Petroleum based vs Synthetic Mixes

Hi there, after 20 years of using 50:1 with few problems, I have chosen to now use 32:1 synthetics. This is because my saws are puting out more hp so the extra fat mix surely cant hurt as long as the carb is set just right. Is there any truth to the notion that a motor will not breakin on synthetics? Do Stihl and Husky recommend 50:1, mainly as an emmisions control issue? Are Stihl and Husky mixes synthetic or petroleum based?
I know these questions may have been hashed over before, but it would be good to know if a modified saw , or any saw, would be better off with synthetic 32:1
Thanks,
John

Ken Dunn posted a link a while back from an oil company site that convinced me...and I've been using 50:1 for a long time too...in snowmobiles, everything, since the 1970's.

The only issue left for me is the (outdated?) idea that synthetic oils exhibit an affinity for moisture that mineral oils do not; one needs be very careful about storage, etc.

In the 1970's Ashland oil and Shell oil were experimenting with synthetics, and the Scorpion snowmobile factory racers were testing it. MY uncle and a neighbor were on that team, so I got free oil too, and we learned that one needed to drain the tank and refill with mineral-oil mix, run at least 1 complete tank full before putting the sled up in April, to wait for the grass drags in June. We tore many wrecked engines down that had traces of the white zinc or aluminum oxides from moisture inside them.

to this day, I drain the tanks of my stuff if they're going to be unused for a while, and run a little 20:1 mineral oil mix through them. THe hygroscopic thing may be no longer an issue, but I do remember sobbing big tears over a whole new top end for a 793 Hirth.

Hi Zypo,
Husky and Stihl oils are petroleum based and 50:1 is "prolly" at least 50% because of EPA standards. I don't know about whether breakin is better facilitated by synthetic or fossil based oils, but I have heard that it's best to stick with one or the other depending on what you break it in with. I used the "KD approved" Maxima 927 which is a blend of synthetic and castorbean at 32:1. I guess this is the stuff they use in high performance cart and motorsickle 2 strokes. The only downside to this oil may be the fact that it has a tendency to gum things up after a while, but again, I have no long term experience in this regard.

Hedgehog the Flatlander

After talking to Ken, I switched to a mix ratio of 32-1 to 36 or so to 1.
I'm using up five gallons of husky mix, as i know it is fine. May switch to Maxima.

But I talked to a quite knowledgable local dealer who gave me data sheets on Opti-2, which is a 100-1 petroleum based oil. He has lots of commercial people using it hard in 2 cycle applications like string trimmers and blowers where the guys dont clean filters often enough. Still has no problems.

Ken, have you heard of this stuff and what do yo think?:

http://www.opti2-4.com/technology.htm

It sounds a lot like what Energy Release does, actually condition the metal surfaces of a motor. I use a small amount of ER in my mix. It has a cooeffecient of friction of 0.02. normal motor oil is 0.08. The only other additive I would touch is Z Max.

Opti 2 has been run successfully at ratios of 50-1 to 150-1. At 100-1,it is cheaper than maxima at 32-1, i think. I'd be inclined to run it at 50 to 75-1. 100-1 is scary.....

Some synthetics(esters) are indeed hydrophillic(attract water). As far as the break in with mineral thing goes. I dont think it holds true and my assumption has been backed up by conversations with a formulation engineer at Phillips 66. As far as the factory mix oils go. Stihl black bottle is a partial synthetic. Jonsered and husky have a simular iso-l-egd equivellant to the stihl product. As far as ratio goes I am not going to stir the poop, but an engine could be designed to run on 50:1. I still run mine at 32:1 however. Oil is cheap, engines are not. BTW that opti2 stuff has some pretty outrageous claims that are best put in the BS file. ER has the same outlandish claims and have been discreditid. Dynotech once did a test on a three cylinder snowmobile engine. After ER was ran through it it lost power that could not be restored without rehoning the cylinders.

The only downside to this oil may be the fact that it has a tendency to gum things up after a while, but again, I have no long term experience in this regard.

Click to expand...

927 seems to leave the combustion chamber and piston FAIRLY clean, but it tends to really gum in the expansion chamber. These have been my observations when 927 is used in my bikes. I personaly like Mobil MX2T for my bikes. Burns very clean when jetted sharp and leaves very minimal deposits. Its also iso-l-egd certified so its fine for warranty use in saws.

mix

What troubles are you having with 50 to 1 mix from the major brands, Stihl, Husky, etc.?

Opti-2

RBTree,
I first heard of 'Optimol' 2-cycle oil about 20 years ago, and started using it. At that time, all the big manufacturers were still running 32-1, but Optimol claimed cleaner burning and less wear when run at 50-1. I guess it was one of the early synthetics.
Anyways, I used it in ALL my 2-cycle stuff for about 10 years when I had my lawn business. I never had a single problem with it, but after a while the dealers started badmouthing it, claiming they had seen many burnt engines from customers who used it. I attributed that to 'operator error' (flunked math, can't mix the gas right).
For several years, Echo 2-cycle mix looked and smelled identical to Optimol.
I assume 'Opti-2' is a second generation version. Anyways, my dealer quit carrying it so I started using Stihl mix and have used it ever since.

Brian,

i think Optimol was semi synthetic. I used to run it with regular and sometimes gasahol, say Arco, not knowing any better. Anyhow, I believe it was the cause of three or four burned up motors, some just the piston. Opti-2 is petroleum based. But I am skeptical, and listened to bwalker.

bw, can you supply any documentation re problems w/ ER? I have had a huge packet of data from them since 1990 or so, seemingly rather conclusive as to its effectiveness. and I believe many race drivers use it, but, as ER has no ad budget, you don't hear about it-unlike the Prolong hype and others. I've heard
Prolong must be drained after every race as it's additives will eat the
innards of an engine.

stihltech ,we've been over this before. you and others may be right, but I'll listen to ken dunn. so far no problems at my new mix ratio.

bw, can you supply any documentation re problems w/ ER?

Click to expand...

It was documented in a issue of the Dynotech newsletter. The newsletter has since went under and I do not have the issue#. Its pretty common knowledge amongst people in the know that ER is a Scam la slick 50 and the other ptfe peddlers.
RB, when you say Gasahol do you mean a ethanol blend. If so stay away from that crap like the plague. If you are in a RFG area which I believe you are use a fuel oxygenated by mtbe. It is a much better oxygenate from a two stroke point of view.
BTW some one mentioned a page that Ken Dunn posted about running richer ratios in a saw. Does any body know the address for it?

synthetic oil

hello BW,
here are the internet sites of the top synthetic oil companies. You need to go to their tech pages . very good data on the pro's and cons of synthetic oil
www.maximausa.com
www.redlineoil.com
www.motul.com
motul is used in europe in their 2-stroke kart engines. they turn 22,000-23,000 on the long back stretches, they use 100% motul synthetic at 12.5- to 15 to 1 oil-fuel ratio
ken

I use Llamaphillic based oils myself and have had
no problems thus far, but I will keep you all posted

Llamaphillic? At what ratio?

With a higher octane and Stabil, it only takes a
small squirt, Like Lambert

I think he misspelled it. The correct spelling is llamaphallic.

You guys got it all wrong, the proper meaning of llamaphillic, according to Funk & Wangnels dictionary is!: One who enters the Testicle Festival and tries to get the highest rating on the scrotum pole.
John's brother John

Hey, doog


Thank you.......

For the return of the mammoth mammaries...

wonder if she prefers natural over synthetic??.....

Hey, my little G2 produces 11.5 mb RAW files. but when I convert em to JPEG and check em out zoomed in, I can see little difference...pretty good testimonial for JPEG. I should print a 13x19, then there should be some diff...? Dont have any paper over 8.5x11 yet.

About to get a ridata 20x 512 mb CF card. That little 32 is for the birds....

Thanks KD, but I already have seen those websites. I though that maybe there was a saw specific page with the info on it. Maxima and motul make excellant products. Redline however has some serious corrosion issues with there two cycle formulations.

Roger,
What you should do is a comparison between Genuine Fractals and Photoshop's bicubic upsampling. You don't need the bigger paper to do it, just crop a small section out of one of your pictures and print that at 8X10. GF rasterizes the file, which essentially does away with the original pixels entirely, then applies a spline-based nonlinear interpolation algorithm ( these equasions were originally developed a century ago to predict the compound curves of lapstrake wooden ship frames, hence the term "spline") to calculate what colors and intensities belong in between the separated original data points. With GF, a picture from a Nikon Coolpix 950 (2.2 MP) was upsampled to 70 feet (!) long and displayed on a building in Times Square some time ago. I saw it personally and couldn't believe how crisp the result was. Virtually no aliasing even at that size.

Oh yeah, sorry. We should get back to oil which I know nothing about.

bwalker, it's obvious to me that you've been spending too much time over at the dirt rider forum with Rich Rorich and Eric Gorr. Your statement about corrosion issues with Redline oil is BS. A while back, I saw that a few people were posting that the brass in their carbs was corroding changing the jetting on the bike due to the oil on the dirt rider forum - I just laughed. I've personally used Redline oil in all of my two stroke motors (Lawn Boy mowers, line trimmer, blowers, chain saws and dirt bikes) for about 8 years now and I've never had a single occurance of corrosion in the carb with it - I feel it's one of the best 2 cycle oils available - perhaps THE best. I mix it with either Michigan pump gas or VP C-12 racing fuel. When I take my carbs apart the brass is like new with absolutely no signs of corrosion (and I put them away wet - even over the winter months). When I disassemble the motors, the pistons and exhaust ports are clean, the clean-up is very easy, and the wear rate is less than with any other oil that I have used. Perhaps you know something that Tom Morgan (Tom Morgan Racing and ex-Kawasaki Factory mechanic and development engineer for Jeff Ward, Mike LaRocco and Jeff Jacobs) and Bruce Kahlhammer (President of PSI Racing - a top notch snowmobile performance shop), two of the most knowledgeable two cycle engine tuners / engineers in America, don't know - they both highly recommend Redline 2 cycle racing oil and call it 'the best 2 stroke oil on the market'. Have you ever used Redline oil or are you simply parroting what a few misguided dirt bikers posted on the dirt rider forum (which I believe is the case)? I personally talked to Tom Morgan about this issue, and he told me what I already suspected - that it's the oxygenates (ethanol, methanol and mtbe's) that can, and do, cause corrosion. The new line of VP race fuels - the MR series - achieve their higher energy content via the use of oxygenates - and it causes the brass in the carbs to corrode black. I saw that you have stated that mtbe's are the 'prefered' oxygenate - have you ever used octane boosters (which use mtbe's as the primary compoment) in your bikes? I have and they cause the brass jets to corrode black - so you better not use VP MR fuels or any fuel containing mtbe's if you don't want the brass in you carb to corrode. As an engineer myself, I have one simple operating principle: SPEAK WITH DATA. If you don't have any data to support your statements, then you don't have any business making the statement 'as fact' in the first place. Parroting BS from the dirt rider forum just adds credibility to the fact that much that is posted on the internet is useless garbage and makes it difficult for people who are looking for good useful information to separate fact from fiction. In this case, it boils down to who are you going to believe - two of the top 2 stroke men in America who have premix running through their veins and have spent thousands of hours testing and tearing apart 2 stroke motors and who put their business reputation on the line by endorsing Redline oil, or a guy who leaves a post on an internet forum - um, let me think about that for about a nanosecond. By the way, I left a post on recommended 2 stroke oils on this forum about 10 months ago and at that time I recommended Redline 2 Stroke Racing Oil, Maxima 927 (although I did note that it does burn a little dirt / sticky), Motul 800 2T, and Mobil 1 MX2T all at 32:1 (30:1 to 40:1 being the 'safe' operating window).

Steve