Don Terrill’s Speed-Talk

Interesting article from Noria:

https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Re ... oil-groups

A worthwhile and useful article, Kevin. Thanks for posting it.

It should make clear the benefit of oil analysis instead of conjecture and marketing hype.

Thanks for the post Kevin.
i read with interest the section on lubrication consolidation, it had more to do with streamlining inappropriate storage more so than actual product line consolidation. This bought an instance to mind that was experienced where i used to work in the railways.

With numerous types and brands of earth moving and track machinery there was a bewildering array of lube requirements, so when doing field services one had to be mindful of what plant was to be serviced in a weekly run, the repair truck would then be loaded with boxes of appropriate filters, scheduled service items and extra drums of whatever special application lubes were required. The workshop on the truck would barely have walking space through the center.

A lubricants crossover compatibility was investigated, what we found was that manufacturers did not like much if any drift in their specs, there was some room to move in hydraulic oils insofar as same grade different manufacturer allowed. There was less room to move in engine lubricants, part of the answer here was to shift all the lower spec N/A engines up to turbo spec lubricants but this came at a cost premium. Drive line lubes were different again, some manufacturers gave no option apart from the schedule lubes dictated.

Even coolant bases were different between manufacturers, mix some of these and you could be trying to pump grease in a cooling system.

With respect to RR, it's the same today. We have 8 different kinds of GREASE on our rail cars. I've tried to get the engineering department to consolidate into one good synthetic grease, but to no avail. As you said, the specs for specified lubricants are so narrow that end user is forced to buy from the OEM, even if the end user's engineering department has proof of lubricant related failures. Everyone knows that some of their lubricants are shit, but nobody wants to sign off and be held responsible for anything.

Covered it in a nut shell, dannobee. Who wants to put their hand up if something does not work out? because there is that much rolling stock ,plant and equipment in service in any railway system consolidation makes very good sense, but, who wants to don the cross hairs?

I would say in the system i was working in there was a lot of spectograph analysis done on oils regularly, the metrology section had a dedicated oil analysis section that was rolling and burning all day [i spent a large section of a shift coating/soaking carbon wheels], I even got to put a sample of oil from my Bonneville through the test, the chemist told me not to take too much notice of the results as there was no base line to gauge them against, good thing, it came back looking like a melange of puss.

Cheers.