It has oil pressure is my benchmark.

 

Well, the first number is a winter rating which probably doesn't apply unless you're going to have this oil in by winter time. I would strongly advise your AVOID winter blends when possible or to minimize their use. The bigger the gap between the first number and the second, the more additives there are and the less longevity and protection they offer generally. In a shorter period of time, they will fall to the lower number and thin out which means risking failure potentially. In race motors we never screw around with silly crap oil that is on shelves. We run the right oil for the right temps. On a street vehicle I'll opt for something like 20W40 for the land rover. Choosing an oil like 0W50 is lazy and foolish in my opinion. Granted the technology is advancing but the modifiers being used still have limitations and if you're thoughtful in your choices, you can give better protection to your engine.

SYNTHETICS...... that you buy off the shelf are honestly, bogus. Most of them are blends and really, they're playing advertising games with the public. You will not find REAL Group V synthetics (which are the true full synthetics) on the shelf for the most part and if you do you'll see their substantially more expensive. I run Motul synthetic that really is a full synthetic oil in my car, it truly needs it at 500bhp per liter! These will handle heat longer and better and provide better lubrication while not altering viscosity as easily. In some cases, a quality oil is quite easily good for 40,000 miles on a single oil change and possibly more if you just changed the filter instead of the oil. They have the ability to hold more particulate matter and they are able to last through more heat cycles. Though I'd not suggest you do this unless you're doing an oil analysis or you know the engine well and what you're talking about. There are factory engines now rated at 40k intervals, the LR V8 is NOT one of them. LOL

When you're reading "full synthetic" on crappy royal purple or some Mobil 1, understand it is NOT a full synthetic and it doesn't matter high or low mileage. The old myths of not switching oils is absolutely a myth. There IS some truth to it but not in regards to the oils people are buying at autozone or putting in a silly LR V8. I wouldn't bother running a synthetic in this motor honestly, it's simply throwing money away.

There is also in general, no reason at all to change your oil every 3k miles! That's a straight up industry marketing plan to make money of ignorance. ANY oil on our typical engines of today is fine for 5-10k miles. If you want to know the FACTS simply send out your oil for testing at 5k miles, you'll find out everything about it and how much longer it can be used in YOUR engine. Facts.

Paying attention to ZDDP and other additives is valuable! You can find these numbers posted as they are bound by API to show them. Pay close attention to what EXACT oil you're looking up, example, Mobil 1 full synthetic vs the high milage full synthetic differs greatly and I'd pretty much ignore their "high mileage" advertising and all advertising and just look at the numbers, you'll find if I recall, a higher ZDDP figure. In the case of a tappet motor, a very good thing.

If you want to learn about oil look up "bobistheoilguy.com" and read up.

I poorly summarized this but it's a bit of random info to be thinking about, if you honestly care, look up the site above and READ.

-Greg

 

What about diesel oils ?? What do you think of them for higher compression and heat like are engines are

 

Well our engine isn't high compression or high heat, it's just runs hotter coolant because it's a poor cooling system. lol Sad huh!? The oil temps though aren't necessarily higher, I'd have to actually see information logs on this to know one way or the other about the operating oil temps on our rigs.

Diesel oils specific to diesels sometimes have qualities that aren't preferred in our engines, our engines should run the oil the engineers called for from the factory. Usually I see people commonly refer to most any heavy weight oil as "Diesel oils". It is not a proper fix to simply run heavier weight oil as many folks do expecting that heavier = better protection.

Running heavy weight oil because the coolant is hot on our motors or because oil pressure is low is not the right solution really. It'll just lower the volume of the oil moved through the engine and offer less protection as a result. It'll yield higher readings of pressure but only because you're restricting the volume, a shot in the foot to distract yourself from a shot in the hand.

Running a better QUALITY oil is a good idea if there's a demand, I don't know how many here are suffering from lubrication failures. Here's an oil I can stand behind and that you can easily get away with 10-20k or longer oil change intervals depending on the particular engine. I'm not extremely versed in engine oils but I've learned a couple things over the years worth noting and I've dealt with oil reps through high levels of racing enough to know a couple things. I can tell you when I've been on teams sponsored by Royal Purple and get all their oils for free....... we refill the jugs with REAL oil and dump their **** out in the trailer without the fans seeing it happen. That's no joke.

It should be noted, synthetics may be more easily consumed by some engines and while they will not CAUSE leaks they may leak more easily, if you switch back, the leak will be no worse or better than before.

A much better solution if we do see our engine oil temps are high is to simply add an oil cooler!

 

@05TurboS2K Hmm I thought about trying the Motul oil we have a drag strip/race track here in town that hosts racers from around North America so our auto parts stores stock a lot of stuff you do not see elsewhere. Might give that try next time around

 

Most of the post before last was accurate, with a few important exceptions. Oil viscosity has not effect on oil pump output directly. Most internal combustion engine oil pumps are positive displacment pumps, putting out a specified volume for every revolution regardless of viscosity. Viscosity can affect oil flow to the valve train indirectly. IC engines pump oil directly to the crankshaft, rod, cam bearings, lifter bores, and in our engines to the rocker shafts where the oil "bleeds" out due to clearances. The clearances are balanced so that all areas receive mostly the same oil pressure. The faster the engine turns, the more oil is pumped however the bleed rate is relatively constant (slightly higher at higher engine speeds, but not much). The bleed rate is affected by oil pressure however, so as pressure goes up, bleed rate goes up. The systems reach an equilibrium where the pressure is either the relief valve pressure if too much oil is going in to the engine, or at some lower equilibrium pressure where the bleed rate equals the pumping rate. Of course the pressure is needed to make sure there always a film between the metal bits. Lower viscosity oils bleed more, typically reducing the oil pressure, sometimes at idle the pressure can drop so much as to starve the top end of the motor (end of the line so to speak). Modern LS series engines pump so much oil they idle at 40 psi, cruise at 60, and peg the gauge above 3000 rpm. This done for reliability reasons, GM is one of the few that gives a crap which is why those LS engines frequently go to 300k with no issues.

All of this is to say high pressure from higher viscosity is almost always a better thing. The one exception is sub-zero arctic conditions where oil becomes jell-o. On startup the cold oil may not get to all the moving bits before they start spinning at speed, allowing metal bits to touch each other. There have been instances where oil filters have been exploded, but that was before the age of bypass valves and pressure relief valves. Even when I lived in Chicago, I never used less than 10w30 weight oil even in the winter - no lubrication issues.

Now OEM's have been going to lighter oils for hp and fuel economy reasons, but they don't care about your engine life because it will make it out of warranty even with the thinner oils.

Oils really only need to be changed due to viscosity breakdown. Synthetics don't breakdown nearly as fast as conventional dino oils, but they are still susceptible to fuel dilution, a side effect of short drives where the engine is not fully at operating temperatures and fuel gets by the piston rings due to cold clearances. A few years back I ran oil analysis at 5000 miles on all my cars, Disco, Camaro, Diesel Truck, GLK350, and my boat. The only one that did not suffer significant viscosity reduction due to fuel dilution was the diesel truck, mostly because it was only used to pull the boat to and from the lake one hour away. The synthetic 10w40 I ran in the Camaro was diluted down to a 10w30. I can post the reports here if anyone is interested, but there are many more on the site Bob is the Oil guy. Basically the synthetics we were putting the Camaro and GLK were a waste of money because I was going to have to change ever 5k anyway due to fuel dilution if I wanted to keep the viscosity up at 10w40 levels.

Diesel oils also contain additives to help suspend the soot that is encountered in diesels so that the filter can grab it, it can also be helpful in Disco engines with a plugged PCV valve because the soot is very similar to the sludge that is formed when the baffle is plugged.

 

I’ll throw this question out there as far as using another diesel oil besides Rotella in our V8 engines... any LR owners use Royal Purple’s Duralec diesel synth oil?
I found no info online about people using it in LRs let alone in gas/petrol engines. Curious about it since I found some for $25 a gallon.

 

I'll throw in my $0.25 worth here, I use a pre-oiler (Moroso) and synthetic 5W-30 here in Alberta but everyone should use the correct oil for their climate and change it at regular intervals, I'm not impressed with Land Rover's 7500 mile interval. When we disassembled the engine on the vehicle I bought (owner followed LR intervals) it was absolutely filthy, so I can only assume that there is a problem with 7500 mile oil changes. I have changed my oil every 4 or 5,000 miles at the latest for all my vehicles and have never had any problems, just my opinion...

 

I think the recommendation for Rotella originally came from the ZDDP content which I believe has since changed. Researching that leads down a pretty crazy rabbit hole. Because of that I stopped using Rotella.