Ancient Royal Purple : SVTP Uses Nixon Administration Era Oilhttp://www.svtperformance.com/forum...ses-oil-dating-back-nixon-administration.htmlhttp://www.svtperformance.com/forum...ses-oil-dating-back-nixon-administration.htmlhttp://www.svtperformance.com/forum...ses-oil-dating-back-nixon-administration.htmlhttp://www.svtperformance.com/forum...ses-oil-dating-back-nixon-administration.html
http://www.svtperformance.com/forum...ses-oil-dating-back-nixon-administration.html
Over the years on SVTP I’ve seen some question the wisdom of using “old” oil they’ve had sitting around for a while in their vehicles. Basically, does oil go bad? The answers seemed to vary with no real consensus to be found. However, we now have a little more insight on this issue thanks to our friends over a Blackstone Laboratories. They did the foot work of acquiring and testing sealed containers of oil dating back to the 1930s. The results were quite interesting. They found, that for the most part, oil doesn’t really spoil over time. It’s most definitely true that the older oils, as in those from twenty plus years ago, are not nearly as well formulated or robust as we expect from modern premium lubricants. You can download the PDF articles from Blackstone here:
Blackstone Article Part 1
Blackstone Article Part 2
Blackstone Article Part 3
Armed with the info from Blackstone, and the need to do an oil change on my DD 2009 Ford Explorer V8, I decided to put some old Royal Purple 5w30 to good use. The title of this article may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I believe this oil was about 3 years old. The bottles are emblazoned with an image of Iron Man, in relation to Royal Purple’s sponsorship of the movie. So I figure oil that’s good enough for Tony Stark is good enough for a used Explorer. I matched the Royal Purple oil with a Wix oil filter. It’s a very good quality, widely available, oil filter that should perform well on the Ex.
The rest is fairly simple, just an oil change. I would like to note that I’m not really a fan of the messiness of changing oil on the Explorer. Due to the tight confines between the fully boxed frame rails and cross-members, and the relatively large modular V8, Ford was forced to use various plastic panels to guide the flow of the draining oil. This leads to copious amounts of splashing and lots of oily surfaced to wipe clean. It’s a minor complaint; I suppose I’m just spoiled by the ease and cleanliness of an oil change on my 2004 Lightning.
As in a previous article we took a sample of the used oil as it was draining to send to Blackstone for analysis. This is the first oil change since I purchased this used Ex, so it’s hard to tell what’s in the engine or how long it have been in there. The info from Blackstone should definitely help me determine what we’re working with and the relative health of the 3V 4.6L under the hood. The Motorcraft oil filter that came on the Explorer appears to be fairly fresh, so there may not have been a lot of miles on that oil. Still, I’d rather get it changed out and know exactly what I’m running. I’m going to run this fill of Royal Purple 5w30 for about 5,000 miles and then run another Blackstone analysis. In the next few months I’ll be pulling the passenger-side valve cover to fix a leaky gasket. That look inside the engine should give me an even better idea about how well my new Ex was maintained. I suspect I’ll find it very little varnish. Until then, check out some pics from this change:
Half the time spent doing an oil change at home seems to be spent gathering the materials.
Holy Crap, it's stock again!! No, these pics just predate the mods we did to the Ex this summer. You can check that article out HERE
Since we had no clue what kind of oil the previous owner had used or how long it had been in there we decided to send a sample off to Blackstone Labs. This way we could get a general idea of the realitive health of the engine.
This is a recommendation we will be ignoring. I have never been a fan of Ford's use of 5w20 oils in the modular engine family.
If it's good enough for Iron Man it'll probably suffice for 3 year old Ford Explorer.
When you see oil splash shields like this installed on a car you should probably just block off the rest of the afternoon to clean up the forthcoming mess.
Look at those fancy new tires. I'll be cover the addition of those later in the week.
Oh great, another splash shield.
A long handle ratchet really comes in handy at times like this.
There's just enough room to comfortably use a standard 3/8 inch drive setup here.
If the slightest of breezes happens to kick up as the used oil cascades out you'll have the honor of cleaning up an Exxon Valdez'esq spill all over your driveway.
Plenty of nice oily surfaces to wipe off.
Having the front end up on ramps makes this a far easier job.
For some reason, lube-techs like to implement the 800lb gorilla method tightening oil filter. When you run into one of those you may have to result to using a persuader.
This tool has saved the day on more than one occasion.
Remember kids, this is a filter and it is intended to be replaced from time to time. There's no need to tighten it to 3,800 lbft. I swear I think some places use red Loctite on the filter threads.
Eventually I managed to get the old filter out of the way and was rewarded with another oily surface to clean off.
We went with a Wix filter this time around. Wix makes a great product and their made in Gastonia, NC.
I'm a fan of the thick base plate and silicon anti-drainback valve on the Wix filter.
It fits handsomely in place and will be a lot easier to remove because I didn't torque it down with a 6-foor cheater bar.
The only thing left is pour in six quarts of Tony Stark approved 5w30 Royal Purple. This Royal Purple is probably at least 2 years older than whatever was in the Explorer’s sump.
Here is a Blackstone oil analysis on the oil you saw being removed above. I had no idea what the oil was (I guessed Motorcraft 5w20 since service records indicated it was serviced at a Ford dealership and it had a Motorcraft filter) or how long it had been in there. From the report though, it looks like both the engine and the oil were are in good shape.
Holy Crap, it's stock again!! No, these pics just predate the mods we did to the Ex this summer. You can check that article out HERE
Since we had no clue what kind of oil the previous owner had used or how long it had been in there we decided to send a sample off to Blackstone Labs. This way we could get a general idea of the realitive health of the engine.
This is a recommendation we will be ignoring. I have never been a fan of Ford's use of 5w20 oils in the modular engine family.
If it's good enough for Iron Man it'll probably suffice for 3 year old Ford Explorer.
When you see oil splash shields like this installed on a car you should probably just block off the rest of the afternoon to clean up the forthcoming mess.
Look at those fancy new tires. I'll be cover the addition of those later in the week.
Oh great, another splash shield.
A long handle ratchet really comes in handy at times like this.
There's just enough room to comfortably use a standard 3/8 inch drive setup here.
If the slightest of breezes happens to kick up as the used oil cascades out you'll have the honor of cleaning up an Exxon Valdez'esq spill all over your driveway.
Plenty of nice oily surfaces to wipe off.
Having the front end up on ramps makes this a far easier job.
For some reason, lube-techs like to implement the 800lb gorilla method tightening oil filter. When you run into one of those you may have to result to using a persuader.
This tool has saved the day on more than one occasion.
Remember kids, this is a filter and it is intended to be replaced from time to time. There's no need to tighten it to 3,800 lbft. I swear I think some places use red Loctite on the filter threads.
Eventually I managed to get the old filter out of the way and was rewarded with another oily surface to clean off.
We went with a Wix filter this time around. Wix makes a great product and their made in Gastonia, NC.
I'm a fan of the thick base plate and silicon anti-drainback valve on the Wix filter.
It fits handsomely in place and will be a lot easier to remove because I didn't torque it down with a 6-foor cheater bar.
The only thing left is pour in six quarts of Tony Stark approved 5w30 Royal Purple. This Royal Purple is probably at least 2 years older than whatever was in the Explorer’s sump.
Here is a Blackstone oil analysis on the oil you saw being removed above. I had no idea what the oil was (I guessed Motorcraft 5w20 since service records indicated it was serviced at a Ford dealership and it had a Motorcraft filter) or how long it had been in there. From the report though, it looks like both the engine and the oil were are in good shape.
Special Thanks To:
Royal Purple
Blackstone Laboratories
- SID297:beer:
You can check out another article involving this 2009 Ford Explorer V8 Sport here:
http://www.svtperformance.com/forum...sts-intake-exhaust-tune-2009-v8-explorer.html
