It is the first thing anyone thinks when an additive comes up, and it deserves a straight answer. Here is what the specification actually says, what the rules let an oil company tell you, and what they don't.
Every certified motor oil meets the same specification, and nothing pays anyone to go past it — the rules let a brand say "exceeds," never by how much. The base oil is the only real difference you can buy. SFR adds what no specification asks for: an extreme-pressure barrier on the metal, plus more corrosion protection and more detergent. By the gallon, that is about $1.32 to $1.55 a quart of oil after the first treatment.
You may ask: why not use a better motor oil and change it more often to maintain my engine like new? Every engine is built to a lifespan, and wear starts the day it is new. Motor oil is controlled by the vehicle manufacturers — the market is so huge that they provide the specifications, based on their own requirements. It is all stated in the specification announcement: motor oils exceed the maximum standards set.
The only problem with that statement is that the standards, which are set in the sequence tests behind the scenes, list the specification as a maximum — but it is the minimum and the maximum, and that is all a motor oil provider can provide. They cannot state that their oil exceeds the maximum by, say, 30%. All they can say is that their product exceeds the maximum standards. These are the lowest and the highest figures regarding wear, which is measured in demerits, gauged in milligrams.
These sequence tests allow three tries, and if the oil doesn't pass, the entire set of sequence tests has to be run over again. The tests run into the millions of dollars, so only a handful of companies certify them, and the marketers of motor oils — possibly your favorite brand — purchase their additive packages from those companies and certify their oil under that license.
Usually what happens is that the company testing for the standard exceeds the minimum/maximum by a lot on the first try, to make sure the oil will certify. Then they cut the additives down to just exceed the minimum/maximum on subsequent tests — because they can't advertise anything more than "exceeds the maximum standards," so there is no incentive to pay for additional additives when the label already says the highest standards are exceeded. In other words, most all motor oils are virtually the same, with the same additive packages, with one exception.
The companies marketing motor oils can use different base oils that provide some benefit. These are petroleum and synthetic, and synthetic comes in Group III, IV and V. Group IV is polyalphaolefin, or PAO, which has a better pour point and heat range because of its level of synthesis. Group V, which SFR uses, is what goes into jet engine oils that face even more severe temperatures. Unfortunately, the additives do the majority of the work, and they are basically the same in all motor oils.
For this reason SFR not only adds extreme-pressure agents motor oils don't carry, it adds more corrosion protection, and more detergent — the one additive increased in almost every new specification — at levels beyond the motor oil increases. This is vital: keeping your engine clean is extremely important to engine longevity and to extending the life of an engine beyond its metallurgy.
You can improve performance and longevity by selecting a higher level of base oil. But improving the additive package — the real workhorse — is the key to making your engine go beyond its intended lifespan. So SFR uses extreme-pressure agents to form a protective barrier on the metal surfaces to protect the engine, and increases the additives of the motor oil to maximize engine cleanliness and performance.
SFR is not licensing a motor oil, so SFR can publish the number. These are results in an already-certified oil, bought off the shelf, run through the industry's own wear tests at the leading independent laboratories in the U.S.:
One gallon treats up to 128 quarts of oil. At the ongoing rate of 1 oz per quart, the engine fortifiers run about $1.32 to $1.55 a quart of oil after the first treatment (SFR 100 $169.40, GASZOL $185.90, D-SOL $198.00 per gallon). The first fill takes 1½ oz per quart. Against the price of a "better" oil that meets the same specification, the barrier on the metal is the cheaper upgrade.
Pull an oil sample before you treat and another at the next drain, and compare the wear metals. Same independent lab, your engine, your numbers.
