Here’s How Making Oil or Additives Is Like Baking a Cake (No, Really!)

Oil or additives have a lot in common with cakes, let’s explore this with an analogy. But first let’s find out what makes one oil different from another?

If two oils are manufactured to the same spec, aren’t they the same and thus shouldn’t I just pick the cheaper one? 

In theory, anyone can start a lubricant business. All you need to do is go to a manufacturer of base oils tell them you want a base that will perform to a determined API standard, such as CK4 standard, then after that I have to buy or create a standard additive package and hey-presto I have a lubricant.  

Now bear in mind that the API CK4 is a minimum standard not a maximum one.

Fundamentally it is as straight forward as that. Now, is my lubricant one that is able to perform to the same standard of the world’s top oils?  Well in a word, NO!

So why not? To understand this, let’s go back to cakes. Cupcakes are pretty easy right; you have the ingredients and you have your recipe. 

But here is the rub: if you gave the same ingredients to me or Gordon Ramsey, I can pretty much guarantee that his cupcakes would come out perfect whilst mine would be second rate because there is an art and a science to cooking as there is with lubricant and additive manufacturing.

Just like mixing the batter for cupcakes, with lubricants, you have to add the ingredients in a set order, this order is integral to the end product, then you have to mix them into a homogeneous batter and then you need to bake them in a set way. Not all lubricant companies use heat blending, which is a mistake.

Here is another way of looking at it: to become a doctor, all you need to do is pass med-school with a 51% average. Theoretically you are a doctor, but, who do you want to perform a lifesaving operation on you, the one that scraped through med school and just passed or the one that swotted and got a 95% pass rate and also has a really good reputation for saving lives.

Clearly one doctor is much better than the other and the same is for lubricants. Likewise for the additives you put into your vehicle which one are you going to trust? The one that is used by the worlds’ preeminent engineering organisation, which is also known as NASA, or one brewed up in an industrial park in the middle of nowhere.

The clever folk over at X-1R manufacture is one such organisation that has the pedigree in additives that people trust. Located in Daytona Florida, at the very heart of NASCAR, its oils are made to the highest standards using a list of ingredients and a ‘recipe’ that ensures that Art and Science meet to create the best additive money can buy. 

That is why we have supplied NASA now for almost thirty years and are proudly in the Space technology hall of fame.  

Now that you know what goes into oil and additives for your engine. What are you going to choose? A generic oil that might have an untested recipe?

Or a trusted additive that has helped astronauts?