catalytic converters and it isn't needed with hydraulic lifters. The moly carbamate has all the slickems to get better mileage and lower wear.

Regarding Rotella T4. Here is something I found in a response from shell regarding zinc, phosphorus, and the API car oil standard SN:
Thank You for reaching out the Shell Technical team. You are right that the Rotella T4 Triple Protection 10W-30 does not carry the API SN anymore. Previously heavy duty engine oil manufacturers can claim that they meet the API SN provided that their product meets the CJ-4, however that is not the case with the API anymore. The push rod engine is a very special case as it requires a high zinc and high phosphorus type of lubricant for added wear protection to prevent premature wear on your flat tappet cams. For API SN however, one of it's requirements is a low phosphorus motor oil because newer engines have catalytic converters and high phosphorus may shorten the life of catalytic converters. Since push rod engines are relatively old, they don't have catalytic converters that newer gasoline engines have. In conclusion, the Rotella T4 Triple Protection 10W-30 doesn't have API SN because of the low phosphorus requirement of the API SN standard, but since the requirement of Push Rod Engines is a high phosphorus motor oil, you can use the Rotella T4 Triple Protection 10W-30 on your 4.9L push rod gasoline engine provided that it does not have a catalytic converter.

Bottom line that I read from my research is that after breakin of a tractor engine you want at least 1200 ppm of zinc and phosphorus along with some moly carbamate in the oil. Not all Rotellas are the same and not all modern oils are the same. Specifically the oils rated for automobiles have additives adjusted for catalytic converters. Diesel oils don't have to worry about catalytic converters so they would be good for old flat tappet tractor engines with the caveat that you check the content to make sure they have enough zinc and phosphorus in them as diesel oils are being continually changed to meet EPA and new engine and turbocharger standards. I think synthetic is a better base oil but it still needs the proper additives to run in an old tractor.

My 2 cents worth, fwiw. Now to go research the data sheets on diesel oil.

When I call the parts store for oil they ask:

"What oil do you want?"

I say:

"Whatever is the cheapest."

Have never lost an engine or found that one brand resulted in more usage or less usage.

I do agree that viscosity makes a difference.