Engine Oil!

[TRE-DEUCE]

HEY all! im very new to RB engines. so i was just wondering how do i change my engine oil? and what engine oils are good!? i did abit of reserch but i still dont understand, can someone please guide me abit!

[fib]

Oil differing opinions - 10-40w oil usually gets the nod. Motul/Royal Purple seem to be the premium pick.

I prefer Royal Purple as it comes in 5L bottles of which I use 4.5L and then the rest as top up.

Motul 4L bottles annoying lol

I haven't tried the cheaper ~$50-60/bottle oils but for an old engine and frequent oil changes it shouldn't matter too much.

Plenty of oil change tutorials.

Good luck.

[Moodles2]

10w40 Motul Turbolight (semi-synth) is base level oil for RBs, if it's purely a street driven car then that's what I would recommend. Changing oil, RB is no different to other engines, oil sump plug is on the drivers side, the tricky part is changing the oil filter it's in a difficult spot depending how big yours hands are.

[JonnoHR31]

standard rb20 = castrol gtx2.

to change oil. get a pan, undo sump plug and dump the oil, whilst its draining undo the oil filter (if you dont have a gripping tool you can tighten a hose clamp around it then grip that with a rag), smear some oil onto the rubber seal of the new filter and screw it on, doing it up handtight. replace sump plug and fill with ~4.5L of oil, checking it reaches full on the dipstick (let it drain to the sump for 30 seconds before checking).

[Galois]

Oils thread

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/topic/22458-the-goods-on-oils/page__hl__filter__st__640

Oil change diy

http://www.skylinesaustralia.com/forums/topic/10035-my-first-skylines-guide-to-changing-your-oil-and-oil-filter-in-an-r33/

[TRE-DEUCE]

Hey! Thank you all for reply! Damm that engine oil link is long !

O

So many different opinions!

Mayb try 10w 40 !

where can I find that royal purple stuff from?

[Galois]

Yeah I'd start at the end, not the start lol, usually any oils based question has been answered within the last 20-30 pages.

10w40 is the way to go, the VAST majority of sau people run it. There's barely any difference between 5w40 and 10w40 though, so either will do. That opens up your options to motul 8100 xcess (5w40) as well as the new 8100 (10w40, can't remember name), and royal purple. Give your local auto shops a call, most will stock motull 8100 xcess, the 8100 10w40 is new and still rolling out, and royal purple is a bit harder to find.

Or order some sougi s6000 from birds, it is motul 300v chrono (~105 for a 4L bottle) quality, but half the price. It's been discontinued but I think he has some left. See last page of the oils thread.

[Granthem]

Oils are a funny thing. Everyone has an opinion. I for one have not put new oil in a car and felt some form of noticable difference.

I used to run Royal Purple 10w40 in my R34 GTT. Made for some very expensive oil changes. 90 bucks per bottle!

Picked up my new much more powerful R33 and asked the old owner what Oil he ran in the car. He said always ran magnatec.

So I kept with what had worked for him. I still use magnatec 10w40 oil. 30 bucks per bottle allows me to change it 3 times as often as the Royal Purple I used to use.

Been going strong on magnatec for 7 years now with 350rwhp

[Brezza]

I find with the RB its usually a safe bet to get something 10w-40, i use the Motul 8100 Max which is the new stuff. pretty cheap and i change it fairly often.

i usually change the oil after about 2-3months depending on how the car has been used. street vs hard hills runs vs track day.

i have gauges for oil pressure and oil temp so i can usually tell when the oil is getting a little old by the oil pressure. the fresh oil tends to be better for warming up and has a lower psi when cold and perfect when warm. but when its a little old the psi spikes to 110psi under boost and drops under 20psi idle warm.

plus another good check is to get some oil between your fingers and slowly move them appart which will give a rough idea to the thickness of the oil.

[Galois]

Sorry Granthem, I have to respectfully disagree.

Magnatec is horrific for performance engines, especially rb's which run a bit rich. It just doesn't have the detergent properties that you pay for with more expensive oils (or that you don't pay for, just get, with sougi). I used it once to do a 1000km flush, changed at 800km because the r34 gtt didn't rev as happily and sounded loud and just wrong. It also came out fairly golden after that time, meaning it wasn't cleaning the engine as it should. Other oils over that time would come out nice and black (be careful not to mix up the black colour of cleaning and of the oil breaking down, you want your oil to come out black as it means the oil is doing it's job).

Magnatec, according to castrol, sticks to the metal using the particular electromagnetic arrangement of the molecules, like static electricity sticks a balloon to someone's hair. This is exactly the opposite of removing soot/carbon buildup from the engine as it creates opportunity for sheltered buildups of carbon.

It is unlikely that these deposits will cause the engine to fail, or even major engine damage, but it's not making the engine any healthier by leaving them there.

[Granthem]

Sorry Granthem, I have to respectfully disagree.

Magnatec is horrific for performance engines, especially rb's which run a bit rich. It just doesn't have the detergent properties that you pay for with more expensive oils (or that you don't pay for, just get, with sougi). I used it once to do a 1000km flush, changed at 800km because the r34 gtt didn't rev as happily and sounded loud and just wrong. It also came out fairly golden after that time, meaning it wasn't cleaning the engine as it should. Other oils over that time would come out nice and black (be careful not to mix up the black colour of cleaning and of the oil breaking down, you want your oil to come out black as it means the oil is doing it's job).

Magnatec, according to castrol, sticks to the metal using the particular electromagnetic arrangement of the molecules, like static electricity sticks a balloon to someone's hair. This is exactly the opposite of removing soot/carbon buildup from the engine as it creates opportunity for sheltered buildups of carbon.

It is unlikely that these deposits will cause the engine to fail, or even major engine damage, but it's not making the engine any healthier by leaving them there.

I thought the reason Magnatec "sticks" to the engine parts was because of the ester they add to the oil. And I also thought most high grade synthetics use alot more ester then magnatec, essentially giving them the same properties... just not spruked about as a selling feature. I could be wrong though?

Either way, for what its worth, I get 3 changes of oil in a 5000km service range for the same price as some of the really expensive fully syn and semi syn cars. That coupled with the fact the engine is hardly a new modern marvel (a design from the early 90's), it seems to do its job.

Still for 30 bucks per bottle, its provided for the engine to run without fault for many years now, and propels it to 12 second passes. Good enough for me

I understand your point, however.

[Checkbuzz]

I only use AMSOIL 10-40W and their oil filter as well.

AMSOIL pretty much beats all others in comparative testing (google it) and I purchase it from a lubrication specialist who stocks nothing else.

There are also plenty of other great alternatives out there such as Motul as already mentioned here.

Previously I used Magnatec which made this lubrication specialist shudder - it is not a great product at all.

In fact Castrol oils have been getting a pretty bad rap all around lately so buyer beware!

If you have been using it and you change oils you really need to flush the engine out properly first as it leaves lots of nasty deposits that can block oil galleries etc.

Further to this it is only semi-synthetic and fully synthetic oils are much better performing.

Buying cheap oil is living in a false economy especially if you are doing track days or a lot of hard driving.

If you can't afford the good oil then you can't really afford to run a high performance track car...

How much is a new turbo or rebuilt engine compared with $90/5000kms for some decent oil?

10-40W is good for Australian weather conditions but check with a local specialist if you live in colder climes as it may not be appropriate.

[Granthem]

Previously I used Magnatec which made this lubrication specialist shudder - it is not a great product at all.

In fact Castrol oils have been getting a pretty bad rap all around lately so buyer beware!

If you have been using it and you change oils you really need to flush the engine out properly first as it leaves lots of nasty deposits that can block oil galleries etc.

Further to this it is only semi-synthetic and fully synthetic oils are much better performing.

Buying cheap oil is living in a false economy especially if you are doing track days or a lot of hard driving.

If you can't afford the good oil then you can't really afford to run a high performance track car...

How much is a new turbo or rebuilt engine compared with $90/5000kms for some decent oil?

If I were tracking the car I would definitely not run with Magnatec oil.

[Galois]

One thing about engine oils is that if you change regularly you can't go too wrong. It's not like changing to a different oil will damage anything, imagine the lawsuits the company would face, it'd go bankrupt.

On engine flushing, it's been a topic up for debate for years. I personally wouldn't do it, running a stripping agent in a complex unit like an engine is not an ideal situation, it's far better to use a detergent heavy oil and letting it clean the engine over a longer period of time, this avoids the violent removal of soot which can block small/thin oil passages.

Another school of thought is that some of the carbon build up on the cylinder lining can help to smooth out the surface, helping compression and increasing engine life.

Regarding magnatec specifically, yes they use a special ester product to attach the oil to the metal. An ester is defined by R-C(=O)-O-R', it is the R and R' chains that are modified by castrol to make their ester stand out as a new technology. One of the R or R' chains has electrostatic qualities which respond to the metal in the engine.

As the R and R' are ambiguous, the statement ester is fairly meaningless in terms of actually describing a chemical, especially when the R and R' chains can be far more infuential than the ester oxygen arrangements.

[TRE-DEUCE]

Wow thank you for advice! Damn I just bought a bottle of castrol 10w40!

should I go change it for something better?

[Galois]

lol, if you want, no harm in using it for a few thousand km, but if you'd rather something heavily used by skyline owners then maybe see if you can exchange it. A lot of people use motul 4100 turbolight for stock-ish cars, maybe look into that if you want a cheaper option?

[JonnoHR31]

it depends on the use of the car. for a stock 20 thats purely street driven theres no way i'd spend $80+ per oil change, complete waste.

motul/sougi/royal purple etc are all great oils if your doing trackwork or have a heavily modified engine, but for a road going stocker its overkill. i used hpr15 for years in several RBs and it does the job perfectly at half the price.