Again, more rock solid facts...

 

Well, I know little about one brand or another, save for Mobil1. I do know they use at least a good portion of their base as PAO. As background, I ran a single train PAO plant in La Porte Texas for a few years, and designed, built, and started up the second train. It is good stuff, as a base stock.

But as I know from discussions with the tech guys from Cincinnati, most of the synthetic oils are a blend of poly esters and PAO. I only made the PAO, in several viscosity ranges.

I am brand new to Harley Davidsons, just purchasing my first just a few weeks ago and have yet to ride it.

However, with respect to the PAO side of the discussions, I do know a fair bit about them and how they are made. What I found fascinating was the final oil comes from a distillation tower that runs at only 1.5 mm mercury absolute pressure, not far from the severity of the vacuum of space. The temperature required to BOIL this PAO is around 540 degrees F at that severe vacuum. Any higher pressures, and the temperature goes so high that the oil actually starts to decompose rather than boil.... So it is temperature stable.

 

could you say that again in English?????

 

Kind of interesting, would like to know more

 

Well, let me say just a touch more without getting off into chemistry. PAO oils and for that matter also the synthetic polyester oils do not really boil at engine conditions no matter the temperature. They decompose, turn to char, and totally degrade. But this happens at a very high temperature, not usually seen in engines.

Reading the discussion about oils this evening, most of this is fairly accurate. The only real differences in these synthetic oils is the percentage of polyester oil used with the PAO and the additive packages. Lubrizol does make the additives for our oils, and I suppose others. I have my old boss and good friend still inside Lubrizol and he will not even tell me what is in these additives..... So yeah, pretty secret bunch over there.

Also, if one wants to say that PAO is not a fully synthetic because it's roots are from Ethylene, through several processes (too much chemistry for this page), and into PAO. And Ethylene comes from processing natural gas.... OK, that is true. I still consider it synthetic, it is semantics in my mind. But neither is the Polyester then a true synthetic. The base materials for the Polyester oils, is the remains from the production of animal fats and oils into soaps. So it actually has closer roots to horses and cows (not dino's) than the PAO does. Yep... It starts out as the fat and guts hide and bones of the beef industry.

As a chemistry enthusiast and in the business of Chemical engineering over 40 years now, if you knew how some of the things we use or eat daily were made, you would start to lose weight, and eventually starve. Don't ask how potatoes were peeled back in the 60's.... they use steam now, but then it was pure caustic lye. Many processes are like that, behind closed doors.....

I am long out of the PAO side of the business and have no problem discussing it now, but as I said, the magic is in the additives, and my friend is still taking their money and working there, so I cannot dig too much out of that side even to satisfy myself....

 

Cool read Longplay. I learned a couple of things today, thanks.