POLYOL-ESTER BASE-(F-1 RACING LONG-TIME AGO).

The History of Engine, Oil-----------

Meanwhile back in the aircraft industry a new breed of plastic lubricants called polyol esters had been developed for gas turbine use. Polyol ester lubricants are so strong that jet engines are filled with the lubricant when built and it remains in there for the life of the engine. Additive packages are replaced and renewed, but this base oil is so immensely strong that it can cope with the tremendous pressure and heat conditions without any degradation. The downside of this product is that it is expensive. For a lubricant to last the lifetime of an engine costing £ 1.0M, this is of no odds. Needless to say, oil company competition departments soon got hold of these products, although never in their wildest dreams would the accountants allow such a lubricant to be produced commercially - it actually cost something to produce, rather than being a free by-product of another process. The polyol esters are not only very very strong, but they replicate the viscosity change of the ideal engine lubricants with temperature, eg acting as a 20W50 without the addition of viscosity modifiers.

The dream lubricant had arrived for race engine designers. This lubricant not only fits the required viscosity profiles perfectly without additives - long chain viscosity modifiers not only break down quickly, but in high compression engines cause varnishing and detonation problems, but is extremely slippery, causing wondrous reductions in power sapping friction losses. The oil is almost impossible to aerate, meaning small oil tanks are possible. It has phenomenal film strength, around five times that of an equivalent weight mineral oil, so that a far lighter weight oil can be used to further cut frictional losses, pump sizes and oil pipe diameters. Polyol esters also have magnificent heat transfer properties to cut oil cooler sizes. Just when the Formula 1 designer was desperate to fit every mechanical part into the slimmest possible tube to allow the maximum ground-effect undertray size, along came an oil which allowed down-sizing of every oil system component. Road oil and race oil had parted company again.

 Polyol ester lubricants really came into their own with the advent of the F-1 turbo engine. 1500cc developing 1200 bhp. Maybe if the old adage 'The older I get, the faster I was.' Is true, there really were 1500 bhp qualifying engines. Certainly the phrase '1000 bhp per litre 'has a certain ring to it. Those of us who were stood at the Woodcote chicane for final qualifying for the 1985 British Grand Prix, when Keke Rosberg took pole position with an engine that melted its cylinder heads as he went across the line, have a sneaking feeling it might have been true. Gas turbine oil was well within its operating envelope in such conditions. The oil that lubricated that Honda engine in the Williams was called Mugen Oil and is spoken of in whispers in paddocks around the world, even today, as the answer to a fast lap in qualifying. It was produced by the Mobil competition department and still circulates at very inflated prices. (Indeed, I suspect that there is far more Mugen Oil in use now than was ever produced then, which is an interesting thought to folks who have paid big money for an unmarked can) In today's terms Mugen Oil is a fairly conventional 30 weight polyol ester, with the interesting addition of fish oil for certain applications. Yes, it does smell particularly dreadful, but there is a belief in the orient that it is a good slipperiness additive.

 Polyol ester lubricants are still the very best lubricants available. All oil company competition departments have their own particular variations for their own sponsored teams. A steady stream of polyol ester oils leave these departments and trickle down to all other levels of racing . The club racer who has a friend, who has a friend, who has got him a special from high street company X competition department, has probably got a polyol ester lubricant. The danger of course is that the friend has got a free sample of gearbox oil, designed to run with silicon oil seals. He then puts this magic oil in his engine and is surprised and amazed when the oil complete with dissolved rubber oil seals and a couple of pistons in kit form fall out on the road, closely followed by the camshaft. Be warned also: race oils do not contain detergents, another cause of detonation in high compression engines. With no detergent package in your oil you can soon block oilways with the sludge from a bunch of cold starts.

 Do you need a polyol ester oil for road use? If you are reading this, then you are interested in getting the best out of, and for, your vehicle, or you may be at the dentist. Polyol ester based lubricants have the advantage that your engine will never wear them out. They are as useful in a old wrecker with piston rings hanging off and bearing shells dropping out as in a multi-thousand pound race engine. Another useful property of the oil is that it does not break down in storage, as does a mineral oil. A vehicle may be left for years with the oil in the sump, and started up as fresh as a daisy when needed. Added to this is the extreme stickiness of the oil, which coats all parts with which it comes into contact and does not creep off, as do other 'synthetics'. For this reason many invaluable vintage, veteran and classic vehicles use nothing else. High street oil companies use polyol esters as additives - a very recent marketing exercise suggests that a wondrous new breakthrough in chemical engineering has developed this sticky oil additive, indeed magnet like, which when added to a mineral oil base produces a significant lubrication technology break-through! This semi-synthetic product retails at virtually the same price as polyol ester based lubricants! The synthetic brand leader, Mobil 1, is 'tri-synthetic', a mixture of PAO, di-ester and polyol ester and indeed brags on the can about jet engine technology. Unfortunately for the discerning motorist, the marketing men have decided that in the small UK market we only deserve one of the wide range of Mobil 1 synthetics available in the US, which cannot suit all engines.

There is one company that produces nothing but polyol ester based lubricants. The ethos of the firm is that the best lubricant base combined with the best additive package will be produced, regardless of cost, as there will always be a market for the unqualified highest quality. Based in the competition market, and suppliers to all race championships from Formula 1 through to boat racing, and including even bar stool racing! ® Synthetic Oil Corporation in California also produce a wide range of road oils for engines and gearboxes, all polyol ester based. You are unlikely ever to find  in Halfords, but you will find it sold by the major competition and classic car parts suppliers; Demon Tweeks, for instance, being a typical mail order outlet for in Europe.  supply product and technical support to race engine and gearbox designers to allow maximum advantage to be taken of the polyol esters' attributes and are in the forefront of lubricant development. Within the UK, the home of race car development, Delta Oil, the European distributor for run a technical sales department which is open to enquiries from anyone wanting advice on polyol ester lubricants . Full product technical specifications are available on the Internet: . I personally have taken a call from a gentleman suffering from a rattling Skoda engine, immediately followed by a call from a Formula 1 team - we were able to help both of them.