I mentioned this person is a "tribologist" in the last post. That's an engineering title for "lubrications engineer". The man's life work is related to lubricants, so I trust his opinion. "RP" is Royal Purple in this context.
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I have been asked about RP many times - I have repeatedly said "No Comment" because I could obtain almost no info from the company. I also commented that in response to some Forum members' saying that this or that magazine did a test and got more rwhp with Royal Purple that I knew there were methods to add a large amount of certain additives to get that result, but that often this meant that there would be a drop in lubricant performance somewhere else. I also commented that some of the RP oils were not synthetic, but mineral oils fortified with some "miracle additive" that RP claimed to have developed.
Please read the following I received today from the Technical Services folks at Amsoil; I cannot certify these comments other than they are in agreement with my general understanding of molybdenum additives in motor oils, and my experience that Amsoil's testing is in agreement with general industry testing standards. They do not consider RP anything other than a niche player, as do I. You decide:
"As you may know, RP is big in racing circles. The chemistry they use is something we choose not to use. One of our big selling points is extended drain intervals. Some additive chemicals can cause adverse conditions when used for long periods.
Royal Purple uses a different chemistry than most. They are one of only a handful of marketers using Moly in their oil. Moly is a solid, specifically banned by Cummins, due to excessive valve train wear.
Moly (Molybdenum Disulfide) is a processed mineral that is similar in appearance to graphite. Moly has good lubricating properties when used either by itself (in dry power form or as an additive to oil or other lubricants). Particles of the Moly can come out of suspension and agglomerate. This can actually clog oil filters or oil lines and the rest normally settles in the bottom of the oil pan. This seems to be more likely when using extended drain intervals. The only test we ran on RP involved their 20W50 Racing oil versus our AMSOIL Series 2000 Synthetic 20W50 Racing Oil (TRO). We ran two 4 ball wear tests with different parameters, a spectrographic baseline, FTIR scan and volatility tests. The Royal Purple showed a significantly high volatility rate with a 12.51% boil off rate. This compares to TRO with a 4.47% volatility rating. Wear scars were also smaller with the TRO. For example the TRO left a .41mm scar and the RP oil left a .66mm scar. There was also a surprising difference in the viscosity index. The RP has a VI of 129 versus 155 for the TRO. The higher the VI, the better the viscosity stays in place at high temperatures.
Royal Purple products are more popular in some areas than others, but generally they own a very small segment of the lubricant market. Advertising against small companies actually gives them advertising in the process and gives little in return. Therefore, we target our advertising against the industry giants that are household names.
We hope this is helpful."
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