CLEAN - A lubricant must maintain internal cleanliness by suspending contaminants or keeping contaminants from adhering to components.

COOL MOVING ELEMENTS - Reducing friction will reduce the amount the heat that is generated and lower the operating temperature of the components. A lubricant must also absorb heat from the components and transport it to a location where it can be safely dissipated.

PREVENT CONTAMINATION - The lubricant should act as a dynamic seal in locations such as the piston, piston ring and cylinder contact areas. This minimizes contamination by combustion byproducts (for example) in the lubricating system. Lubricants are also relied upon to support mechanical seals found elsewhere and to minimize external contamination and fluid loss.

DAMPEN SHOCK - The lubricant may be required to cushion the blows of mechanical shock. A lubricant film can absorb and disperse these energy spikes over a boarder contact area.

TRANSFER ENERGY - A lubricant may be required to act as an energy transfer median as in the case of hydraulic equipment or lifers in an automotive engine.

PREVENT CORROSION - A lubricant must also have the ability to prevent or minimize internal component corrosion. This can be accomplished either by chemically neutralizing the corrosive products or by setting up a barrier between the components and the corrosive material.

COMPONENTS OF A LUBRICANT
Lubricants are generally composed of two groups of materials. The first is a base or stock fluid. This fluid will make up 75 to 95 percent of the finished product. The most commonly used stocks today are derived from petroleum crude oil. These stocks are also referred to as mineral or synthetic oils.

To this, base or stock chemical compounds may be added to enhance or impart new properties to the mineral oil. These compounds are commonly referred to as additives. The use of such special chemical compounds is another way to minimize friction and wear. The main role of these compounds is to offer protection when the lubricating fluid cannot maintain component separation.

THE EVOLUTION OF SYNTHETIC OILS
As time goes on, the lubrication needs of equipment continue to change. As equipment becomes more sophisticated, the demands placed upon the required lubricants become more severe. What may have been a preferred lubricant in the past is likely to be totally unacceptable today.

The automotive industry is an excellent example of how demands on equipment have changed. The engines used in today's cars require significantly more from a motor oil than they did only a few years ago.

For improved fuel economy, most cars are now using lighter oils. Yet the same cars have engines that put out more power per cubic inch of displacement than ever before. To achieve this power level, designers are adding turbo charges which expose the oils to higher temperatures and greater stress. Requirements for cleaner exhaust emissions have contributed to higher levels of contaminants in the oil and also increased the oil's operating temperature. By reducing the aerodynamic drag of new vehicles, designers have also minimized the amount of air that flows over engines and drive trains, and caused operating temperatures to increase still further. Even with all of these changes, designers are still requiring lubricants to last longer than they ever did before. The demand for synthetic lubricants has never been higher.

HOW ARE SYNTHETIC OILS DIFFERENT?
Although the engineering of each synthetic base stock varies depending on he particular stock, synthetic are generally made through a reaction process. This reaction process significantly improves the consistency of the stock and its molecular uniformity. Mineral stocks, on the other hand, are obtained through a process of distillation.

Distillation slightly limits the molecular diversity that may exist within the stock, but does not completely eliminate nonessential molecular structures. This is important because unnecessary molecular structures produce variations in the stock's performance. The ideal lubricant's chemical composition is one in which the molecular construction is identical throughout, such as in a synthetic base stock. Because of the way synthetic stocks are produced, they are molecularly uniform and contain significantly less undesirable materials than a mineral base stock.

Molecular uniformity also affects the properties that each type of lubricant possesses. The properties of mineral oils tend to vary due to inconsistencies in the crude from which they are obtained. The properties and performance features of synthetics, on the other hand are very predictable. Once again, this is due to their molecular uniformity.

AMSOIL synthetic lubricants are formulated to take advantage of superior properties of synthetic base stocks. They provide excellent lubrication and wear protection and have been designed to resist the chemical breakdown processes that limit the service life of conventional mineral-based oils.