Originally Posted by
coastie
from the same thread immediately before the quoted post
"Politics, sex, motor oil: the three topics most likely to yield nonsense and bad advice on the Interwebs? [g]
Just a quick comment: "detergent" oil does not, contrary to popular belief, contain dishwashing soap or the equivalent [g]. It does not "wash" anything. Instead it holds dirt particles in suspension, which is why it gets darker in color faster than non-detergent oil (if you can even find such a thing these days), which lets the particles settle out."
Not wanting to incite anything but I just have my feelings about emotive posts. The TDI post is a good read just the OCD comparison struck me as unusual parallel.
fair enough, and not a lot of chance of inciting anything but good discussion in our cosy little corner of the forum. I do realise that oil doesnt contain dishwashing liquid (i use dishwashing liquid to get engine oil and grease and dirt off my hands almost every weekend, such is the life of keeping 3 cars over 15 years old running by yourself). Perhaps I underestimated the readership and oversimplified my expanation - I only indended to bring conceptual understanding, and in this I do not believe I have been in error -
engine oils (particularly diesel oils) contain detergents to clean the inside of the engine.
The idea is that as the oil runs around inside the engine it picks up any foreign matter, soot particles and dirt, and these are trapped in the oil filter
and transporter, sorry to be picky, but
otherwise it would mean that if you pour new oil in the engine and didn't drive it at all it would corrode and the oil would leak out
is not what i was trying to explain. Any corrosive component is "used up" whenever there is a reaction, and thus the concentration of corrosive chemicals in solution (if allowed to react) will decrease logarithmically (I am trying to say "upside down exponential curve") over reaction time. I do, however feel that it is likely that any troubles would be more realistically attributed to using oil that contained the wrong friction modifiers or lacked them completely, as you say. I only pick this up because I dont want to you to publically interpret what I have said wrongly.
Last edited by gldgti; 09-06-2010 at 06:58 PM.
'07 Touareg V6 TDI with air suspension
'98 Mk3 Cabriolet 2.0 8V
'99 A4 Quattro 1.8T
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