What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?

[tannguyen]

A certain company touts this particular test, ASTM D-4176, to why their product is superior to the competition. I've heard that the 4-ball wear test does not apply to real world conditions.

Anyway care to comment?

 

[evelrod]

You heard right, Bubba.

(Bet that fires the oil experts up.)

Rod

 

[patprimmer]

I also heard that the test applies extreme pressures that are not really seen in an engine Regards
pat

 

[TheBlacksmith]

Quick, name all the bearing surfaces in an engine that resemble the 4 ball test. There are many standard tests that are designed to be easy to set up or duplicate, which while giving consistency to the results, bears little or no resemblance to real world conditions.

Blacksmith

 

[tannguyen]

I can't think of anything, in the engine that would resemble the test.

Is this much like the Dura-Lube bearing wear test?

 

[LadaTrouble]

I've seen the timken roller bearing test several times,It appears the only products that pass are those that are being sold,I'm downright suspisious of this one.Nearly bought a machine being sold so I could figure out what was going on.

 

[ivymike]

Does that mean that you don't sell the products that don't pass, or what?

 

[NickB]

I think he's saying they engineer the tests so that only their products pass it.

 

[evelrod]

When I was just getting started I witnessed a few of these 4 ball tests at MacMillan Oil Co., Pennzoil Racing, Valvolene, Castrol R, Torco, and some I can't remember. I THINK the tests were honest but, ???---It seemed like a good way to compare various oils but in the years since, I have found NO good reasons for these comparisons. Why do the tests? It impressed the hell out of me when I was 26 years old!!! Got me to use the brand being tested (for a few years). Went back to Castrol in the late '60's and never had problems that I can remember.
As a teenager in high school we had salesmen come by to "demonstrate" Wynn's Friction Proofing. Similar to the 4 ball but with little wheels and a torque wrench---what I mean to say is that this stuff is not new and IMHO, 'pseudo-science'!

Rod

PS---Get them to try some hypoid lube and see how it compares to WHATEVER they are testing!!!!!!!

 

[romke]

the four ball test was originally developed by shell as a screening test to assess the capability of lubricating oils to prevent wear in highly loaded contacts as can be experienced in ball bearings. it turned out to be a suitable and cheap test to assess whether a finished product contained antiwear additives and as such was accepted by the "oil community" as a standard screening test and incorporated in various national standards (ASTM, DIN, IP etc). it was never intended as a full fledged test to assess all the wear preventing capabilities of a lubricant and certainly not as a test for engine oils.

the testapparatus contains three stationary balls where one rotaing ball is pressed against. the torque, friction and rotational speed can be recorded and after the test the load at which seizure starts and the wear scar diameter can be assessed.

to a certain extent it can be compared to the Timken OK test and other tests where two mating surfaces move relative to each other under load.

you get the certainty that a given product performs in a certain way in the test apparatus, but you cannot derive its behaviour in an actual machine like a gearbox or an engine. if it fails in the test however, the performance in actual operating conditions might also be not that good.

 

[drwebb]

The 4-ball wear is a bench test designed to correllate with certain aspects of WHEEL BEARING and GEAR lubrication performance. If these are included in your sources "real world", they may not be entirely correct.

As noted by others, engine oil additive marketers notoriously misapply 4-ball results, which is a BIG stretch at best (fraudulent at worst). If engine oil is what your sources mean by "real world" then they're right.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but I don't recall a 4-ball in any of the current ILSAC or API engine oil specs, probably because it has little relevance in such cases. Admitedly, small marketers can't afford multiple $20,000 Sequence III engine tests, so $150 4-balls may be the best they can do. But for engine lubes it seems to correllate best with someone trying to get their hand in your wallet!

Food for thought- wear can be a counterpoint to fatigue. In a different bench test a gear showed extensive fatigue pitting when overtreated with antiwear additive. Now most of us assume more AW is good, but in this case it made the surface of the metal so hard and brittle that it started breaking off in little chunks. So completely eliminating one failure mode precipitated another. Just goes to show, more isn't always better, and formulation is all about balance while marketing is all about hype . . .