TDI Race Oil

I'm trying to figure out which oil to run in my high performance 2.0L PD150 that is making close to 300 hp/450 lb/ft I'm going to be taking the car to the track in 2 months and wanna make sure my engine has the correct oil in it to help prevent any unnecessary failures.

These are the oil I'm considering.
Schaeffer S9000 5W-50
Liqui-Moly Rach Tech GT1 10W-60
http://www.blauparts.com/proddetail.asp?prod=J1A1701-B
http://www.blauparts.com/proddetail.asp?prod=J1A1705-B

Thanks in advance for any help

I think any of those would work well on the track. If you plan to keep it in for some street use as well, I wouldn't go any thicker than a 50W. Mobil1 has a 15W-50 race oil that should also be good for track use.

turbobrick240 said:

I think any of those would work well on the track. If you plan to keep it in for some street use as well, I wouldn't go any thicker than a 50W. Mobil1 has a 15W-50 race oil that should also be good for track use.

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Thanks for the reply and the tip on the Mobil 1 15W-50 race oil.

Right now, I'm leaning towards the Schaeffer's Oil, since I can get it from our local Car Quest and Amazon even carries it. Schaeffer's S9000 5W-50 12 pack

The required oil viscosity depends almost entirely on your peak oil temps; and subsequent oil pressure. Going too thick with oil selection is almost as bad as going too thin. I'd start with a 5w-40, full synthetic and deviate from there once you acquire some test data to justify a change either way, i.e. to an xw-30 or xw-50. I seriously doubt a 10w-60 is needed at all.

The higher the oil viscosity, the higher your equilibrium oil temps will run. A thicker oil also requires more HP to pump and to shear between moving parts. FWIW, NASCAR engines (358 ci and ~ 850 Hp), are now running on synthetic lubes as thin as SAE 0w-5!

TS

Yeah, I think a 5w-40 or 5w-50 is a good place to start. The Schaeffer 9000 sounds like a good choice for the track. It and other racing oils have more friction modifiers and anti wear additives and less detergents than street use oils. I wouldn't worry much about the various oils the NASCAR guys are using. Their engines only have to survive one race. I guess the same is true of top fuel dragsters- and they often run 70 weight.

turbobrick240 said:

Yeah, I think a 5w-40 or 5w-50 is a good place to start. The Schaeffer 9000 sounds like a good choice for the track. It and other racing oils have more friction modifiers and anti wear additives and less detergents than street use oils. I wouldn't worry much about the various oils the NASCAR guys are using. Their engines only have to survive one race. I guess the same is true of top fuel dragsters- and they often run 70 weight.

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I was thinking the same thing on those NASCAR engines only having to survive one race and granted they are getting pushed to the max, they are built with the best parts that money can buy.
"Most top racing teams build their own engines from scratch. The total cost of these engines, which take more than 100 hours to build, is anywhere between $45,000 and $80,000" From Here

Since the car will be driven to and from the track the Schaeffers 5W-50 makes the most sense to run in that engine.

I ended up going with a case of the Schaeffer's S9000 5W-50 race oil for my RTDI, so hopefully that does the trick to help protect my engine while we push the car for 25-30 minutes out on the Road America track

You need to install an oil cooler that will keep temps in an acceptable range, not band-aid with heavier oil. Normal Rotella T6, M1TDT, ect, will be just fine.

Kevinski4 said:

You need to install an oil cooler that will keep temps in an acceptable range, not band-aid with heavier oil. Normal Rotella T6, M1TDT, ect, will be just fine.

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Not trying to band-aid anything, since I've never run the car on the track and mentioned I've had high oil temps previously.
I just want to run the best oil for my application, which is wringing this engine out for 25-30 minutes at a time and then doing that 5, maybe 6 times in a day.
I'm trying to be smart about preventative maintenance on this car, since I can't afford to rebuild this engine with everything else that has gone into this car. So if I wanna change out the unknown oil that is currently in the car with something that is going provide an added level of protection, then that's what I'm going to do as cheap insurance.

A good Group V ester synthetic like Redline or Motul 300V work really well in sustained high power applications. They resist breakdown better than other synthetics.
You want something that won't shear down, so the higher the HTHS rating, the better.
Watch oil temps with a gauge and do an oil analysis to see if your oil is shearing down to a lower grade.
That 5w-50 should serve you well with a 5.08 HTHS viscosity

I use Millers Nanodrive 5w40 or 10w50 depending on time of year.

I also run a Thermostatic mocal oil cooler.

I find even with an oil cooler, I can only do 15 minute stints on track at a time.

The max oil temp I'm prepared to run to is 120c after that I back off and cool things down. 100% need an oil cooler and temp gauge.

xjay1337 said:

I use Millers Nanodrive 5w40 or 10w50 depending on time of year.

I also run a Thermostatic mocal oil cooler.

I find even with an oil cooler, I can only do 15 minute stints on track at a time.

The max oil temp I'm prepared to run to is 120c after that I back off and cool things down. 100% need an oil cooler and temp gauge.

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With the 5W-50, I really don't have to worry about time of the year
The car is put away for the winter, unless we have a good winter there's a chance that I'll take it out on the ice and see how well the AWD system works with a LSD front and rear.

Otherwise the plan at the moment is to see how the car does on the track with the 5W-50 and if the oil temp starts to get to an unsafe level, then we can back it down for the rest of the session. Then we'll know that adding a Mocal oil cooler is necessary before next season.

xjay1337 said:

I use Millers Nanodrive 5w40 or 10w50 depending on time of year.

I also run a Thermostatic mocal oil cooler.

I find even with an oil cooler, I can only do 15 minute stints on track at a time.

The max oil temp I'm prepared to run to is 120c after that I back off and cool things down. 100% need an oil cooler and temp gauge.

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Where do you measure your oil temps?

With a good synthetic 40 or 50 weight oil, I wouldn't be concerned until oil temps went over 140c/280f for a sustained period.

Fix_Until_Broke said:

Where do you measure your oil temps?

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Common Rail has oil temp as part of oil level sensor which I monitor via Polar FIS.

20170122_163922 by Fat Bear Photography, on Flickr

Many aftermarket gauges can be used in the same manner via a sump plug.

I can almost guarantee you that you will need an oil cooler for any level of track work.

I went from 95c to 120c in 4 miles of track driving before I had an oil cooler fitted.

If you are monitoring oil temps at least you can see when it gets too hot. It also depends on the turbo and setup you are running as to how much stress you put on cooling system. But for any sort of track use I strongly recommend oil cooler.

I figured I'd update this thread after taking the car to the track 2 weeks ago. I decided to go with the Schaeffer's 5W-50 S9000 oil. The car ran great during the track day and the only problem we had was not related to the engine getting too hot.
The highest temperature we saw on the gauge 148 F this was on a cool fall day was in the low 50s and ended up raining after the 2nd session, so that probably helped to keep the temperatures down a little bit. I still don't see there being a huge increase in temps during the summer months and as long as they don't get over 220 F I don't see a reason to slow down or pull of the track and head back to the pits.

I can update this again next summer if anyone is interested.

You sure the oil temps were only 148F? That number sounds VERY low for any fully warmed up engine, even under easy street use. Does your engine have an OEM thermostat? What temp does it open at?

Thanks,

TS

TooSlick said:

You sure the oil temps were only 148F? That number sounds VERY low for any fully warmed up engine, even under easy street use. Does your engine have an OEM thermostat? What temp does it open at?
Thanks,
TS

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To my knowledge it should be the factory thermostat installed in the engine, but I can't say that 100% certainty. It's reading off of an aftermarket relocation kit, so that is probably part of the reason why it's reading so low imo.
http://store.42draftdesigns.com/VW-Oil-Pressure-Relocation-Kit_p_314.html

I'll have to keep an eye on it and see what happens when things get warmer next year.

3L3M3NT said:

To my knowledge it should be the factory thermostat installed in the engine, but I can't say that 100% certainty. It's reading off of an aftermarket relocation kit, so that is probably part of the reason why it's reading so low imo.
http://store.42draftdesigns.com/VW-Oil-Pressure-Relocation-Kit_p_314.html
I'll have to keep an eye on it and see what happens when things get warmer next year.

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148F is 64c. So this is not correct.

Both my old PD and CR natural oil temperature would be around 95c. Which is over 200F.

The max temp I run to is 125c / 257F and even with an oil cooler I can hit that quite quickly.

I was thinking it's probably reading 148C, which is ~ +300F? Of course that would be VERY high for an equilibrium sump temp.

TooSlick said:

I was thinking it's probably reading 148C, which is ~ +300F? Of course that would be VERY high for an equilibrium sump temp.

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Possibly. At those temps I suspect the water temperature would be very high too.

I am starting to find the stock limits with my coolant temperature hovering around 102-103 on trackdays even with oil cooler. A better radiator I think is needed.