What oil.?

The Weapon

1 of the techs at the dealership said he went on a training course for the Z, told me that the Nissan Ester Oil they use is Fully Synthetic. I don't know if it "REALLY" is or not but he said they only use it on the 37OZ, G37 and GTR.

Anyhow it seems like a few people have had problems with ticking and engine noise when it's not used. There's a thread dated from 9/08 on my37 that talks about the oil as well.

drisko

I think the tech is wrong on this matter. I've heard the ester oil is a conventional oil with ester additives...and the GTR uses Mobil 1 (see Mobil 1 Selected as Factory and Service Fill Motor Oil for New Nissan GT-R Multi-Performance Supercar).

In any case, the PREMISE behind the ester oil is that it electrochemically bonds to the metal inside your engine, which makes it superior to conventional oil in terms of its ability to provide lubrication. Apparently, this is a very important property for the VVEL system, where the tolerances are tight and the oil experiences a lot of shearing forces that a normal conventional oil could not withstand that well. However, full synthetics like Mobil 1 already have been proven to work very well under extreme conditions, like very low/high temperatures, and high shearing forces. Full synthetics also flow faster/better than conventional oil and reduce friction inside the engine.

I did a lot of research on this and even called Mobil 1 and Nissan Corporate to confirm that Mobil 1 should be fine to use. I'm going to try it because I think it has benefits over the Nissan Ester Oil. I will be very suprised if I get any sort of VVEL "ticking" sound.

Besides, in our 370Zs I think we have the updated ECM software that takes care of the VVEL ticking noise.


^After doing some more research on esters, it seems like there may be some real needed benefits that the Nissan Ester Oil brings to the VVEL system (esp. in the long term). And what's more, since we don't know exactly what esters are in the oil, you can't just go out and buy a Group V synthetic ester oil and hope it does the same thing. So, until I find out EXACTLY what is in the oil I am probably just going to stick to using the Nissan Ester Oil instead of Mobil 1, or any other synthetic for that matter.