The American Petroleum Institute has updated its Motor Oil Guide, its primary document for educating consumers about engine oils, to include its latest gasoline and diesel engine oil upgrades. API also has beefed up the document’s warnings against using obsolete engine oils, such as SA and SB, in most cars on the road today.
API reissued the Guide to coincide with the first licensing of SM oils, which began Nov. 30. API’s Lubricants Committee participated in its development and reviewed it before issuance. The updated Guide can be found online at www.api.org/eolcs; click on “SM Shelf Card.”
Nancy DeMarco, publisher of Lubes’n’Greases magazine, which campaigned for more than a year to have API more strongly warn motorists against using obsolete SA and SB oils, hailed the new edition of the Guide as an important change. “API and the members of its Lubricants Committee should be applauded for finally giving consumers the clear facts about these widely marketed oils, which continue to be a blot on the lubricants industry. This is exactly the kind of basic consumer education that we’ve been hoping API would undertake.”
The two-page Guide packs a great deal of consumer information on engine oil, despite some gaps. At the top of one side, API’s three licensed symbols are depicted: the API “Starburst” certification mark, the API “Donut” service symbol, and the “Donut” symbol denoting CI-4 PLUS for diesel engine oils. Each of these symbols is a registered API trademark, as is the abbreviation API.
The parts of the traditional donut are explained as well as the new designation called CI-4 PLUS, which is located in the lower part of the outer ring of the donut. This is a first for API; in all previous donut iterations this section has been reserved only for the “ENERGY CONSERVING” designation. CI-4 PLUS is licensable only in conjunction with CI-4, the most current API diesel engine oil service category.
The front of the card also includes a chart explaining the typical SAE viscosity grades for passenger cars, and a short section to help motorists “get more from your motor oil.”
However, only the most cursory information is given for the Starburst logo. Nor does the card include any information or reference to GF engine oils for gasoline-fueled vehicles, the oils most recommended by automakers and the only ones which may display the Starburst on their labels. Vehicle manufacturers issued GF-4, the most recent GF specification, on Jan. 14, 2004, and API began licensing the oils on July 31, but the Guide is silent regarding them.
The back of the card is headlined “Which motor oil is right for you?” All current and previous gasoline and diesel API Service Categories are listed and their status identified along with specific recommendations for each category.
A major modification in this edition of the Guide is that it provides considerably more information on the status and usage of various API service categories, particularly obsolete ones. For example, oils meeting the SC category are called “obsolete” and “Not suitable for use in gasoline-powered automobile engines built after 1967.” Use in more modern engines, it adds, “may cause unsatisfactory performance or equipment harm.” (Previously, the Guide simply said SC oils were “for 1967 and older engines.”)
The new Guide offers a similar emphatic “CAUTION” against using SA, SB and SD oils in engines built after 1930, 1963 and 1971, respectively. API adopted much of this “new” language from SAE standard J183, “Engine Oil Performance and Engine Service Classification,” issued in June 1991.
While acknowledging that the Guide was better than previous versions, “all the symbols still made it confusing,” Mike McMillan of General Motors told Lube Report. McMillan chairs ILSAC, the committee representing U.S. and Japanese automobile manufacturers on engine oil issues, and he went on to summarize opinions on the document from other ILSAC members, who declined to be identified.
For example, he said, the Guide makes some technical claims which are of concern. “It’s probably risky to recommend … 10W-XX oils below or down to 0 degrees F. It’s not clear that the SAE classification protects for these grades down to these temperatures.
“Further, the Guide is incorrect in saying that SB oils are good for engines built before 1964,” he pointed out. “Vehicles with hydraulic valve lifters, which were available even in the 1930s, require detergent oils, not SB oils. It was noted that the API website shows a young family in front of a 1955 Chevrolet with the hood up and a bottle of engine oil. [We] certainly hope that it is not a bottle of SB oil.
“On the second page,” McMillan continued, “[the Guide] states that SM oils are ‘for all automotive engines currently in use.’ This is only true for General Motors if the SM oil also happens to be ILSAC GF-4 and carries the Starburst, and is the right viscosity grade. To say SM is good in all automotive engines is misleading at best.”
API pointed out that its Engine Oil Licensing and Certification System budget supports all facets of the program and includes distribution of the shelf card. “We have already handed the Guide out at the AAPEX trade show and plan to have more on hand for shows in 2005 where we’ve been handing out shelf cards for several years. We also provide the card online, have mailed them to each of our licensees, routinely send them to consumers and offer sets of cards to licensees on request,” an API spokeswoman said. A packet of 50 laminated Guides costs $106 and can be ordered through “API Publications” on its web site.
For many years API published a larger, 32-page booklet, also titled “Motor Oil Guide,” which provided consumer information in greater detail. That well-received publication is currently unavailable while API revises it, but it says it plans to make it easily downloadable from its website.