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Old 10-19-2011, 11:17 AM   #161 (permalink)
ClevelandCWRU
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Red__Zed View Post
While it is impressive on a scientific level, it's not really shown to help in the real world.

It's more of a great lesson in project management. Here's what happens when you give a bunch of engineers a budget and very little control....you get super cool oil that doesn't work.
Controlling temperature wasn't the driving force in reducing friction in this case. The goal was to decrease power losses and increase fuel efficiency, both of which were accomplished. A lesser important side effect/benefit was that less heat was generated due to lower friction.

I say less important because the amount of heat generated from the valve lifters is relatively insignificant relative to everything else happening inside an engine (ie. combustion), and a very small component in controlling engine temperatures. You can verify this by running a typical high-performance synthetic compared to the ester oil and watching temps. It's unlikely you would see any statistically significant variance in overall engine temps. between the two.
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