API CG-4 is headed for the graveyard of obsolete engine oils. The American Petroleum Institute’s Lubricants Committee has voted to discontinue licensing products against the diesel engine oil category, and effective Aug. 31, 2009, no products can claim they are licensed to the 14-year-old specification. After that date, products cannot be labeled with the CG-4 designation inside the trademarked API ‘donut’ service symbol.
API encourages marketers instead to upgrade their oils to one of the surviving service categories, and already has stopped accepting license applications for CG-4, said Kevin Ferrick, its engine oil licensing manager. He explained that the Lubricants Committee acted on a request from the Engine Manufacturers Association, which last year formally asked that the category be withdrawn due to lack of engine builders’ support.
“The engine manufacturers prefer to see companies using API CH-4 or above,” said Ferrick, who is based in Washington, D.C. CG-4 oils were introduced to the market in 1995, and were superseded just three years later with the API CH-4 upgrade.
“In our minds, CG-4 was always a non-stand-alone category,” said Greg Shank of Volvo-Mack Powertrain, chairman of EMA’s Lubricants Committee. “It was originally aimed at soot control, that was the real driver. But there was a big gap: CG-4 did not include a cylinder wear test.”
That oversight quickly was recognized as a flaw in the CG-4 diesel oil specification, and engine manufacturers soon backpedaled on it. They would recommend only CG-4 oils that also met the prior API CF-4 specification, which at least included a wear test (albeit a weak one). When CF-4 was withdrawn from licensing and declared obsolete two years ago, that further undermined OEM support for CG-4.
“EMA felt that without CF-4 and without a ring and liner wear test, this was the time to end CG-4,” Hagerstown, Md.-based Shank said. “EMA has ensured that every subsequent API category has included the Mack T-9 test for ring and liner wear,” he pointed out, including API CH-4, CI-4, CI-4 Plus and the newest service category, CJ-4.
“We also want to push our customers globally to have CH-4 as the minimum performance level,” Shank continued. “We voted unanimously to ask API to end it, but we discussed it for several months first. As engine manufacturers, we found we would not recommend anything lower than CH-4 in the future. Those oils are available worldwide now, and we hope to drive even emerging markets to use at least CH-4.”
Ferrick observed that API sees little demand for straight CG-4 licenses. “‘Pure CG-4’ oils were a small number, fewer than 200 products on our list of licensed oils earlier this year,” he said. A look at API’s list of licensees this week shows the ranks of “pure” CG-4 products now have withered to around 30.
The category’s end will require adjustments, however, by the many marketers who offer CG-4 in conjunction with other performance specifications. “The majority of licenses claiming CG-4 use it embedded in a string of other categories on their labels, such as CG-4/CH-4 or CG-4/SJ,” Ferrick pointed out, “and the change now will be for those companies to take the CG-4 out of the string.” More than 1,000 such engine oils are on API’s list of licensed products, and all will require new labels to continue in the marketplace.
Licensees have until Aug. 31 stop packaging and labeling any product with the CG-4 designation, whether alone or in a string. “We recognize that the packaged goods may hang around a while in warehouses and stores, until they’re consumed,” Ferrick added. “But we hope marketers will use up their old labels quickly and begin packaging products without the CG-4 designation.”
Overall, Shank volunteered, EMA is happy with the handling of engine oil service categories, thanks to EMA’s and API’s joint Diesel Engine Oil Advisory Panel. “It’s a good forum and has worked very well for us. We meet a couple times a year to review tests and issues, and as hardware changes, and to listen to each other.” So EMA’s views regarding CG-4 were well-known before it requested API to take action, he said.
EMA last year also asked API to cease licensing products to the API CF specification. None of EMA’s members recommend the use of these diesel oils, which debuted in 1994, “although some of our members do recommend API CF-2 for two-cycle engines,” Shank said. He seemed resigned to whatever fate API decides for CF oils, which are meant for use in older off-road engines. The category may die a natural death anyway, as parts for a required CAT 1M engine test may soon run out, he indicated. Lack of parts for a required engine test is also what doomed the API CF-4 category two years ago.
API’s Lubricants Committee has not decided yet whether to act on discontinuing CF licensing, Ferrick said. Meanwhile, API 1509, the governing document for the Engine Oil Licensing & Certification System, is being amended to remove CG-4.