What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
(OP)
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?
Anyway care to comment?





RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
(Bet that fires the oil experts up.)
Rod
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
Regards
pat
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
Blacksmith
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
Is this much like the Dura-Lube bearing wear test?
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
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!!!!!!!
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
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.
RE: What's the significance of the 4 ball wear test to oil performance?
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 . . .