Running diesel oil

[classicauto]

What do you expect to gain from running diesel formulated oil that couldn't be gained by just running a heavier oil like 20w50?

Personally, its not like the rotary suffers from any kind of premature bearing failure or anything that would require re-thinking the contents of the lube system - outside of modding passages and teardropping orifices on the e-shaft etc.

But I highly doubt its going to kill anything either?

[TitaniumTT]

Originally Posted by Gravity Fed

i figured that since diesels are high heat and rotaries are high heat, it can't be too bad a combo. Standard gas 4 cylinder engines do run quite different than a standard rotary engine. And im sure no company is going to make something specific to the operating needs of the wankel.

Idemitsu makes a synthetic engine oil specific to the rotary engine. They took into account the OMP when they designed it. I've never used it. I run 10w-30 Mobil1 and have a seperate tank for the OMP system that injects the Idemitsu oil.

Originally Posted by classicauto

What do you expect to gain from running diesel formulated oil that couldn't be gained by just running a heavier oil like 20w50?

Personally, its not like the rotary suffers from any kind of premature bearing failure or anything that would require re-thinking the contents of the lube system - outside of modding passages and teardropping orifices on the e-shaft etc.

But I highly doubt its going to kill anything either?

I think the one thing to really be condidered when choosing engine oil is the ability to cope with fuel dilution. Alex has an MS6, with DI which apparently has some issues with fuel saturation in the oil. He runs Shell Rotella for this purpose

[vex]

Originally Posted by classicauto

What do you expect to gain from running diesel formulated oil that couldn't be gained by just running a heavier oil like 20w50?

It really comes down to ash content. CJ-4 Has much less ash content than most oils I've seen from BITOG.com. Less ash, means less chance of pre-ignition events occuring within a given time period.

Personally, its not like the rotary suffers from any kind of premature bearing failure or anything that would require re-thinking the contents of the lube system - outside of modding passages and teardropping orifices on the e-shaft etc.

It's not the bearings I'm concerned about, it's the pre-ignition factor. Since the car is injecting oil into the combustion chamber the ash content of the oil becomes very important. The less ash (under .5%--I think, it's been awhile since I looked), means less chance of carbon build up and less chance of pre-ignition. There is a discussion on ash content and oils that were discussed in the Rotary Engine forum, which I'll link shortly if wanted.

But I highly doubt its going to kill anything either?

See above.