Useful engine life
Useful engine life
(OP)
I have come across this web page that reports engine life expectancy according to manufacturers and I was wondering if it's true.
http://www.synlube.com/viscosit.htm
Quote from page
FORD which has previously designed cars to have 10 year or 150,000 miles life has reduced the mileage life expectation to "beyond 100,000 miles" on vehicles that are operated on SAE 5W-20 Motor Oil.
HONDA only claims "useful life" as 7-years or 70,000 miles in EPA certifications for their CIVIC which uses SAE 5W-20 Motor Oil, while the previous model that utilized SAE 5W-30 Motor Oil was certified for 10 year or 100,000 mile durability.
http://www.synlube.com/viscosit.htm
Quote from page
FORD which has previously designed cars to have 10 year or 150,000 miles life has reduced the mileage life expectation to "beyond 100,000 miles" on vehicles that are operated on SAE 5W-20 Motor Oil.
HONDA only claims "useful life" as 7-years or 70,000 miles in EPA certifications for their CIVIC which uses SAE 5W-20 Motor Oil, while the previous model that utilized SAE 5W-30 Motor Oil was certified for 10 year or 100,000 mile durability.





RE: Useful engine life
Why do hondas only go 10k/yr, while fords go 15k/yr? Seems odd...
RE: Useful engine life
If manufacturers are reducing u.l. because of warranty risks then synube (a thick oil advocate) is twisting the meaning and attributes the lower u.l. to thin oils.
RE: Useful engine life
Sure, you can find numerous SAE and internationally published papers on specific durability development exercises, Taguchi studies, applications of Deemings principles, et al, but there's still a dearth of understanding and capability amongs many engineers, lower and middle managers - the ones that should be the 'enablers'.
So, I'm not surprised at the contradictions from that particular company.
In my own system/sub-system work, I could never get management to publicly nominate a target, so I set it for myself as a 10% failure rate (i.e. Weibull B10) with 90% confidence, of 150,000 miles, as modelled by the company's data used for correlating their test tracks. Clear as mud?
Total system reliability, like an engine 'life' in a particular vehicle platform even when it's been serviced as specified, will be affected by the number of starts experienced, accels, torque reactions, loading profiles, fuels used, environmental temperatures, blah, blah blah.
From what I see these days, the power of CAE and the increasing power of desktop computing has a lot to do with the straightforward stress/strain-related durability issues and friction/lube issues are still not quite so well supported in that direction.
RE: Useful engine life
but I can tell you with great certainty that the PRL packs for at least one diesel OEM have a B10 life well beyond 1,000,000 miles for on-hwy HD applications. The key for PRL wear is to run many endurance (cyclic) tests to a significant fraction of the engine life, and track wear closely throughout. Alongside that battery of tests you run a field follow program, and you pay close attention to any parts you can get back from the population at large, and at the end of the day you know darn well how your parts are performing (or at least you can draw a floor on it). You do sometimes get really odd results back which you can't readily explain (like a cylinder with 1,000,000mi projected life next to 5 others with 5,000,000mi projected life), but with enough data those guys fade out.
I can't say how Ford do their evaluations, but if they can't spare a few bucks for the above, I don't know who can. (so it would be a shame if they're as clueless as you suggest)
RE: Useful engine life
RE: Useful engine life
My statements are based on direct experience of that particular manufacturer's business in Europe and experience as part of the full-service supplier business they set up a few years back. That company's business was to supply so-called 'tier-one' products back to Ford. What I saw there was what I described and I had already experienced similar in Ford. I once went through a cam and follower development process, aimed at eradicating a cam wear issue in heavy truck diesel engines. I got to a conclusion which significantly improved durability and was supported by a statistical analysis. The trouble was, the cam came from supplier A and the followers from supplier B. The purchase dept gave all the business to supplier B, cutting the durability advantage significantly and negating about 9 months work.
More recently, a product which features an electric motor that runs all the time the engine does was having the motor validated in the USA by just running it !!
I managed to get budget to do the same work for European applications, but with the assembly on a triaxial vibration rig and with recorded road-load fed in. Result, a b10 of about 60% of the US tests.
Management in organisations like this often just want 'the bottom line' and won't give time to understand the parameters. If 'their man' says it's OK, it's OK. It's only when the warranty starts to mature that the revisions and revalidation start again.
I am guessing from your description that the engines you refer to are used in earth movers, locomotives, real heavyweight trucks or similar?
The customers for these are a different breed altogether. Downtime to them is real money and not an just an inconvenience. Proper validation, results and evidence are acknowledged.
I think some auto manufacturers get a lot of mileage from never doing anything too radical - radical design needs thorough validation.
RE: Useful engine life
RE: Useful engine life
The EPA don't care if the engine quits, since then it has zero emissions.