Slava

The professor in the college I go to stated (and I have no idea if he is full of it or not) that about 10-20 years ago there was such an animal as graphited motor oil (pure black color) and he used it in his Honda Prelude (I am guessing 1st or 2nd gen)

He says he drove that car for 200,000 miles and changed the oil TWICE!! during that whole time.

It's been on my mind for a day now. Please someone tell me he was full of it. Otherwise if you really could use one oil change per 100,000 miles why isn't this oil any longer on the market.

Oh and if it WAS on the market how would it work in the current generation TL with hundreds of different sensors monitoring every aspect of the engine?

caball88

this sounds like a question for Road Rage.

GQS

Could be he's talking about Molyslip, an oil additive. Don't think it has graphite in it though. It has some form of molybdenum in it, hence the name. It is a dark grey colour and will turn your motor oil very dark.

Supposedly the moly bonds to metal parts and reduces friction and wear. I tried some back in the early '80's in my Civic. Can't say it really made any difference.

Hybrid

I think he was referring to ArcoGraphite oil. The stuff was pure black looking. If it ever got on clothes, it was never going to come out. It disappeared off the market after not too many years. There are reports of problems keeping the graphite in suspension in the oil. If not driven regulary, I guess it could cause sludge and oil passage clogging. I used it for a year or so with no problems.

Road Rage

It is not molysli-p that uses molybdenum disulphide.

Wow - I hope that professor is not teaching neuorosurgery or poly science. If so, both our brains and world are doomed!

In the 1970's, ARCO briefly marketed a graphite "enriched" oil - basically a colloidal suspension of micro-pulverized graphite, as in your pencil. Powdered graphite is a great, if messy, dry lubricant. It is an effective lubricant for cylinder locks, for example, as long as they are NOT subject to exposure to oil or grease, in which case one gets a congealed mess. And that is the point....

ARCO thought that the slippery graphite would get in between the asperities, reduce friction, make the engine last forever, and blah blah blah etc. The fact is it made a congealed mess, clogged oil pickup tubes, etc. It was quickly removed from the market. It had a less lengthy, if equally deceptive and fruitless run as did the great "Teflon/PTFE" oils like Slick-50 and its snake oil siblings.

Without going into a lot of scientific proof (someone take my word for it), the basic problem was that the specific gravity of graphite compared to oil required the graphite to sink to the low points of the engine - now class, where is that pesky oil pickup tube, which is the alpha of all the good oil does, and if occluded, is the omega of your engine's lifespan? Correct! At the low points of your engine - oh yeah, there is another gizmo down there that has something to do with 200k longevity - the crankshaft, and its little helpers, the bearings.
http://lists.contesting.com/archives.../msg00329.html

Yes, your professor is an idiot - what does he teach? Obviously not tribology? He must be one of those revisionist history guys, that blame male Europeans for all the world's woes. And if his engine lasted 200K on two oil changes, it speaks to the miracle of Honda engineering, not to graphite oil, nor certainly your Professor's good sense and technical understanding of the lbrication needs of modern internal combustion engines. His attempt to put this one over on you makes me

Slava

He teaches International Business and he blames the IMF for all world's woes (I tend to agree with him on that) We were going over different outcomes of what would happen to the price of a product sold in US (like Honda Prelude) in US dollar and Japanese Yen terms if US$ dollar was depresiated. So he went off on this "tangent" about graphite oil.

To give him "some" benefit of the doubt, is it theoritically possible in best case scenario, like driving 200 miles a day and not giving the graphite a chance to settle to the bottom, to go 100,000 miles on one oil change of graphite oil? Japanese engineering not withstanding, is it even a theoritical posibility?

dforslof

There is a product out there made by KREX called Graphite. It is an oil additive and I have no idea what the long term effects are. There are a lot of snake oil companies out there but there is one called MOC Products. MOC was started back in the 50's in SoCal by a government physisist who was daunted by the task during WWII to come up for a way for the tanks to run cooler across the Africa. He came up with an oil additive which helped dissipate heat and helped the engine run smoother or so I've heard. They have a great product and I guess you could say that they are the original. see www.mocproducts.com I do think that it was a fluke if that guy's engine ran for 200k with no maintenance

SLVR04TL6PD

Anyone who would buy that graphite "oil" for the sole purpose of not having to change his oil more than twice is not a car enthusiast by any stretch and should not offer any guidance on car maintanence.

He probably only washed the car twice as well.

I hate all of these tree hugging liberals in Massachusetts that drive 1980's Volvo sh*tboxes with environmental stickers all over them. And yet they burn more oil than gasoline . My TL is ULEV and they look at it like it will ruin the environment faster than their delapitated deathtrap. <<sorry for the hijack--I had to vent>>

-Chad

(((walks off to go cut down a tree)))

JetJock

It cracks me up when I hear someone mention that "my girlfriends brother's uncle's best friend" did this or that and ran their car on some magical mystery oil and it went 1,000,000 miles without any problems. It's bull**it!! There isn't any magic potion on the market that substitutes for common sense. Buyer beware!!

Slava

Amen!!
The Kyoto Accords are EPA's nuclear weapon. If any half-way civilized country would follow these accords we would all degrade to pre-industrial revolution technology. All the EPA terrorists (you know the kinds that burn down a dealership full of H2 Hummers) should be then and then and then some more

ibeplato

He's correct - it was made by a company called Arco. I used to use it in the early 1980's but my understanding is that there is no benefit to it.

Vanwall

This oil was marketed in the 70's when the gas prices were going up. The sales pitch was reduced friction and better gas mileage.

cvajs

i had a car like that too, never ever changed the oil, EVER.

all i had to do was keep topping off the oil, every other day it was a 1/4 quart down, so i figured that if i'm adding fresh oil every 2 days why bother to change it. i did swap the filter out every summer though....

fla-tls

How many miles did you put on it while driving it that way?

pettydw

I used Arco Graphite 10W40 oil for a few months in a VW Scirocco in the early eighties. It was left over stuff at a liquidator store for pennies a quart. It looked shiny black weird, but did not appear to settle as mentioned in other posts. The oil filter gasket leaked at start-up on a -25F day, putting a black stain on my in-laws new concrete driveway (I assume graphite clogged the filter at this temp), and I later read graphite is a poor high pressure lubricant (at the pressures generated by the OHC & tappet). I switched back to Castrol and had no furher issues.

Road Rage

Is there an echo in here?

Road Rage

Theoretical? Of course! If he never turned on the engine, and coasted downhill, and had the vehicle trucked each night back up the hill. Actually, based on what i said, if he seized the engine from the clogged oil pickup tube, that might have been what was done!

Honestly, in my many years as an engineer, and as an oil specialist, I have heard it all. During my Lemon Law case against a certain "perfect" Japanese company relentlessly pursuing perfection, they sent an idiot who testified as an "expert" that I had "changed the oil too often", and that "oil needs to get friendly with the engine over many miles".* I mounted a withering cross-examination. citing my credentials and questioning his, and also told the judge that "if the witness can produce one shred of evidence from an SAE paper (I am a member of the SAE) or a degreed tribologist not associated with the defendant company that speaks to the validity of the concept of oil 'friendliness', I will drop my case". He couldn't, I didn't, and won my case.

Oil is volatile - at idle, it would burn off a fair amount over time - then of course, oil is consumed, as the ring seal is not perfect - how could it be?

* MY crazy Uncle Fritz had an old Hudson that he claimed he never changed the oil in - another proponent of oil friendliness - of course, the engine failed at 30K, but he always maintained that "that proves nothing". Ohhh-kayyyyy.......