Swepco vs Redline motor oil

SWEPCO is a good non synthetic oil. If you need the characteristics of a synthetic it is not a good choice.


Motor oil is the subject of greater bias than anything I am aware of. SWEPCO is obviously a bias of your friend. I quit using it years ago because I felt synthetics offered more important benefits.

 

I would never feed my Ferrari a non-fully-synthetic motor oil--its your car and you can do as you please.

RedLine is just about as good an oil as one can get. Although, to be fair, most of the non-SM, non-Star burst fully synthetic oils are so close it doesn't really mater. If your car does not see the road race track, then this strengthens to -- it really doesn't mater, just stay with the 10W-40 range of oil. If you want to look, look for 1100-1200 in zinc or phosporous and for 4.2 cP in the HTHS number. You can find these kinds of number in M1 (5W-40 TDT), RedLine, AMSoil, ELF, Gibbs, and many other formulations. But you absolutely cannot just walk into K-Mart/Pep-Boys and expect to find what you want. The data you need is not printed on the can (shame really).

I, personally, have driven my F355 on 10W-30 RedLine in 102dF temperatures at TWS for multiple 30 minute sessions as part of an experiment. This was 15 thousand miles ago and the car is still running perfect and consumes no oil. RedLine is the only oil I would do this with as it has an HTHS number of 3.8 cP which is just shy of the 4.2 cP from the Ferrari recommended Shell Helix Ultra 10W-40 oil. No other 10W-30 has such a high HTHS number.

 

Spectro is as good , perhaps even better than redline as far as zinc in the oils , for CV joints swepco , at least when I was in Indycars is what virtually all the teams used.

 

I agree. People tend to play favourites when it comes to motor oil (among other things).

From everything I have read, the synthetic oil is the top choice to go with.

 

Actually, I have become reformed (or is that reformulated?) on this subject. Use a good synthetic in your Ferrari. Redline is great, but is probably an expensive alternative to a Mobil answer. Now, in your gearbox, you would be nuts to use anything else!

 

Their moly grease is about as good as it gets.

 

Which Mobil 1? I was surprised to learn a while back that Mobil 1 0w-40 under used oil analysis, will typically shear down to a 0w-30 within 1000 to 1500 miles. There are several threads about it on www.bobistheoilguy.com. Strange because in all the used oil analysis on Mobil 1's other grades, this does not happen.

 

I use redline all the way ....

 

It still takes a fairly big dose of VIIs to get the inherent 0W-20 base stock to go up to a 0W-40 operating oil. It is these VIIs that shear out. This is because the VIIs thicken oil as temperature rises. Thus a 0W-40 oil starts with a 10W base stock and then adds enough VIIs to thicken it up to a -40 oil at operating temps. In the fully synthetic end of things, a 10W-30 oil has very little VIIs to shear out. In the dino end (refined oils) a 10W-30 oil has a fairly big VII dose to thickent the less thermally stable dino base stock.

Secondarily, 0W-40 M1 is on the thin side of a 40 weight oil anyways. Conversely Redline 10W-30 oil is almost as thick as 0W-40 M1 at operating temps. An oil weight is about 20% wide when measured in a viscometer. So there are thin 40 weights, medium 40 weights and thick 40 weights; depending on what properties the oil engineer is attempting to formulate.

Overal, if you want oils that stay in grade, look for those oils with small differences between the number in front of the 'W' and the number after the '-'. Thus, in general, a 10W-30 oil is more likely to stay in grade than a 0W-30 oil. Similarly a 0W-60 oil is pretty much guarenteed to go out of grade.

 

Good info Mitch. I am thinking of switching to Castrol Syntec European Formula 0w-30, which is almost a 40 in testing. It is very popular in the BMW world, and used oil analysis is very good with it. I figure for my street driven 355 this may be a good choice, and I already have it on the shelf for my BMW.

 

A few points for you and the rest of the thread readers.

A) for a street driven Ferrari almost any xxW-30 weight is good enough as long as the oil temperature does not get above 250dF.

B) when the oil temperature gets above 250dF you need an oil with an HTHS of at least 3.5cP, above 265dF 3.8cP, above 285df 4.1cP. There are 10W-30s with HTHS numbers of 3.8cP (RedLine), I don't know of any 0W-30 oils with HTHS numbers above 3.3cP (with most being down in the 2.6-2.9cP range).

C) the oil you specify does not have this HTHS number in Europe or USA (2.9cP) but does in Australia (3.5cP)--go figure.

D) this is an interesting case (not seen so often) where a 0W-30 oil is thicker at startup (66.8cSt versus 59.6cSt) and at operating conditions (21.1cSt versus 10.1cSt) than a 10W-30 oil.

E) if you don't want to become a semi-expert in oil, stick with 10W-40s and keep the oil temps below 285dF. But even here, stay away from SM oils, StarBurst oils, and look for oils with 1100+ ppm of zinc or phosporous.

 

I was told that the German version of Castrol Syntec 0w-30 (European Formula found only at AutoZone stores) is 3.6cP, but I have not been able to confirm that yet. Where did you find this info?
The rumor of why this German Castrol (nicknamed "GC") is that thick was to meet the BMW LL-01 (longlife) specifications for 15,000 mile oil change intervals, in order to "stay in grade". I have no idea of that is true or not.