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Hi Bob,
Just catching up on the zinc question and enjoying your Starburst Oil Myth link.
Here I thought that name only referred to a chewable candy or fireworks!
The part API lettering is correct about the SN designation for the latest revision in oils.
I have concluded that every so many years they change the letters, SF, SJ and so on.
Now they have finally gotten to the letter N.
Reducing and adding different additives to make the present newly letter oil “backward compatible” to a previous oil. This way a chain is created to make a “no loss” in engine protection.
This has always been one criterial perimeter used to redesign motor oils or other petroleum products and marketing has always played a role in twisting a hawing the truth to “up sell.”
Even the new synthetic oils had to work with the public or consumer demands, of which, is the manufacturers demands who want good for their products as well!
We have seen for a few years now, that API, has finally settled on some additive package that replaced the Zinc Phosphate, so the “N” is appropriate to mean, there’s NONE!
This has beat away the EPA and overall, it is cleaning up and helping the recycling oil industry.
In all likelihood the new oil you buy today is not made from totally Virgin crude but is a mixture that has to exclude the Zinc Phosphate to get the SN rating.
I’m pretty sure you are not going to find anything but SN since all the oil sold today is higher in price period!
The cheaper oil of my recent years of $1.00 a quart are gone!
Not that it cost more to make, but it had to go up in price, to bring the cost of synthetic down from where it started out in1974!
The 1974 oil embargo push forth the drive for synthetics and Mobil’s synthetic oil came in round “puncture spouting” quart cans! I have an article in Popular Science as a cover story!
Don’t remember when the cans went to foiled paper insides, maybe then too!
A case of oil was 24 quarts too!
I Remember bulk non detergent oil was sold in glass jars in gas stations, up till the sixties.
It was a Nickel a quart.
Even going back farther than 1974 and if non detergent oil thinking “could” still be around, well, that would be a giant set back!
Yep! Amsoil was there, with its ridiculous prices per quart, just the same. The race was on, but lots of empty seats!
What about Zinc Phosphate then?
What API rating was the synthetic, a SF?
Lots of turm...oil, as I Remember!
Today is about the same thing, except it’s called “market” sales or “branding” and anything else they can think of! There it is!
The amount of zinc in that tiny bottle of additive, of what type of oil carrier, is minuscule and probably not well disclosed either!
When it comes to synthetic blended oils ... I ask, just how much of which type oil is in a quart anyways?
It’s never disclosed!!
So, raise the price of conventional oil, to make synthetic oil look reasonable and WE all pay to get a more expensive seat at the oil race contests!
Yep, you don’t need ZINC in Volvos!
Phil
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