The New And Improved Unofficial R65 Forum V2
General Category => Totally Off-Topic Discussions, Rants, Tire & Oil Threads, Etc. => Topic started by: Bengt_Phorqs on November 29, 2011, 03:45:28 PM
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A short time back Bob Roller posted a thread about BMW oil storage life. It got me to thinking about finding some technical data for this topic so I turned to one of our excellent process engineers here at the oil company. He put me onto this article from an industry publication, Machinery Lubrication. Here is the article and it's well worth reading.
http://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/172/lubricant-storage-life
As I suspected, it's really oxidation that directly affects the shelf life of most products (including the human body).
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Very Interesting article if only to demonstrate the variation in opinions. And opinions it must be rather than fact otherwise there wouldn't be such wildly ranging views from 1 year to 5 or even 10 years shelf life.
Common sense suggests that if the oil can last 1 year in use in an engine being constantly heated and cooled, aerated and oxidized it ought to last more than 12 months on a shelf in a sealed container at a steady moderate temperature.
The most useful information was about storage conditions. I knew very cold temperatures were bad because oil can permanently thicken. Not just thicken because it's cold but permanently change it's viscosity rating. Very hot being bad makes sense too but I hadn't thought about agitation. Time to move the stuff off the top shelf in the garage and put it low down in a cool spot. If I can find somewhere that is a fairly steady 10 Deg C I think I'd be happy to store engine oil for 3 - 5 Years. I don't make a habit of stockpiling the stuff but I did just buy 3 years worth of gear oil.
So lay it down in a cool steady temperature and don't touch it ?
I wonder if I could get away with storing my oil in the wine cupboard.
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I used to buy 205 litre drums of oil very cheap from one of my suppliers - it was over used by date US oil....we don't care about that over here,it was perfectly good oil.