Season 2, Episode 127 - The Guys Take a Trip to Superior, Wisconsin for a tour of AMSOIL PT2

 

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Sean P. Holman (0s):

Okay, fellow truck Show Podcast listeners, where we left you was right in the middle of our tour of AMS Oil’s headquarters in Superior Wisconsin. And we were gonna pick up with the second half of our tour starting in just a moment. But first, we have to thank Nissan, the presenting sponsor of The truck. Show Podcast. So if you’re in the market for a mid-size pickup like the Nissan Frontier, or you want a full-size SUV, like the Nissan Armada, head on over to nissan usa dot com where you can build and price, find exactly the options and the features that will fit your lifestyle or head on down to your local dealer for a Test Drive.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (30s):

And since we’re talking about lubrication, this episode, gotta talk about banks new cool runner oil pan for Durmax pickup trucks. 2017 to 2019 and 2020 plus. If you’ve got a Durmax truck, man, oh man, you ate high temps. And this is the way to cool ’em down. Also, the brand new Ram Air Trans pan for all of the Allison Transmissions, 2001 to 2019. Head over to Banks Power dot com to grab yours. And

Sean P. Holman (53s):

Of course, this episode is also sponsored by our friends over at AMS oil. So stay tuned because you’re gonna hear a lot more about the brand from the inside. But if you wanna do a little research on your own, head on over to AMS oil dot com where you can find all the products and all the information that you need to pick out the best synthetic lubricant for your vehicle.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1m 9s):

And before we get blown away outside of AMS oil, ’cause the wind is kicking up, we’ve gotta talk about E-G-R-E-G-R is our friends who make absolutely amazing truck accessories, including window visors, fender flares, and the EGR roll track. Tono cover. Whether it’s electric or manual, they have one for your pickup truck. Head over to egr usa dot com to go shopping

Intro (1m 28s):

The truck show. We’re gonna show you what we know. We’re gonna answer What The truck, Because truck rides with The truck show. We. have the lifted We have the lowered and everything in between. We’ll talk about trucks that run on diesel and the ones that run on gasoline. The truck show. The truck show. The truck show. Whoa Whoa. It’s The truck show with your hosts Lightning and Holman.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2m 7s):

Looks like we’re saying goodbye to Darren VP of production. You have been a wealth of knowledge. Thank you so much for the tour. Looks like you’re dropping us off in the mechanical engineering lab.

Darren (2m 18s):

Yep. You guys will have fun in there. They, they get to play with all the cool toys, unlike like us in manufacturing. I

Sean P. Holman (2m 24s):

Don’t know, I saw a lot of cool toys out there. I would

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2m 26s):

Disagree. Yeah, I agree with Holman. You got some really neat stuff.

Darren (2m 28s):

We have nice stuff. This is really fun. Cool stuff. So You guys will enjoy this. They’re gonna walk you through some pretty cool things that they do. you know, you guys have already seen these really nice test mules that they’re, they’re beating on and And. we got

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2m 39s):

A bunch, I got a can of Maverick. We got another razor, got a, a lifted AMS oil. Looks like a durmax in the corner. Yeah. You got no, got

Sean P. Holman (2m 46s):

Harley behind you. All sorts of stuff in here.

Darren (2m 48s):

Yep. And like I said, don’t forget to ask him about the LS motor. That’s a fun toy.

Sean P. Holman (2m 52s):

All, right?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2m 52s):

All. right. Thank you much. Thank you guys. Yeah. Mark. Long time no speak. How you doing? Good. Good. Yep. Mr. Mark Olm. And now you are in charge of the mechanical engineering lab here at AMSOIL, is that correct?

Mark (3m 4s):

I, I recently turned that over back to our vice president ’cause I moved on into a different position. But yes, I had managed this lab for about five years, six years.

Sean P. Holman (3m 14s):

So You, you know, A little bit about it.

Mark (3m 15s):

I know a thing or two.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (3m 16s):

Take us through you. Everything from a Duramax diesel pickup truck here on the corner. I guess you guys are, I won’t say too much, but I, I overheard that he’s playing with an oil bypass system. Some upgrades to a new oil bypass system.

Mark (3m 29s):

We do a variety of things here, right. So, it could be from small engines that we have on stand that we’re doing really finite chemistry and validation work on all the way to bringing in vehicle off the street that might be a customer’s and diagnosing something that’s going on with it or using that truck to do some prototype development stuff. Like a bypass system like he’s doing.

Sean P. Holman (3m 50s):

So what is this Ls we keep hearing about? We keep hearing about, we should ask you specifically about the quote unquote. No. It makes, yes,

Mark (3m 58s):

It makes big power.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (3m 60s):

Worst power is what we’re hearing.

Mark (4m 1s):

It makes more than that. Oh

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (4m 2s):

Really?

Mark (4m 3s):

It does. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (4m 4s):

Oh, there’s a lot of questionable glances coming. Are we, maybe we need to do we have to stop this light of questioning Don? Don’t know. There’s,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (4m 9s):

There’s PR people off to our corner here and

Sean P. Holman (4m 11s):

They’re looking like Lightning

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (4m 13s):

Already. This is public already. Okay. All, right? This is

Mark (4m 14s):

Public already.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (4m 15s):

So can we go into the dyno

Mark (4m 16s):

Cell? I mean, yeah, we can go in there. Okay. We can go anywhere you want in here. It’s your choice. Why?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (4m 21s):

Hold on. There’s, I, so there’s engine parts abound in here. Do, do you want

Sean P. Holman (4m 25s):

Transmission? The DCT from the, the canam is sitting on there.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (4m 28s):

Right? So

Mark (4m 28s):

We’re standing in the area where we build up and tear down things, right? So everything that we do here, we measure. Nothing is subjective, it’s up, it’s always quantifiable. And that’s, that’s the important thing about running a dynamometer facility like this is we don’t just look at things and say, give it the old thumbs up. you know, we actually measure things, which means when you buy something that’s brand new, the first thing you do is tear it apart. You have to measure everything and then you can build it back up and then you have to send it out somewhere where it normally operates like a side by side. It goes out in the field. It’s strapped with a whole bunch of data acquisition equipment to collect how the thing operates under, I’ll say normal use.

Mark (5m 8s):

Right. So the average person

Sean P. Holman (5m 10s):

There were saying your air quotes there. Did you see that?

Mark (5m 12s):

I mean there was air quotes there. Normal. And I say normal very specifically because you always will say, well I’m pretty heavy on the foot of my vehicle. Like nobody rides harder than I do.

Sean P. Holman (5m 21s):

Everybody does. Okay.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (5m 22s):

Every, everybody

Mark (5m 23s):

Does. Right? you don’t think that the OEMs know that. Yeah. I mean, so we send it out in the field. And, we collect lots of data, And, we do push it hard. So then we take that thing back And, we analyze and synthesize that data so that we can take what we collected in the field and put it on a dyno. Because none of these things are built to run on a dyno. So, You have to know how they operate in order to duplicate that in a dyno profile here to collect the data that you want to capture.

Sean P. Holman (5m 51s):

So are you basically taking the data acquisition that you would bolt on for the field and then you can take all that data, load it, the dyno to replicate it in a controlled environment? Is that the

Mark (6m 1s):

Idea? A hundred. A hundred percent. Okay. Yeah. We want to run something that we measured out there in a very controlled environment. Got it. So we control all the variables now and then we can start dialing things up and down however we want to to really test our lubricants. We’re, we’re not here to put the equipment on tests. That’s what the OEM does. Right? Right. We’re here to put our lubricants on tests to make sure that when we say that it’s good for it, it’s good for it.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (6m 26s):

So things that like you’d normally see in a dyno cell would be like, like top end runs. You’re not doing that because that’s not realistic. Right. You’re blip in the throw. Wow, wow, wow. Like you’re in a turn out of a turn on and off throttle, things like that.

Mark (6m 42s):

Our dino profiles are, are tried to be much like how somebody would operate it outside. Now you can’t be perfect with that, right? Because as you’re say, you’re blip through the woods or something or you’re in traffic. That on and off the throttle really fast is hard to do with a dyno. So we, we have ramp rates that we roll into the throttle And, we back off the throttle and those ramp rates can be pretty quick, but they can’t be as exactly like your foot hammers on it. So we, we, we try to be as, as close as possible in the dyno based on what we collect out in the field. What we do in here is, you know, most people say think about a dyno as like, yeah, I’m gonna go put my whatever my truck on it.

Mark (7m 25s):

And

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (7m 25s):

That’s chassis dino where you’re, where the, where the wheels are rolling on two rolling pins. True.

Mark (7m 30s):

Right? But even engine dinos, like some guy builds a big monster and wants to make sure that it’s put together right and that it can make a lot of horsepower before I actually put it in something before it goes down the track. Like, but those are very quick horsepower sweeps. Like that’s, that’s not what we do. Like

Sean P. Holman (7m 47s):

Yeah, you may be able to find out your, your peak torque and peak horsepower, but what is your usability? How is the vehicle in the middle of the rev range? How is it responding as you’re using it? ’cause nobody’s going out in the world and every time they use it is like a wide open throttle.

Mark (8m 1s):

Well some people do well,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 3s):

But more importantly, you’re probably doing these for hours on end I would assume, right?

Mark (8m 6s):

Yeah, that’s the true difference is we’re not just throttle sweeps. We’re doing durability runs And. we may run something for 10,000 miles, you know, on a motorcycle or something like that. So we’re doing long-term testing. And, and the, the Ls that you quickly brought forward, I mean we ran that through three different profiles. We did just throttle sweeps like full bore, right to the floorboards many times over and over. Like it would be if you’re drag racing, like track stuff is hot on the throttle for eighth of a mile tops, quarter mile maybe. And then you’re off the throttle. We did that like geez a hundred and some times, which was way beyond most people’s racing season.

Mark (8m 52s):

But that’s not it. So I mean it’s more than just that. There’s other things that you could do with that engine.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 57s):

What about like for instance, when we were walking through the warehouse, there are stacks and stacks of marine motor oil, marine, that’s a very different use case. That is when you go to the river, you pin the throttle and then you sit back and you have a beer as you go across the lake and then 15 minutes later you pull back on the throttle like it’s just pinned the whole time.

Mark (9m 14s):

Right. And, we do some of that stuff too, right? We’ll load the thing heavy and just run it at high load cases for hours on end. I mean we have engines in here that, that simply wi run it wide open throttle. We tape ’em off to control the heat, drive the heat up and the sumps and they just run for hundreds of hours. So it. It’s all depending on what we’re trying to accomplish with the lubricant that’s in the engine at the time.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (9m 37s):

Okay. So then are you doing the same thing with like the factory spec lubricant and then you are rebuilding it, remanding it or whatever you have to do and then putting the AMLO lubricant and seeing what the same degradation or lack thereof is?

Mark (9m 50s):

There’s always a comparison, right? You’re comparing your own performance to something. So what is the baseline and, and everything out there? Everything but most things have an OEM recommended fluid. That’s the baseline. So you’re always gonna compare yourself to that. And that sometimes we bring in other competitors that we specifically want to compare against for marketing purposes. You’re always comparing to something.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (10m 14s):

Alright, so let’s go into the DNO cell All, right? Do the big heavy lead line doors. Oh, I see. Hold on. There’s a, there’s a rolling cart with pistons, rods and, and then I see photographs being taken in a light box, which means that you’re photographing evidence,

Mark (10m 29s):

Evidence after test, after test performance. Right? So this is about as subjective as our analysis gets And. we do this so we can compare the before and after. Mostly for the purposes of if we wanted to run many tests over and over and over and over and over, we could always compare what all these tests looked like from a a visual perspective. But all these parts also get measured and that’s the objective piece. We’re quantifying data. And the difference between any of those measurements is

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (10m 60s):

Where the data that you care about as the engineer is. Well it’s just that it’s data. You’re looking at the numbers, the spreadsheet you’re looking at, at where and pitting and all these other things. Right? But as a consumer, the photographs that he’s taking right now, those don’t lie to my eyes. I go, oh I don’t want that. It looks bad. I buy AMS oil. Right?

Mark (11m 20s):

And and many of, except for

Sean P. Holman (11m 22s):

AMS oil customers are way more sophisticated than that.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (11m 24s):

So than my caveman impersonation, but yes.

Mark (11m 27s):

Yeah. Yes. Pictures are used because they’re pretty and they can be used for marketing. I mean if you run a test that’s super abusive And, we demonstrate that case and then you show a set of bearings at the end that look virtually like new. That’s telling to the customer that we did our job. Right.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (11m 43s):

So then I see you’ve got multiple dyno cells, what’s inside of them? Three cells

Mark (11m 48s):

In this block? Yes. We have three different cells. We can go in each one. And there’s different capabilities within each cell. Oh, okay. That’s why we have three different All.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (11m 57s):

Right. Where’s the

Mark (11m 57s):

Light switch? So unfortunately for you, you guys get to see the aftermath of this test and not the LS that you were looking for.

Sean P. Holman (12m 3s):

Holy Mac, this is a snow machine that’s been completely obliterated. Yeah. It

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12m 8s):

Looks like a bomb went off on the inside of a, of a, a snowmobile. Well

Mark (12m 13s):

This is a properly taken apart snow machine. When you say bomb go off, people are gonna think it

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12m 18s):

Exploded. Oh no, no it didn’t at all.

Mark (12m 20s):

Didn’t do their job.

Sean P. Holman (12m 21s):

No, no. That’s not what happened. There’s just pieces of it.

Mark (12m 24s):

Yeah. So here’s the tough, here’s the tough reality with today’s sled technology. In order to get the engine out of the thing, you basically have to take the whole thing apart.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12m 32s):

Wow. Is that because it uses the engine as kind of a, a piece of structural member?

Mark (12m 36s):

Yeah. And they bury it to get the center of mass real low, you know, and everything’s got fuel injection on it now. And there’s lots of, there’s turbos and there’s coolant lines and there’s exhaust around and lots of different electrical sensors and harnesses. Like we used to take engines out of the chassis, we’d put ’em on the dyno and we’d run ’em. But then it got too complicated. Like there’s too much technology and sensors and wires and like everything you see dangling here would have to come out. It’s too time prohibitive. So what we did is we built a table instead. We can buy sleds from any dealership And. we can virtually have Montes the same week. And the only reason it takes A little bit of time is because we have to take the primary off.

Mark (13m 18s):

We build an adapter, we hook it to a drive shaft to the dyno And, we run the thing as is. Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (13m 23s):

So I mean this, this engine, I guess you would call this transverse mounted, right? Because it’s belt driven, right? Correct. Okay. So then instead of a belt, you’re just running the prop shaft straight out the side of the snowmobile, kind of where you’re below where your left knee would be.

Sean P. Holman (13m 38s):

Yeah. Where the primary is is just running a shaft rather than a belt back to drive right

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (13m 41s):

Into your dno Right Into your, into your super flow absorber over here. Exactly. What tests specifically were you running on this turbo? 1 37.

Mark (13m 50s):

So what we’re testing is our lubricants in this particular engine. So there’s a four stroke engine and it’s a new model here that’s out there. We do this a lot. We buy new model year stuff from the OEMs And, we run our oils in it. We beat ’em up to the profiles that we’ve established that we know taxes our oil to prove that, that that the OEM didn’t come out with something new or they didn’t do something different that, that we need to be aware of when we put our oil and recommend our oil for these things. Gotcha.

Sean P. Holman (14m 20s):

So when you said the three cells have different tech or capabilities, one is this one has the table in it for the power sports equipment or what’s the difference with two and three? Right.

Mark (14m 30s):

Well I, I’d say back that up even to this has the super flow. Okay. Right. So we can adapt this cell to run lots of things that we can connect to the super flow. Got it. In this case, sleds are easy ’cause we have built this table. I mean the LS just came off this same dyno not too long ago. So. it has the capability of running things like you see here as opposed to really high horsepower LS builds like we put together. Got

Sean P. Holman (14m 56s):

It.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (14m 57s):

Cell one down, cell two rolling

Sean P. Holman (15m 0s):

In two. Oh completely different. Oh,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (15m 2s):

Very different light switch

Mark (15m 3s):

Over here. Yep. So in here we have two different

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (15m 7s):

Capabilities. I see leaf blowers. Ah,

Mark (15m 11s):

You see a lot of little small engines. We, we use these engines for again, small tweaks in chemistry that we’ll make based on maybe something that’s new that’s come out that we want to evaluate. We have, we have about 10 years of history on these little small engines. I believe these are new Kohler ones that we’re trying to investigate whether they can replace the Honda platform that we have been using. But we’ve been using that Honda platform for 10 years. We know probably more about that platform than Honda does ’cause we’ve run thousands of them. And what we’ll do is we’ll set up a bank of six, you know, three and three.

Mark (15m 51s):

So three of ’em will have the new thing that we’re evaluating in oil. The other three will have the known good baseline chemistry. And we’re always comparing what’s changed, which is something we did to the oil to the baseline. We’ll run ’em for, depends on the profile of what we’re trying to evaluate. Sometimes it’s three to four to 500 hours wide open throughout all nonstop. We usually control the amount of heat that goes into it by taping off the vents to try to drive the heat up, you know, into the two and the 300 degrees range. And then at the end we turn ’em apart, we look at ’em, we see what the difference of the performance is and then they end up going to scrap.

Sean P. Holman (16m 30s):

So looking at this NL, you’ve got the Honda now come Kohler, small engines maybe. Yeah. And you’ve got the small engine oil on there. What’s the difference between what a small engine needs in terms of lubrication versus a regular motor vehicle engine outta a car? Is it air cooled versus water cooled? Is it anything else

Mark (16m 50s):

There? You, you hit the big one. So the big one’s air cooled versus water cooled. Okay. you know, a water, any, any car on the road has a bigger radiator and a thermostat that controls it to, let’s just for arguments say call it 200 degrees, pretty typical air cooled engines. There’s nothing on it that controls it to any temperature other than the load that you’re putting on it and the ambient temperature operating it in. Right. So up here, you know, let’s say it’s 70 degrees in the summer, not so bad, right? But if you’re in Texas and it’s 120 degrees, you’re already at a 50 degree delta now you put that same load on it. Well that thing may see two hundred and eighty, two hundred ninety, three hundred degree little temps, which is cooking much different than your, than the car on the road that’s controlled the 200.

Sean P. Holman (17m 37s):

So is it safe to say that that oil is designed to not cook off as quickly and last at higher temperatures and then I guess a different additive package?

Mark (17m 46s):

Yeah, lots of different additives that are a lot for oxidation resistance. So as you pour heat to the oil and you add oxygen in it, it wants to oxidize and thicken. So we do a lot of work to try to maintain viscosity over time, given an engine that’s gonna run that hot. We also know that people don’t treat those types of applications really

Sean P. Holman (18m 8s):

Well. The

Mark (18m 9s):

Same scrutiny that they do with their car or something that they absolutely love.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 13s):

Nobody, it gets thrown in the shed and they hurt it. They, they, they run it to the point where it’s gonna die. I think I had a, they just tossed in the shed. I think I had a

Sean P. Holman (18m 19s):

Lawnmower for 20 something years that never saw an oil change.

Mark (18m 22s):

And that is really typical.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 23s):

We

Mark (18m 24s):

Are, we are a consume and dispose society. Yeah. And a lot of times our maintenance is pretty particular to that method, which if it, if it’s missing oil, we top it off. Yeah. Right. But I don’t Don don’t drain the oil. Yeah. You burn some and add some more

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 41s):

All. right. What’s next?

Sean P. Holman (18m 42s):

Cell three

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 44s):

And outside I see A-T-V-U-T-V oil. Is that just a Coincidence?

Mark (18m 48s):

Oh, you happen to be here at a time when the machines that you saw outside, torn down just came out of here.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 54s):

Okay.

Mark (18m 55s):

So we have a roller down on here that’s capable of up to, in size to big at or big UTVs. So we run motorcycles, whether they’re on road off road or a variety of different UTVs in here, same deal. All that stuff has to go outside to collect data. We bring it in here, we strap it to the roller and then we put it through its paces here. The difference is we get A little bit of drive, train exercise as well because the power’s gotta go through from engine through transmission differential to wheels to roller. And that’s what’s gonna resist the torque. So we get some drive terrain fluid exercising and testing as well. Gotcha.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (19m 35s):

How much of your job is paperwork? Like just Excel spreadsheets, let’s just pouring over data versus running engines and making noise?

Mark (19m 44s):

Well, I mean, from a technician perspective, they get all the fun to make the noise and watch the test. Like from a, from an office job perspective, it’s a lot of analysis, right? We wanna make sure that what we capture out in the field is valid. We wanna make sure that once we put it on the dyno, we’re mimicking what we do out in the field. And that the data we’re collecting in here is valid. I mean, we look at data from a day-to-day basis to make sure that there’s not some sort of anomaly or trend that’s happening that we, that we don’t want to see. And if we, and if we do see some sort of trend, we start to reel back and say, well, why we ask? We are always asking ourselves why, why, why, why, why?

Mark (20m 25s):

Because that’s our business. I mean, we wanna make sure that when we run a test, the variable under test is our oil. Not something else that we’re missing as part of the equipment that’s changing over time. We don’t want to impact the, the results that we, that we would get from our oil based on something that’s happening in the drive train. For example,

Sean P. Holman (20m 47s):

When you fall asleep at night, do spreadsheets enter your nightmares? It’s all about numbers in the Excel columns.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (20m 53s):

PTSD,

Mark (20m 54s):

That’s kind of my life actually, you know, mechanical engineer by trade. So I think it started at a young age.

Sean P. Holman (21m 0s):

So now do you, is everything in your house operate by spreadsheet as well? Is your

Mark (21m 6s):

Definitely homestead finances

Sean P. Holman (21m 8s):

For sure,

Mark (21m 10s):

But we do have some fun, right? I mean ev all that stuff we talked about going out in the field. Well, although we like to say it’s very diligent and we’re collecting data, you’re still outside, you know? Yeah. Not sitting in the office at a desk driving something or doing something

Sean P. Holman (21m 25s):

Bugs in your teeth ready to go. Well

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (21m 27s):

Let me, let me ask you this. So speaking of that, how much data are you collecting and how much data acquisition equipment do you have you installed on racers, vehicles? Whether it’s like a Scott Birds all top, you know, top speed car or it’s an offroad buggy, that type of thing.

Mark (21m 41s):

So before we invested in this facility, that’s how we did business, right? We used to partner with commercial businesses, race teams, you name it. But the, the problem with that method is that time is time is, it’s too long. Yeah. I mean, a race team only competes what, a couple times a month maybe, or a couple, you know, few times a year. Like, and you’re gonna, you could wait an entire year to get a whole season’s worth of race data. We can do this, we can run this facility 24 7 And. we can do the same thing in a week. So like, it completely collapses our timeline in terms of trying something new and determining whether that was successful or not. Now we still use race teams, we still collect data from them and it’s great data, but we can do things a whole lot faster here.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (22m 28s):

I’m sure too, you see trends in the marketplace as far as how guys are using the equipment too by, by teaming with race teams, right? Like if a, if a particular, if like king of the hammers or something is exploding, that’s maybe they’re using a vehicle in a different way than, than you had been used to and now you can make a chemical kit for them.

Mark (22m 47s):

Well I, I would say that the thing that you guys probably know and most other people would is that horsepower is going up, right? So I mean, 10 years ago, anything that was on the road is not the same as it was today. And it’s because we care more about power than maybe we care about fuel mileage. So when we build lubricants,

Sean P. Holman (23m 8s):

U-S-A-U-S-A-U-S-A when we

Mark (23m 12s):

Build lubricants, you know what used to be a 200 horse engine is now a 350 horse engine and you need to make sure that your

Sean P. Holman (23m 19s):

Product is indirect injected and turbocharged and add all the other things to as well. Right?

Mark (23m 24s):

Right. It’s all those additional technology advancements that we need to be able to make sure we can protect from,

Sean P. Holman (23m 31s):

Especially on from you, the

Mark (23m 33s):

Guy, the guy on the right foot

Sean P. Holman (23m 34s):

Really, especially on di right di gas engines have a completely different signature than a regular indirect injected, dual over cam engine. And you’ve got some of the challenges with emissions and soot and things like that that you would have with a diesel engine. So, You have to start taking into a, an account today’s newer engines and maybe even formulate a gasoline style of oil to mimic more of some diesel properties.

Mark (23m 59s):

Yeah. The, the impacts of technology on oil from a byproducts of combustion perspective are super important. you know, as you’re getting, you know, those byproducts getting into the sump, I need to manage those as we get unburned fuel from that into the sump. I need to manage that as the horsepower goes up, I need to manage that additional load. We’re always tweaking to, to go beyond what technology is at today because we don’t want to be right on the edge where, where can happen And. we need to beyond that. Right? Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (24m 30s):

Okay. One more question. I think Holman was dying to ask you about diesel oils. At what point do you graduate from max duty to dominator? So basically,

Sean P. Holman (24m 39s):

You know, we know there’s dominator competition, diesel oil, which is a big deal, especially I’m ding I’m racing, I’m doing all those kind of things. And I know that you guys have designed it so that you can have it through multiple events at a competition without having to do an oil change. But how does it differ for the guy that is driving, using his truck, working it every day, you know, some sort of a a a haul or a hot shot. Where do you go? What’s the right choice?

Mark (25m 5s):

You kinda answered a whole bunch of that question just by going through it actually. And it, it’s really based on what, what you’re doing with The truck and how frequently you’re doing it to, so

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (25m 13s):

It’s not a horsepower level then

Mark (25m 15s):

It can be, but I mean a lot of daily drivers aren’t running around with 1500 horse under the hood. I mean, they’re just not, I mean that that’s a, that’s a truck that somebody’s gonna use for a particular purpose. It’s either at the track or, or or something other than that, right? We have segregated based on horsepower where we usually say if you’re less than a thousand horse, you can run our Max V stuff and you’ll be just fine. If you’re over a thousand horse, you start looking at our competition diesel or you look at our dominator product, you know, And, we have customers that run all the way up to 3000 horse on our dominator stuff and it, and it’s great, but it’s the, it’s the frequency in which you’re doing stuff like this. you know, can somebody run our dominator in a daily driver?

Mark (25m 57s):

Well you could, but it’s, it’s it’s way overbuilt for what you’re gonna need. It’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (26m 2s):

Overkill at that point. Yeah, but it won’t, it won’t hurt the engine obviously. It just, it they’re spending more money than maybe they need to.

Mark (26m 7s):

Yeah, I mean if it makes you feel good, that’s great, but you don’t need that. It’s like our Max duty has great capabilities up to a thousand horse and that’s pretty much everybody that’s driving around on the road. If you’re saying off-Road, well now we have some different options for options for you. And now a horsepower does matter. So competition diesel that we have is a, is a 2050, we’ll say, well that’s great to like 1500 maybe maybe 2000. And then anything over that, we push ’em right into our domino series. Okay. Proven performance up to 3000 for sure. And

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (26m 37s):

So what is different?

Sean P. Holman (26m 38s):

What if I’m at 3000 in one horsepower

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (26m 40s):

Shut?

Mark (26m 41s):

Well

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (26m 42s):

What makes the difference why I have a a product for you? What makes the difference? How is that dominator different? What, what does the horsepower do to the oil package?

Mark (26m 54s):

So it’s, it’s load, right? So it’s load on bearings. So, You need a very robust viscosity because that viscosity, that film is this difference between metal to metal contact. And if I break my film, I need additives in order to be my, my belt and suspenders approach before metal to metal contact happens. You buffer. So right. So my package is extremely robust and viscosity in film thickness to be able to manage the load and at those impact load times,

Sean P. Holman (27m 22s):

It sounds like a Lightning package. Very similar.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (27m 25s):

I was very robust.

Sean P. Holman (27m 26s):

That’s what

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (27m 27s):

She said,

Sean P. Holman (27m 30s):

That HR is right on the other side of that door right there.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (27m 32s):

And when

Mark (27m 34s):

And in those times in which you have impact loadings, now we’re talking very robust additives to be able to maintain that separation between metal and mal contact. Our dominated product is super robust in those two things,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (27m 46s):

Which explains why I saw so much AMSOIL at the ultimate College challenge just a couple months ago.

Mark (27m 51s):

Absolutely. Those guys are all running, you know, north of 1500 to 2000 horse

Sean P. Holman (27m 56s):

And. we saw it at Diesel Power challenge back in the day. Rest in

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (27m 59s):

Peace. So that is all three dyno cells here and All. right? What’s, are we off to talk to Len next?

Mark (28m 5s):

You’re gonna go and spend some time with Len Gu All. right. Great guy loves power sports

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 11s):

All.

Sean P. Holman (28m 11s):

Right. So I’ve, I’ve known these guys since my magazine days, especially Len, a lot of Diesel Power challenge stuff. So

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 18s):

The bald guy down there,

Sean P. Holman (28m 20s):

You mean that’s, that is strapping Adonis at the end of the ano cell hallway. Yes.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 23s):

Let’s go say that to his face.

Sean P. Holman (28m 25s):

Thanks Mark.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 26s):

Thanks Mark. Fun. Love you Meeting a long time. This is not the, the great Len Groom is it? Hello?

Len (28m 33s):

How are you doing? It is and and Don don’t like the great parts. Oh, you

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 37s):

Don’t like the great. No.

Sean P. Holman (28m 37s):

Fantastic.

Len (28m 38s):

You could just stick to Len.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 40s):

Am I good Len?

Len (28m 41s):

I would just call it average,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 42s):

Personally

Len (28m 43s):

Average only. Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 44s):

So apparently you and Mr. Holman over here have known each other for some years.

Len (28m 48s):

I’ve been at AMS oil for 15 years. I’ve known Mr. Holman all 15 of those years.

Sean P. Holman (28m 52s):

Yeah, I think ’cause when you first came on at AMS oil, one of your, like within the first year, I think you, well we worked together on some events and you came out to our old Orange County office in Irvine. Maybe MPMC or something like

Len (29m 3s):

That? No, it was top truck.

Sean P. Holman (29m 6s):

Geez. Even further back. Yeah. Top before it was

Len (29m 8s):

TTC that I got here and they said, Hey we need you to go to California. There’s an event we sponsor. Yeah, that’s right. Since I knew a couple things about,

Sean P. Holman (29m 14s):

You know, I totally forgot about that. ’cause I was thinking about on the cannabis side, Diesel Power challenge, which we also did. So I remember an Angela signed up for Diesel Power Challenge and like, oh we’re sending Len out. I’m like, oh yeah, I already knew Len.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (29m 23s):

So Len, what is your title and duty here at Angela? I’m

Len (29m 27s):

The product marketing manager. Power sports and Power Equipment. Okay.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (29m 32s):

And so are you, do you spend more time at the office or at races and supporting your, your team?

Len (29m 37s):

I, I would say it’s a, it’s a kind of a mixed bag. We work, the area that I work in, it’s similar to, you know, areas that, there’s several of me that work here, And, we kind of break up the different markets. So I fall under power sports, which at AMS oil is racing as well. So I have the racing oils, we have a, we have a hand in what products that we’re launching in any of those areas. So if I speak to power sports, it’s because that’s what I do. So it’s what products, what’s the look and feel pricing. We work with product development to, to develop, here’s what we’re looking for, here’s our major competitors. These are some key areas that we need to build technology for. And then work with marketing to build that plan based on some of those key technological parameters.

Len (30m 20s):

So I, and then I also have a hand in some of the testing in this mechanical lab you’re gonna find there’s a lot of power sports equipment. I’ve got a hand in test design, what the results look like, how we shape the message. And then in certain situations I actually end up on some of the videos. So

Sean P. Holman (30m 33s):

How has the technology for oil changed in the power sports market? Because it’s completely different from 10 years ago turbos and different types of going from CVTs and belts to, you know, DCT transmissions or you know, on and on and on.

Len (30m 47s):

It. It’s changed quite a bit in a time just that I’ve been here we used to be able to, you know, borrow different formularies from different areas of the company that would be, you know, maybe pass car related or heavy duty related. Now it’s become very, very specialized where you not only have to buy the equipment, test it because the OEM isn’t going to help you. We we’re looked at as a competitor, sure you need to buy the equipment, test it, figure out, you know, what is, its appetite for oil as we say. Okay. And then design the product to meet those needs. And in certain situations we find weak spots in the OEM oil and then we can exploit that, you know, through marketing and, and ultimately it’s a benefit to the consumer because it’ll lasts longer run cooler. you know, you can do more cool things with it, you know. ’cause as you know, you buy a dirt bike, you buy a UTV, first thing you do is go and do everything.

Len (31m 31s):

You’re not supposed to do that Right. So You, hundred percent. You’re gonna beat the heck out of it.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (31m 35s):

And by the way, the UTVs are so expensive these days. I mean, and

Sean P. Holman (31m 40s):

You have to buy the trailer and the tow rig on

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (31m 41s):

Top of it. I mean it was only 15 years ago when like the rhino, right, the Yamaha Rhino came out and it was kind of the, that was the gold standard and it would like, it would do 40 miles an hour at best or something like that. And now the guys are doing a hundred and they’re $60,000 like fully loaded. It’s nuts. Yeah.

Len (32m 2s):

And you wanna keep the thing alive as long as you can. You want it to work for you when you need it to work is kind of the big deal. So it, it, you know, it’s to everybody’s benefit to build a product that that’s going designed to work in those pieces of equipment. And what we run into in these dirt bike would probably be the best example. Very small amount of oil that’s required to do a really big job. So there’s a quart and a half of oil in some of these dirt bikes and it’s, you know, what are they making for horsepower? Supercross bike making 50 horsepower, 60 horsepower. You can clear a triple with one burp of the throttle. So there’s hardly any oil in there So. it means it has to go through the engine and do, do its job over and over and over so many times faster than if you had 15 quarts, you know, or even four. So you’ve gotta build for the oil to cycle like that, to also take those kind of heat, you know, those heat cycles that it can handle high temperatures, A lot of sheer stress, tons of pressure on the bearings.

Len (32m 51s):

They’ve ditched the roller bearings in some of these things and now they’ve gone flat bearings because they know there’s power there. Again, that’s film strength oil has to bear that load, you know, of that technological change to get the bike to make more power.

Sean P. Holman (33m 3s):

What, what’s the benefit to going back to, we were talking off, off air, but a property owner who has a bunch of side-by-side motorcycles. Things that may be run once a month. you know, owner goes out there, parks his diesel truck or whatever and he’s on his side by side or dirt bike or his A TV running around the property and then I think it’s parked it, it’s stored, it’s sitting there, it’s hot temperatures, it’s cold temperatures. He expects it to fire up right away and do all the work every time. Their benefit to the AMS oil product for that consumer. And then like how often should those people be doing oil changes? Is it by hours? Is it by time? What is, what’s different in the power sports market from a guy who might be used to doing his own oil changes on the consumer truck side?

Len (33m 43s):

Well we started in the power sports area by putting no specs on anything, right? So there’s not a API SL or a CJ four or you know, certain things. The best spec we can come up with in Powersports to a certain degree is the, the JS O MA A two, which is your frictional characteristics that we’d use to build anything that has a wet clutch. Outside of that, there’s not really like a spec that we could build something to. So an industry standard, we know that we can build it inside of this, this range. But these additives, it’ll do this. Everybody’s got something specific. Mm. You have to go out there and understand the equipment. So we have to get it, build it. We have a general knowledge of how to build an oil for a four stroke engine. Sure. But then you start tweaking on it. So all the things you talked about, lots of on off or short trips, putting fuel in there, you’re putting condensation in there, it’s sitting, it’s a four stroke engine, the exhaust valves can’t stay closed.

Len (34m 33s):

So something has to be open and exposed to atmosphere. So, You have to figure all of that stuff out. And then you build for it. So there’s only so much room on the surface what that means. So the molecular surface, there’s only so many places you can put,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (34m 46s):

You know what, I didn’t even, you’re saying this and like, I don’t even think anyone considers that when they just turn the engine off, there’s a valve open, there’s a valve closed, there’s a valve exposed and it’s, it is exposed to moisture, to temperature, to to temperature to everything. And those valves are like, and I also don’t think that people understand how fast the valves are moving and what they’re being asked to do and the, the gases that they’re asked to pass through. Like I don’t

Sean P. Holman (35m 13s):

Think people, so that’s why I think a quality oil makes sense, especially in those use cases that aren’t in every day something sitting it’s pizza, right. Equipment. Right,

Len (35m 20s):

Exactly. So, You have to figure that out. And then you have to adjust the product, right? So there’s a base type product that we can build. Like if you want a 10 40, we can build you a 10 40. But then we leave some room there to adjust if we know that it’s gonna sit, we’ll add some rust and rosin inhibitors in there. We’ll add some, if we know that it’s ultra, ultra hot, like an air cooled application, we can put in more, we can add detergent, dispersant type additives to keep the deposit control, you know, to add some deposit control to it so we can tweak it in different areas based on what the oil’s going to do. And that’s really what the fun part about this whole thing is.

Sean P. Holman (35m 53s):

And with the dispersing that keeps kind of the things suspended in the oil. Yeah. So that they pass through the filter and not sit it in the sump. Correct. And basically cause a bunch of sludge in the bottom

Len (36m 2s):

Right. You want to keep it off the surface, dump it in the filter. That’s the key. Get it in the filter control soot, get it to move to the filter. That’s what it’s there for. Keep your filter, you know, use a decent filter, get everything in there, don’t let it collect or coagulate inside that engine. Right. So, You have antioxidants, dispersant detergent package, all work kind of in conjunction to, to do that. Keep it from forming. If it does form, get it in the oil filter.

Sean P. Holman (36m 25s):

So one of the things I, I’ve kind of been interested about is filters. So You guys make your own filters in AMS oil and So You can include it in, you know, when you buy your oil, whatnot. But a lot of these filters are pretty small microns. How small are the, the molecules of, of the additives are when, when oil’s passing through a filter, obviously you’re being, you’re able to pick up So it, metal metallic pieces, things like that. Are you ever picking up additives or anything that you don’t want the filtered pickup? Or are those so small they’re always passing through?

Len (36m 54s):

That’s a good question and I think that’s interesting to people because I’ve asked that question myself. The answer to the question is about five microns. Once you hit the five micron range, so the human eye can see about five microns. So if it’s shiny in the filter, you can assume that’s bigger than five microns. Once it gets under that, you get to oil analysis, you get to about the three micron range, now you have to start worrying about additives. So if you get a, most filters are gonna play in that five micron range that’ll get the job done for soot and, and different things like that. But three, two, now you start worrying about additive removal because they will be certain additives and again, leave me a lot of room here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Certain additives can get grabbed in that filter. So You, watch yourself start around three microns, then you, you have to be careful, you

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (37m 36s):

Know, and at a certain point do you inhibit the, the actual passing of the oil through it? I mean if you get too small too fine. That’s

Len (37m 43s):

The cool part is you can get a media And. we have that here. You get a media that’s highly efficient So, it will flow really well. But it also filter really well. So You add more pleats, So, You open up an extended type filter. You’ll see more pleats and

Sean P. Holman (37m 54s):

It’s all about surface area, more surface

Len (37m 55s):

Area. That’s all it is. So You want an a low micron filter that still will filter. Right. I don’t want a five micron at 60% efficiency. Right. Part of it’s going out through the bypass. Yeah, you want nineties on your efficiency rate. That means 90% of the oil is being filtered.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (38m 11s):

I didn’t think about the use case for power sports like a lawnmower. It might sit for months and I know we’ve touched on this quite a few times, but most of our listeners drive their truck every day. There are some guys that use it only to to haul a boat once a while,

Sean P. Holman (38m 26s):

Things like that. But they all have lawnmowers,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (38m 27s):

Motorcycles. I understand that. That’s what I’m talking about is it’s such a, you are these two crazy extremes where you have to build one additive package, one oil to do so many things.

Len (38m 41s):

Yeah. And that’s, and that’s one of the things that we really specialize in is is like I’ve, I’ve already hit this like a couple times, is really and understand that motor’s appetite. But then there are some that if you build for a worst case scenario, it’ll cover you for many others. So I’ll give you an example. It’s very difficult to build oil for an air cooled motor such as your lawnmower because what happens there, right? You’ve got an air cooling a fan that’s questionable at best on the flywheel. Yep. It gets clogged with grass. Lord forbid you clean it. It’s in the

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (39m 9s):

Dust stream. Yeah. When you,

Len (39m 10s):

It’s just jammed full of everything. So your sump temperatures on a lawnmower far out exceed some, some temperatures on on many gas applications

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (39m 18s):

And you may never change the oil in

Len (39m 19s):

Your lawnmower to entire. Right. And then who changes it? No one, you kick it in the garage, maybe check it if you’re lucky. Add if it needs it. Add A little bit. Yeah. So it. We start a lot of times there. That’s a worst case scenario. So if you can formulate for a small engine air cooled small engine, you’ve done something with your additive and your antioxidant base oils play a large role there as well. The better the base oil, the less bandaids and fluff you have to use to make it do something. Right. Because base good base oils inherently do a lot of jobs well and you don’t have to patch it up with things such as viscosity modifiers and antioxidants. Right. Just those are a big bandaid as well. Antioxidants are required for formulary but you use a good base oil you can use slightly less because you’re not trying to work so hard to keep the oil from oxidizing in those hotspots like around the the valves.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (40m 5s):

So two questions Lynn. First we hear that you had a hand in analyzing all of the engine parts that are disassembled outside that used to be in these dino cells. Can you tell us what you found, what you were looking for and what you found?

Len (40m 19s):

A lot of what you’re looking at out there, given whatever piece of equipment it was, we run something called a proof of performance. Certain situations, we’ll call it an extreme proof of performance where we’ll take, we’ll buy a, a specific piece of equipment, we’ll take it out on the trail, fully sensor the thing and then understand how it runs in the wild. If you will drive it like a normal person would drive it. We’re not trying to break it. Have we taken ’em to the racetrack? Yes. Have we done hill climbs? Yes. But then mix that in also with some recreational type driving. How are you gonna use your Polaris razor turbo? Okay. If I can have a use a brand name on this show. And that’s one of the pieces of equipment that’s out there. So what we’re looking at is you run it for an oil change interval. So that’s what we did. And then we take it apart And, we look at it And, we make decisions on, well what,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (41m 3s):

What are you measuring? First off

Len (41m 5s):

Everything that you can imagine bearing clearances, rings all everything rings. We’re looking at depositing what the deposit looks like or we’ll get a, we’ll get a rating on it. We’re looking at, we’ve got a profilometer that runs down the bore. So we’re actually looking at how the ridges look inside

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (41m 20s):

There. Are you putting some of the stuff under microscopes as well? Or?

Len (41m 23s):

Well the profilometer in a cylinder will get you what you’re looking for. It gives you your, your profile of what the bore looks like as you I’m sure know. So that really tells the tail on if the ring pack is wearing or if the, if you’re, you know, if the oil’s not doing its job on the, on the cylinder liner, you’ll, you’ll see those, the, the peaks and valleys start to shrink. You lose your oil, lose your compression, you start to wear it out. So we’re always looking heavily there and we’ll use that tool for that. Not so much microscope based. It’s more precision measuring tool like you would see at an engine shop.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (41m 51s):

Did you see anything that surprised you or do you ever like oh

Sean P. Holman (41m 54s):

My god. Or are there trends with the new agents or higher stress, higher power turbocharge now there’s a lot of high performance trickling down from cars and and traditional vehicles into power sports Right

Len (42m 4s):

Now, you know what we’ve seen a ton of is these turboed vehicles fuel dilution. You wouldn’t think that, especially considering they hold three and four quartz oil, which isn’t a ton considering the power. They’re

Sean P. Holman (42m 14s):

Outputting a lot bigger than a motorcycle though So

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (42m 16s):

It So it fuel for those who don’t understand like me fuel is getting past the rings,

Len (42m 20s):

It’s getting in there somehow most likely Yes. Past the rings

Sean P. Holman (42m 23s):

And it’s sitting in the sump with the oil. Yep. It

Len (42m 24s):

Collects in the sump. The doesn’t get hot enough to boil it all off. So then it starts accumulating in there. So once we do our samples throughout the test, we start watching fuel dilution. you know we’re seeing some of these things in the three and four and 5% range. Five is bad. That’s a lot. Five is bad. Right. The test doesn’t

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (42m 40s):

Go. So you’re seeing 5% of all the oil that’s in the sump, it has fuel in it. That’s right.

Sean P. Holman (42m 44s):

Nope. 5% of all the fluid liquid in the sump is fuel. Oh

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (42m 48s):

Okay. That’s that’s correct.

Sean P. Holman (42m 49s):

You’re a hundred percent correct. So basically now you’re only getting 95% of the performance that you should have gotten when you first oil change.

Len (42m 54s):

Everything gets, everything is now thin. Yeah. So, You start to see your additives drop, you start to see the viscosity go away. But what you look at sometimes there’s nothing we can do about that. It’s a stock piece of equipment, it’s gonna fuel dilute it is what it is. So what you start watching is the wear metals. If they don’t go up the oil’s doing its job, as soon as the wear metals you see fuel deletion go up. If you see the wear metals climb, the oil is not doing its job at

Sean P. Holman (43m 15s):

That. And the wear metals is the oil analysis where you’re looking at picking up all the little pieces and shards and where the shiny stuff that comes off.

Len (43m 22s):

You’re looking at cylinder liner. Most importantly you’re looking at bearings and what makes up the bearings. Those are the two key pieces that we’ll see inside the, that are wear metals as you would with a car engine. Yeah. The same basic design. You see those start climbing, you got problems. So we’ve seen some really bad fuel diluter, we’ve not seen wear metals. Right. So that’s something that we kind of talk about in the proof of performance. It’s like it’ll take the fuel dilution and doesn’t wear it out. So it’s nothing to be concerned

Sean P. Holman (43m 45s):

With So. You can, you can formulate the oil with a special additive package where fuel dilution at 5% doesn’t hurt the oil in terms of lubricity and its ability to do its job.

Len (43m 55s):

Yep. It comes down to your choice of, it really does. It comes down to your choice of quality tools and you start with the base oil, So, You, you put a really good base oil in there. You use high quality additives, you use this modifiers that are very, very robust if you have to use them. So all of the chemistry, you’re making choices. It’s like building an engine, right? You as you make the choices to build the higher, higher end engine, the price tag goes up. It’s the same thing with oil, but it’s also a trade off. You’re never gonna get everything perfect, right? You have to skew it certain different directions. So again, it’s about that piece, that piece of equipment’s a, if it’s a fuel diluter, we know that we’ll start looking at the base oils, making sure we’re using really good robust base oils in there. So we know that the film strength, ’cause that’s what starts failing is the film that the oil is building, whether it’s pressurized or not, starts to be compromised.

Len (44m 42s):

So, You pour

Sean P. Holman (44m 43s):

Fuel in it. What we’re talking about too on film is you’re running the engine. Obviously a film is coating the parts that are helping for metal pieces to slide by each other. But film also has a level of, so after the vehicle’s turned off and everything’s dripping down into the oil pan or whatever, there’s still some oil film that’s kind of left behind so that you’re not starting metal on metal in an

Len (45m 7s):

Engine’s a amount that’s behind. Yeah. And, we look at that. There are different additives that would have the tenacity to hang around So it, it’ll stay in there on the part if you leave, leave oil sit long enough, gravity will take its toll. I mean it’ll come out of there. Right. But there we can, we can influence that to a certain degree. But for the most part, the oiling systems are designed that as soon as you hit the key it’s, it’s pressurized. you know, a lot of times that’s why you’re seeing, you know, in power sports we’ve seen a move towards the fives and the zeros to a certain degree. And a lot of that has to do with getting it up to pressure quickly. ’cause it’s going to move faster than a 20. Even good synthetic. Yeah. Zero eight versus a 28. That zeros gonna move quicker, you know? And in the days of, you know, you start it and go, you’re better protected with zero.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (45m 48s):

I just did an oil change on my son’s 2016 Scion TC zero 20 weight and I know, I guess it’s a thing, but I didn’t, I have never used zero 20 on a car before and I was like,

Sean P. Holman (45m 59s):

Hybrids are zero now.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 0s):

Are they really? I was like, this is one, it’s not that the zero is, it was like capped at a 20. Like I was really surprised how it, it’s like it’s

Sean P. Holman (46m 8s):

Pretty common. Is

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 8s):

It really

Sean P. Holman (46m 9s):

For efficiency, basically.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 10s):

I mean it’s like a sewing machine.

Len (46m 11s):

Correct? It’s, and the problem with that is the move to zeros is okay,

Sean P. Holman (46m 16s):

It’s the move down to 20.

Len (46m 17s):

Well you start looking at the spread anytime you make that spread wider. So if you get to a zero 50 which we have, you have to have some very high end juice in there, as we call it, to make sure that it’s going to be robust. Because it would have a tendency, anytime you stretch the vista that far, it has a tendency to lose its viscosity real quick. So You put it in as a 50, you run it a little while, turns into a 40 to a 30 real quick, it starts falling down the hill. Okay?

Sean P. Holman (46m 41s):

It goes off a cliff

Len (46m 42s):

On a ground, right? You can heavily influence that with base oil selection. The problem is behind that comes pricing So You. Gotta make sure you got the room to, to be able to do that. But yeah, our zero 20, and I can speak to the Pacar world A little bit. The zero 20 is starting to edge in, in the five 20. Our edging in on our, on our

Sean P. Holman (46m 58s):

10 40

Len (46m 58s):

Flagship five 30. Okay. Yeah. The flagship five 30 is losing some ground to the zero.

Sean P. Holman (47m 3s):

So you’re starting to see that market share ramp up as those newer cars coming along

Len (47m 6s):

You’re seeing. And I think that’s just because you’re seeing, you know, the, the car park is aging and,

Sean P. Holman (47m 10s):

But that’s actually slid s good for you as AMS oil because it shows that people newer cars are putting your product in it

Len (47m 16s):

Possibly,

Sean P. Holman (47m 16s):

You know, because otherwise if you didn’t see that switch, people were just like, well, whatever.

Len (47m 21s):

You know? True. I think that, you know, the OEMs hold a lot of influence over what viscosities are going to put into that. I can speak to from the PowerPort side of it is the, the OEMs hold all the power people are going to put in there what they require. And we’ve given up on trying to switch people’s thinking a long time ago. It’s better off, hey, let’s just build one that works really well. Yeah. I’m not gonna talk you into a 10 40, I’ll build you a zero that’s as tough or better than that 10 that, but it might

Sean P. Holman (47m 44s):

Be A little bit more expensive, but it’s also gonna last longer and be a more quality oil and

Len (47m 48s):

All those things. Yeah. At the end of the day, when you’re keeping your vehicle longer, whether it’s power sports or not, if you use a quality piece, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a zero, as long as it’s a quality, it’s gonna last longer. Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (47m 57s):

So am I hearing that if I have, if I’m trying to stretch the viscosity at a zero 40 or something like that, or a 10 60, which I think little Eric at my, like in, you know, he has A-B-M-W-M three and I think it’s got 10 60, which it’s a, it’s racing oil and it’s expensive and I’d also never seen before. But when you stretch it that far, do you need to change it more often because you’re asking more of the oil?

Len (48m 24s):

No, you wouldn’t. No, it’s just that engine’s appetite, it wants the oil pressure fast, but then at the end of the day, it needs durability when it’s up to operating temperature. So as you guys may or may not know, oil has to get to two 12 F to make its actual rated viscosity. Somebody probably told you that today. No,

Sean P. Holman (48m 40s):

You did,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (48m 41s):

You did right now. Okay. Thank you

Len (48m 42s):

Lynn. So, You have to get the oil to 212 degrees because that’s the industry standard. It’s actually a hundred C. So if we speak in cell C or F, it doesn’t matter. A hundred C two 12 F is what your oil viscosity. That’s where it makes its viscosity on either side of that. Now it really depends on how you’ve built the product. You get it hotter, some are gonna hang on longer, it’ll stay a 50, stay a 50, you get it to 300 degrees. Eventually they will all fall off the cliff. They’re gonna start dropping. So

Sean P. Holman (49m 8s):

Most 50 43, so most of FedEx. So we’ve, we talked about A little bit, but I think you’re kind of delving more into it. So I’ll, I’ll bring it back up again. A lot of vehicles today run at oil temps of 2 20, 2 30 from the factory normal every day. A lot of new vehicles require synthetics for that reason. And so they’re running those higher temperatures for emissions. So a lot of people who maybe haven’t bought a new car in let’s say 12 or 15 years, they’re used to 180 200 and they’re seeing on the, on the, on the coolant temp. And they’re seeing, you know, low two hundreds on oil and now today your 2 20, 2 30 on coolant and 2 40, 50 60 sometimes on some of the really new vehicles on oil temps.

Sean P. Holman (49m 49s):

So I get a lot of people emailing me or DMing me or asking me, they’re like, Hey, something’s wrong with my new yeah Jeep Wrangler. They feel uncomfortable. Something’s wrong with my new, you know, whatever car. And they’re like, it’s running at two 50. And I’m like, that’s fine. And most, from what I understand, synthetic oils hang around until about 2 80, 2 85 or so before they start breaking down. Which is why most of the new cars require a synthetic from the factory when before you can get away with a blend or a conventional. Is that true? Is that, what’s the insight to that?

Len (50m 19s):

Here’s the thing on that, I can’t speak to other people’s the way they construct the oil, but it has a ton to do with, and you go back to this, the quality of base oil that you’re gonna build, build, we’ll move that temperature around. If you start, you know, mixing in different group threes and different things like that, yes the temps will move. You use a really good high, high quality, let’s say PAO for the example, like a group four, group five Esther, right? The super, super exotic boutique stuff that’s gonna hang on into the three hundreds, you know, depending on how you’ve put it together. And again, give me some room on this. I don’t wanna get hung out to drive it. The better, the better basos you use, the higher temps you can get away with. But you’re exactly correct. These cars are running hotter for longer and that’s just demanding a synthetic.

Len (50m 59s):

If you put a low rent conventional in, in something like that, you’re back to changing oil at 3000 miles or less. And who recommends that’s probably gonna,

Sean P. Holman (51m 7s):

It’s be dark too.

Len (51m 8s):

We’re all, especially in the diesel world, we’re, we’re all five to 7,500 in the gas world now, you know, So You could never get away with that. You’d be, you’d turn the whole thing black. You’d see these sludges, like you guys have seen in the videos when they lift the valve covers and it’s all jelly. That’s oxidized oil or son antifreeze leak. It’s one

Sean P. Holman (51m 23s):

Of the two. Well, yeah, one of the two. One

Len (51m 25s):

Of the two. But a black, the real black caramel look. Yeah, that’s, that’s oxidation.

Sean P. Holman (51m 29s):

I, I guess my point too is with manufacturers recommending synthetic out the gate, that leaves more room for people to, or I guess another reason to go to Amil, right? Because maybe in the past like, well Don don’t really need a synthetic. Well now you need a synthetic. Yeah, So You might as well go out and get a much better synthetic than what you might otherwise have chosen. And you certainly don’t wanna go back to conventional on a new vehicle that requires synthetic ’cause they’re not just trying to gouge you at the dealer or something like that. It really requires it because these engines are running so much hotter and I don’t know that everybody takes that into account or understands that your

Len (51m 58s):

Problems down the road, if you oxidize up a motor by using cheap oil, not changing oil on time, you know, just really going low rent. You’re just asking for trouble. We were talking earlier, you know, what does it cost to do phasers on a gen two eco boost? you know, there’s three grand out the window, a turbo that you’ve got all coked up and won’t work anymore. There’s five grand and

Sean P. Holman (52m 15s):

There’s a lot of cars and trucks you could, where you have to pull the body off to get to the turbo,

Len (52m 18s):

Right? Realistically, you could save yourself some money by changing your oil. Using a good synthetic in many of those engines can make ’em last longer. Right? It’s the oxidation that that kills you. lts, they’ve got cam phasers and they have minimum and maximum pressures that they can work under if that, if you get the oil too hot, you get an engine light. you know, because it just, the oil as we were talking about earlier start, the pressure starts to drop as the oil gets thin, the car knows that and it’s gonna light you up for that. So You really gotta use a decent synthetic product now.

Sean P. Holman (52m 48s):

So we keep hearing about this mystery LS engine every, every time we say either somebody smile, smiles or somebody nods their head or shakes their like, like somebody’s like, I wanna tell you about it. And then somebody else over here is like nods and says, maybe not.

Len (53m 3s):

No. So part of what I do, as we talked about earlier is have fun. Yeah. We get to have, we, we have some fun around here, And, we do. As you guys have seen, right? Yeah. And I get to be involved in it ’cause of the job that I do being power sports and racing. We decided we wanted to come after, you know that that LS crowd, it’s like let’s build an engine and do something fun with it. But

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (53m 21s):

That’s such a small audience. Oh wait,

Len (53m 24s):

Boo. Massive I know. And that’s the thing, it kills me. ’cause I mean I’ve told people this before, so I’ll tell you guys, if you really just let me pick, I probably would’ve picked a Ford, right? And I can get crucified for that. But at the end of the day, we make choices based on the market, right? So So, You have to look at an Ls, So it

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (53m 39s):

Ls Ls the world, you

Len (53m 41s):

Know, it’s an, it’s an LS three. So we built an LS three. It’s like, what can we do to this thing? Everyone’s already done a thousand horsepower, what can we do with this thing? So what we decided to do was let’s build a thousand horse, but then let’s drive it around, right? Let, let’s do something to it. So we, what we decided we wanted to do is we were gonna race it as much as the average enthusiast would race it in a season. Then we were gonna autocross it the much, as much as an average enthusiast would do that in a season. And then we were gonna, what’s your average grocery getter guy that has a thousand horsepower under the hood do with his car in a season? We lumped that all into one dino program in one engine and did that to it on the Dino. So we drove it around, we put huge hits on it, a pile of hits about full, full thousand horse Dino hits on it.

Len (54m 24s):

And, we drove it around a track. We simulated a couple different tracks. We were able to collect some data. There was so much power there. We had to actually tune it down slightly because most autocross cars aren’t making 8 75 coming

Sean P. Holman (54m 35s):

Out of turns, spinning out third members up the back. It

Len (54m 37s):

Would be spinning across the track. So anyway, at the end of the day we, we worked it pretty good and then we just drove it around. Part of the, I think 20 hours of that program was, was just driving it around,

Sean P. Holman (54m 46s):

What was it then? Nothing. It was in

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (54m 49s):

Theno wrote

Len (54m 49s):

The program on the dyno. So our DNO is fully automated. There’s no handle, you don’t have a long

Sean P. Holman (54m 54s):

Time, you don’t have like a screen and a steering Wheel and a pedal. No. And your guy can sit here and just drive all day. No,

Len (54m 59s):

You can drive it around with those, with the two knobs and the dy, you know, our Dino operators listening to us, they’ll be like, oh, driving around I. know what that means. But we actually wrote the programming So. it had no human had to really do it. It just, it, we did the, we put the drag race and hits on it. Then we changed the programming to Autocross And. we switched it to, Hey, we’re just gonna drive it around. Right. So? it was

Sean P. Holman (55m 16s):

Turbocharge or naturally aspirated? No,

Len (55m 17s):

This was a Whipple. We did a Okay. Whip lower. We did a three liter Whipple on there. Supercharger? Yeah. Yeah. They, the big one had not come out yet. We were just behind when that that new, I think it’s a three five.

Sean P. Holman (55m 25s):

Yeah, I think this is a two nine you used or something like that. Or three. It

Len (55m 27s):

Was a three. No, it was a three. Three.

Sean P. Holman (55m 28s):

We have a, we have a,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (55m 29s):

We have a gen 5, 3 8 on lock jaw. Okay. And he’s coming out with a four. Four.

Sean P. Holman (55m 33s):

Yeah. Okay.

Len (55m 35s):

Yeah. Yeah. We

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (55m 36s):

So, You probably had the, yeah it was a, it was a two, nine or three. Oh and then a the three eight

Len (55m 40s):

And it had a Yep. Intercooler built in.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (55m 42s):

That’s correct. Right under it.

Len (55m 43s):

And they do great, great piece. And that’s, that’s what we use So. it was a, a Whipple supercharged LS three make

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (55m 50s):

Some good noise too. They

Len (55m 51s):

Do sound cool.

Sean P. Holman (55m 52s):

I hope you made some recordings of that for your social,

Len (55m 54s):

We’ve got a pile of video out there that you can, you can actually look at. Awesome. What we actually did to build it all the different parts and pieces, we put all nice, we put all pretty, you know, high end stuff in it. ’cause we didn’t, we didn’t wanna break it. ’cause at the end of the day it was a learning experience for us to get to that horsepower level and do what we were doing to it. So, You understand that the crank wants to play jump rope sometimes in there on an LS, specifically supercharge, you’re going to front bearing and LS is center supported. So that crank wants to start playing jump rope as we call it. Right. You guys know this? Yep. And it starts rubbing up some of the bearings. So, You have to build your tolerances properly. Use the right visc metrics in the oil. What

Sean P. Holman (56m 29s):

Oil did

Len (56m 29s):

You use to get a clean looking bearing?

Sean P. Holman (56m 31s):

Was it race oil or did you see that your series

Len (56m 33s):

Or Actually we used 1550 dominate racing oil on this thing. Okay. Because of the way the engine came together. Yep. And what it was showing us, we, it needed to have the high end stuff.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (56m 43s):

Can I ask you a question that no one, I I I, we’ve talked to you guys all day long and I don’t know how the OE comes up with the original oil spec or how you, as you kind of built this engine from scratch, how you decide on these things. How do you even know? Or is it because you’ve already built hundreds, like if you built one engine from scratch, you were gonna design an engine land right here at a billet. No one’s ever done it. Three cylinder, like something weird, whatever. How do you decide what oil you’re gonna start with? Like what determines that? ’cause we just go, oh, the, the OE said five 30. How did they come up with five 30

Len (57m 22s):

Bearing clearance is generally speaking, right? Any engine builder’s gonna tell you that engine and bearing clearances a lot of times. And then horsepower levels will start to dictate A little bit. But usually bearing clearances, oil flow rates will start to dictate what, what viscosity that you want it to, to be at. So this was a three, I think it was three and a half to four th on the mains. We might have been two and a half on the rods on this LS that we’re talking about. And at that point it was a, it was a 58 to keep the film alive so we didn’t want the parts to touch. Right. you don’t even want ’em to get close. Yeah. So, You start seeing that on the bearings and in most vehicles that would be fine. But we were gonna show it to people so we wanted to make sure it’s, it needs to be straight.

Sean P. Holman (58m 2s):

Here’s pictures of our bearings after. Don’t mind the other side. They were touching things. Yeah,

Len (58m 5s):

Yeah. Don’t worry about that center and that front. It’s ’cause the supercharger pulley pulls up.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (58m 9s):

I don’t

Len (58m 9s):

Wanna have to explain that. So we built the thing properly and then that’s why we went with a 58. But tolerance tolerances, generally speaking sets your baseline block construction. If it’s aluminum, it’s gonna move a lot more. You’ll see those things run really thin tolerances ’cause they’re so tight when you start ’em and then they expand So, it is usually to engine tolerances. We will, we’ll get the path set and then we can always adjust from there based on testing. Got it.

Sean P. Holman (58m 33s):

One last question for you. So it’s been kind of a big deal. We thought it was a big deal. AMS oil has come out with oil change kits on The truck side. So that’s a, you know, funnel nitrile gloves, even the sticker, whatever oil that you’re using in the filter. But my understanding is you started that on the power sports side.

Len (58m 49s):

We did. Right. So the, the first ones that we did here at slo, believe it or not, were the, it was the HD kit. So we, the V twin, it was a V twin kit. Okay. We know who HD is. Yeah. So we started there and the main reason behind, the reason I pitched that was they didn’t have one at the time. So we thought, well this might be a good idea because you could start to see that shift, right? Yeah. People just wanna, it’s nothing technologically great. It’s just super easy. One stop shop, it’s just super easy. It

Sean P. Holman (59m 18s):

All right there. You don’t have to buy your oil one place you love somewhere else. Your oil filter somewhere else. Else. Yeah. You can do it because of your distribution. Boom. It’s here at your house tomorrow. Right. And it’s oil change in the box, everything

Len (59m 26s):

You need. Right. And if you want to test that, you should test it on a competitor that doesn’t currently have one. That it’s a very, very good product for us. So our 20 W 50 V two motorcycle oil is a very, very good product. It’s got known history. So we tried it there. So we put it in the HD or we put it in that and it just went crazy. So we’ve been building kits ever since. And the OEMs, of course this isn’t new. They’ve been doing this for a while and now we just continue to build and, and people are, we’re just trying to provide to the customer something really easy. Here’s everything you need, do it at home. It’s not that scary that that was really a key thing. That’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 0m 0s):

Great. Congratulations. I’m so happy that they’re giving you a commission on every kit sold.

Len (1h 0m 4s):

That’s correct. Right. I gotta go buy a Porsche

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 7s):

Professor Len Groom. Thank you. Woo. Thank you for all of that. Yes. There’s, there’s some good nuggets in there that I think people will find really interesting. So we appreciate your

Len (1h 0m 15s):

Time. You’re gonna figure you edit me down to about 15 seconds total here.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 0m 18s):

All of you. We left it

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 19s):

All in. Yeah, all of it.

Len (1h 0m 20s):

Hey I appreciate it. It’s fun. I like talking to you guys.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 0m 22s):

You look good on audio too. I gotta tell you. I got

Len (1h 0m 24s):

A face for audio.

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 25s):

So do we

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 0m 28s):

Holman, it’s funny that Holly has been kind of shadowing us the whole day just to make sure that we don’t say anything like Don don’t get her in trouble. Well she’s down at the very end of the competition in the

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 37s):

Orange vest. I had noticed her following us all day in the shadows.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 0m 41s):

It’s so funny. H it’s like we’re with Tom Cruise and Pamela Cs from PMK. Nobody

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 46s):

Knows

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 0m 46s):

The reference. It’s a p, it’s a PR Hollywood reference. And she’s following around re make sure he doesn’t, you know that that Tom Cruise doesn’t do anything wacky or anything like you did on Oprah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 55s):

So basically she’s here to make sure you don’t jump on the AMS oil couch.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 0m 58s):

I mean pretty much. Yes. All, right. All right. So now we’re in the conference room. I feel like official. Who are we with and what do you do?

7 (1h 1m 3s):

I’m Alex Thompson. I’m the senior product marketing manager for the automotive group at AMS oil.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 1m 8s):

You talked about long titles. That’s the longest so far. So you’re

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 11s):

The most important. You run the company I wish. No. Now we were talking earlier about the new car care product lines. Does that fall under your purview? It

7 (1h 1m 20s):

Does. Yep.

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 20s):

And probably all the other products that Holly likes to send us from time to time to, to check out. Are those all your babies?

7 (1h 1m 27s):

The majority of them probably are.

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 29s):

So what’s your favorite out of all the new products that you’ve had lately, is there there one that you’re like, you know what, we killed it on that one And everybody needs to have it. Everybody needs to use it. Well

7 (1h 1m 37s):

We kill it on every product launch here.

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 39s):

Good answer. But that being said, it’s completely already understood. What’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 1m 43s):

Your favorite one is your

7 (1h 1m 43s):

Favorite? I would say that my most exciting product launch in the last year has been our car care line. Just because it’s been something completely different for us.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 1m 52s):

Did your both consumers and your retailers see it coming or was it, did you just drop a bomb and go? Guess what we have,

7 (1h 2m 0s):

We, we dropped the bomb on ’em. Yeah, it was, it was a complete secret and we decided that we would come out with some of the most popular products to start And. we look forward to expanding that line in the future.

Sean P. Holman (1h 2m 12s):

And if you use a foam cannon, it’s like spraying your car with shaving cream. Absolutely. Your your soap. It’s awesome.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 2m 18s):

Let’s talk about that. When you look at launching a new line like that, I mean you, you’ve obviously AMS oil is one of the, if not the most respected name in lubricants. How do you kind of stand on the shoulders of this giant and launch this new line, right? Because it has to stand up to the AMS oil name.

7 (1h 2m 38s):

Well, first and foremost it’s just starting with the end goal in mind and and understanding who we are and our target customers. So we do a lot of primary and secondary research at AMS oil. So we we’re really identifying our target market and who consumes our products. We also look at the broader market too and say, well lubricants is a place that Amwell has played in for, for over 50 years now. What are some adjacent markets that make sense? Amwell has a few other products that you may or may not be aware of. Like gun lubricant or No,

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 10s):

I’m aware. We’re very aware and I use it and is fantastic.

7 (1h 3m 14s):

So where there, there’s still a lubricant element to it and a lot of people don’t understand that products like car shampoo or car soap, it has a lubricating factor to it and, and having these products really lets us take that protection that you’re putting in the inside of your engine and bring it to the outside exterior of your vehicle. Or we also have some interior products

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 3m 36s):

As well and So, You do have interior and you also have some ceramics and that feels like something that although you have incredibly skilled chemical engineers upstairs, like that may not be what they’re used to playing with. So how do you pitch this idea

7 (1h 3m 52s):

Very carefully? So. it, it, it is some new muscles, however there’s a lot of products out in the marketplace that we could really learn from and and develop truly a, a unique solution that lives up to the AMS oil name both in quality and performance. So

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 4m 8s):

What you’re saying is you basically go, go out and buy some popular brands and benchmark them and say here’s the the minimum we can get away with doing and then we’re gonna go up to the AMS oil standard?

7 (1h 4m 18s):

Absolutely. Yep. We’ve tested just about every brand you can think of and we take that as our benchmark and go from there. What are

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 25s):

The current lineup of car care products right now?

7 (1h 4m 28s):

Right now Amwell has high foam car shampoo, which can be used in both foam cannon, foam gun and bucket wash, traditional bucket wash applications. We have a ceramic spray product, which is an after wash product. It is going to provide that sacrificial layer of protection to your clear coat, your paint. It’ll enhance the gloss, it’ll make your, you know, bugs and stuff not stick to the front of your car as much. It’ll reduce your drying time on, on your future washes. And then we also have two interior cleaner products. One is no scent and the other one has a nice lemon scent to it so that we have the exterior and interior of your car covered.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 5m 10s):

I will say that after having used the, ’cause the first car that got dirty at my house was my kid’s 2016 Scion TC. Just talked about it in the last segment. And we use the ceramic spray on and it normally was getting dirty ’cause it sits right outside of the house under a tree and it doesn’t, luckily it doesn’t sap but it’s got just tree, the dust and the leaves and all that stuff. And in a week it would be filthy. We went three weeks after spraying it three weeks because the dust was not adhering the way it normally does into the porous paint And. we are meticulous about waxing these cars that spray it. It behaved very differently.

7 (1h 5m 47s):

Well I’m glad you pointed that out because that is one of the unique factors of our products or components of our products is that it is anti-Static So. it will not attract pollen dust or any other light airborne contaminants

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 5m 60s):

Like it. It’s weird because I was my wife, she does the grass cutting. Maybe I shouldn’t say that ’cause it’s embarrassing but she does all the yard work ’cause she enjoys it. Does she

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 9s):

Also pull up the Ballards?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 6m 10s):

No, she won’t do that. She’s checking. I have to do the Ballards. He doesn’t know about that. So don’t tell. Oh I know all of them.

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 15s):

Oh,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 6m 17s):

44 million

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 18s):

Views on TikTok or YouTubers or whatever. Some everybody knows about ’em.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 6m 22s):

So then like she’s always doing the lawn. She does it like sometimes twice a week just ’cause she enjoys it and it throws up a lot of dust and the cars are dirty instantly. And I remember standing out there with her, it was like Sunday afternoon. I go, isn’t Quinn’s car? My kid isn’t Quinn’s car normally dirty by now. She goes, yeah, why? I go look. She goes, what’s different? I go, we sprayed it with this Amil ceramic cutting. I was, I was like hmm. It was just like one of those hmm moments.

7 (1h 6m 51s):

That’s what we like to hear. Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 52s):

Look at that customer feedback right here live on The truck. Show. Podcast. Yeah. And

7 (1h 6m 56s):

That’s another way we collect information is just testimonials and customer listening to our customers.

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 60s):

So let’s pivot over to the consumer oil line and obviously you guys have a complete lineup of all sorts of different things. High mileage, hybrid new car, old car, CVT, European, you know, transaxle transmit, I mean on and on and on. You guys have a complete everything you need. But one of the questions that Lightning and I had is what it came to what oil does, I have a had a Wrangler 3 92 normally aspirated. He’s got A TRX but he also has a Mercedes supercharge V eight SL And. we were having this discussion one day of like, hey, which AMS oil do we use? It was like, oh I’ve got this signature series.

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 40s):

And so I said, but is it the European you’re using on the, no, no I got the regular, the TR will be fine, the Mercedes. And then he got to thing, he’s like, well wait a minute, I don’t know. So so how Mark and Mark said No you should use the European on the Mercedes ’cause there is a difference. So what does Angelo say? What, what is the difference between those and how would they be used differently? They’re the same viscosity. And so we’re like man there’s almost too many choices. How do we know the right one for our vehicles?

7 (1h 8m 5s):

Yeah, I think you guys are probably catching on that our, our slogan now is specialized lubricants formulated for what you drive and how you drive and that that really is the reality is that there are specialized formulas based on engine type, vehicle type and and just general application. So when we, this particular example, we look at A TRX versus a supercharged Mercedes. Yes they take the same viscosity. However the additive package that’s in that oil is completely different. And when we look at European vehicles in specific in particular, their emission systems are built completely different than your traditional domestic vehicle. And So You really wanna make sure that you’re using a European oil in a European vehicle so that you don’t poison your emission system.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 8m 52s):

Interesting. I didn’t expect that as the answer because again you have a supercharge V eight in the TRX and a supercharge V eight in the Mercedes and you go, they’re so similar. What? But it’s not really the engine we’re worried about. It’s the aftertreatment systems.

7 (1h 9m 6s):

That’s correct. Yep. The, the bearing clearances are likely going to be very close to each other, which is why it was specking a five W 30. But the after treatment requirements are drastically different. And

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 9m 18s):

What happens if I use the wrong additive package? The world ends in the Mercedes, the world ends. No legit are my

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 24s):

No, that’s it. That’s it. The biblical times we all die world. That’s it. Don’t do it. Make sure you’re using the right AMS oil and the right, yeah, four horse drastic. It is drastic. That’s why they put on the label European that way, you know.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 9m 36s):

But I mean is this something that happens? Does, does something happen in 5,000 miles in a thousand miles in 30,000 miles? Like what?

7 (1h 9m 43s):

It depends on driving conditions. It, it’s not gonna happen immediately but it will shorten the lifespan of your aftertreatment systems and those are very expensive to replace, especially on Mercedes BMW After about

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 55s):

Like if you, let’s say you had a Mercedes that did no longer or had surgery that relieved it of its aftertreatment system. Not, not that we know anybody like that. But then are those oils interchangeable at that point for modern? This is for science, this is completely for science. I’m just saying that if you were

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 10m 13s):

On, these are

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 13s):

Hypotheticals, hypothetically you lost your after treatment of the emissions on the Mercedes, would you still use the European oil?

7 (1h 10m 24s):

That’s a great question.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 10m 26s):

He’s not going to answer. Yeah,

7 (1h 10m 28s):

I plead the fifth on that. No, in all honesty, if it’s a modified application you do have a lot more flexibility with your oil choice and you mainly wanna focus on having the right viscosity at that point. So I wouldn’t vary going outside of a five W 30, but your options do certainly expand once you eliminate after

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 48s):

Treatment. So let’s look at your OE line versus your signature series line and what’s the difference? Obviously the price point’s different, there’s a probably a slightly different target of customer, but what do you get if I’m sitting there and I’m saying, oh you know what, I’m listening to this show. I love the idea of AMS oil, I’m gonna buy your at the your the checkout with your cart and you’re like hmm, do I go OE or do we go signature? What is a customer getting with oe? And then what do you, what more do you get with the signature or

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 11m 17s):

Do I actually throw one more at you and say the high mileage?

7 (1h 11m 21s):

Sure. Again, we have specialized products for specialized applications. So with OE you’re getting an API licensed product, which means it’s gone through all of the, the certification processes and it follows the rules. Let’s say there you’re guaranteed to have excellent protection, even AM O pushes those limits on our OE products to stay within licensing but be at the very high end of those licensing requirements. So you’re still getting one of the best synthetic lubricants out there, but you’re getting it at that lower price point. OE is a great product for commuters and you know for people who really need a quality product or prefer quality product but aren’t necessarily beating their vehicle or taking it to severe applica or severe service, a lot for high mileage, that product was custom formulated with boosted detergents in IT and dispersements.

7 (1h 12m 17s):

So for engines that have more than 75,000 miles on it, they’ve had some time on the clock, they’re accumulating deposits. We want to rejuvenate that engine, clean up those deposits and pass on to the filter and carry them to the filter. That’s what the disbursements job is. I’m sure the lab walked you through some of that, but the detergent cleans, the dispersant carries to the filter that way you don’t have agglomerations where you don’t want ’em. So that’s one of the main points of high mileage. Additionally, with high mileage, because it has such a boosted additive package, it does carry a longer drain interval than OE by 2000 miles. So

Sean P. Holman (1h 12m 52s):

Would you use high mileage going forward or could you use that for a couple oil changes, get your engine cleaned up and then go to OE after that? Or once you stay within a certain oil it’s good to just stay with that?

7 (1h 13m 7s):

Yeah, so they’re all compatible with each other. The technologies we use are also compatible with competitor products too. So when you wanna switch from those other brands to Amwell, it’s real easy.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 13m 17s):

You don’t have to flush or anything like that.

7 (1h 13m 19s):

No you don’t have to. But Amwell does have a flush. If you are concerned or you have an unknown maintenance history, you can certainly throw a bottle of flush in there and just accelerate that cleaning process. But to answer your question, once you switch to high mileage, there’s other benefits to high mileage too. It’s built A little bit heavier on the viscosity side, still staying within grade as engines age they get a little looser So it. There’s some benefits there as well. So I would recommend sticking with high mileage or or signature series after the fact. But again, all of our products are compatible. So, You, you can switch between.

Sean P. Holman (1h 13m 56s):

And then going back to signature series, I’m looking at oe, I might be going up to signature series. What’s the benefit of going to that, that price class?

7 (1h 14m 4s):

So signature series is the best oil that has ever been developed. And that’s no joke

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 9s):

Bar none. Look at that. That’s no joke man. That’s a confident, that’s confidence right there. Wow. Shots fired. All, right? He’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 14m 16s):

Got, he’s in the bull ring with the red cape going, I dare you.

7 (1h 14m 20s):

I welcome that challenge. Yes. Okay, we, A signature series is the most overbuilt oil. It will handle anything that you throw at it as some, a lot of our product testing shows on our, on our website you can see the proof. We’ve subjected it to a hundred thousand mile tests. Bearings still look brand new. We’ve taken industry standard tests and we’ve doubled the length of them or we’ve increased the severity of them. And you’ll still see that our product blows the doors off of the, the standard requirements. So signature series really, I mean even up to and surpassing thousand horsepower applications, you’re not making it sweat at all. It’s a, it’s a really well-built durable product and it also carries a service interval of 20 thou 25,000 miles if you’re looking for that once a year oil change or that’s the, or even longer the, that’s the best stuff we, we’ve

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 12s):

Got, I think I wanna put it in my, in my kids’ C RV ’cause she’s just starting driving so she’s not gonna drive a lot. I think that’s probably the easiest once a year. Throw that in and I don’t have to worry about it. Absolutely. Along with the CVT transmission fluid too.

7 (1h 15m 26s):

Yeah, it’s interesting. Signature series is really built for the automotive enthusiasts. But I do hear from a lot of dads who are sending their daughters off to college that they like signature series ’cause they know their daughter’s not gonna change the oil.

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 38s):

Exactly. That’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 15m 38s):

That’s there’s a lot of suns today by the way. Gen Z, they ain’t gonna freaking that’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 44s):

Change it. That’s going in my head too. So sucks. You had brought up on OE has the API rating on it and I know as you go up to let’s say signature series, it doesn’t necessarily necessarily have that stamp on it, but it’s important to know you test to exceed all of those standards so your bottle may say a compatible with these standards and then list whatever the different manufacturers are. But I’ve been informed and stuff and people ask the question, oh but they don’t have the certification stamp, right? That’s because you’ve chosen to formulate it the way that you wanna formulate it. you know, it exceeds those. You build it to exceeds though and really it’s like on that product, it’s going to the enthusiast, not the commodity buyer. So we’re not gonna pay to have it go through the process even though it exceeds all those standards.

7 (1h 16m 26s):

Signature series is tested to the industry standards, but the industry standards do box you in. And so even when we look at high mileage, high mileage is an API license product. But when we formulate, we boost to the absolute highest levels to stay within in the, in the performance parameters we’re looking for when it comes to products like signature series, no holds

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 51s):

Are it you want, you don’t want any constraints on fitting in that box. That doesn’t mean the oil’s lesser, in fact it means the oil’s better and you guys are actively internally third party CER certifying it. It just doesn’t have an API stamp. Correct. ’cause you want to do it the way you wanna do it. And I, I just think that’s an important distinction because there are people who don’t understand that or have asked that question before and I try to explain it, but getting it from the horse’s mouth at AMS oil is probably worthwhile.

7 (1h 17m 15s):

Yeah, there’s a big difference between avoiding API licensing because you’re putting out a poor product and then avoiding licensing because your product is just so good it can’t be licensed.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 17m 24s):

In addition to your high mileage and your signature series and diesel and everything else, you also make lubricants or motor oils for classic cars. And how does that product offering differ

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 35s):

And, and And, we were talking earlier how new vehicles require synthetics from the factory, yet you have these old vehicles that are almost like, you don’t want them to have synthetics because a lot of the other products that are out there don’t have high enough zinc or these old engines that don’t have as tight of tolerances don’t necessarily need that. So how do you formulate a synthetic oil for the classic car crowd?

7 (1h 17m 58s):

Yeah, so the, it’s a common misconception that synthetics can be used in or can’t be used in classic cars. Amwell disproved that with our first motor oil back in 72. So Amwell takes a full synthetic approach to our classic car motor oil line, which is called our Z rod series. It’s called Z Rod because of its boosted zinc content. So it’s primarily designed for vehicles 1980 or older and for vehicles pre catalytic converter. And it provides that extra zinc boost for those flat tapit cams.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 18m 33s):

And you don’t want that extra zinc going into the, the catalytic converters ’cause it will. It’ll cause

Sean P. Holman (1h 18m 38s):

Yeah. So basically oil formulations change when the emissions requirements came online and that’s sort of the difference. It’s not necessarily that the vehicles have changed all that much, it’s the after treatment that you’re sort of solving for. But when they went away from zinc to protect the ly converter, you lost some of the properties that those older vehicles love to, as Len said, the engine loves to eat. Right.

7 (1h 18m 59s):

Yeah. Zinc was a great sacrificial product for, for those older engines. And it’s not that today’s engine oils are any weaker, in fact they’re much stronger than they once were. But they, the zinc has been replaced with other materials that provide the wear protection that’s required in modern engines.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 19m 16s):

Okay. So it’s been said by several people under this roof that they have been influential in the new kits that have recently launched. And word in this room is that you are the man behind the fill kits. Is that true?

7 (1h 19m 32s):

We have a great team here at Anna I Don don’t take credit for, for the entire team. No, we did focus a lot of effort here over, over the last year on improving our customer’s experience with Amwell. We, our product is second to none, but we really wanted to improve the experience as well. So we, we took a hard look at the oil change experience with AMS oil And. we wanted to make some improvements or some enhancements. And so recently what we’ve started doing is including with every oil change kit purchased from AMS oil dot com, you’ll receive a funnel, a pair of gloves and a oil change reminder sticker with every oil change kit to help you not only complete the oil change process, but also remind you when, when the next change is due.

7 (1h 20m 24s):

And, and just help out that DIY customer. ’cause that’s one thing that a lot of people don’t think of when they change their own oil is I don’t get the sticker anymore from, from the dealership or from the quick lube that tells me when I’m due. Now a lot of newer vehicles of course have the oil reminders reminder, but when you’re using products like amel that have a 25,000 miles service interval, your computer in your car doesn’t correlate with the weather. Don’t

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 48s):

Even worry about that light. Yes. It doesn’t even mean anything anymore. So

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 20m 51s):

We’ve gotta reset it.

7 (1h 20m 52s):

Yeah, when you go in and keep resetting that light it, it doesn’t necessarily correlate.

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 56s):

You get five resets with signature series. Yes.

7 (1h 20m 59s):

So And, we do have some more improvements planned here over the next couple months here that we think are really gonna help improve our customer’s experience with our products.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 21m 8s):

So my day job is working at banks, so I work for Gale Banks Don, don’t know if you knew that or not, but we are doing, we, we saw a rear differential and as you know that we are, we were very proud a few years ago to team up with AM Oil to offer 75 W 90 full synthetic Gear oil 75 1 40. But they’re in the easy packs. And, we have introduced hundreds and hundreds of customers to the AMS oil easy packs. We were new to them but like we didn’t know quite how convenient they were when we signed up. We’re like, we love the oil that’s in the pack, but we hadn’t used the packs themselves.

Sean P. Holman (1h 21m 44s):

Let me help out here because Totally. I feel like totally Jay’s going on this very long story. What he’s really asking you for is he realizes those packs are like up-sized apple juices for a kid and he wants you to make them with beer in them. No,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 21m 55s):

That’s not where I was going with

Sean P. Holman (1h 21m 57s):

This. Oh, are you sure? I was just gonna get that would be, think about how easy it would be for you to drink beer. You wouldn’t have to carry that, that bulky can around you could just cut the top off a cap and Yeah. Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 22m 6s):

I I mean no, I wasn’t going there. Oh, okay. I wasn’t, I had, I did have beer on the mine, but that’s not it for later I was just gonna pay you a very long compliment because they’re incredibly handy in all the mechanics at work love them. They’re like, how did we do rear diff fills before ezp packs and it’s Did

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 24s):

You Well they’re, they’re, they’re nice and clean for the do it yourselfer who doesn’t have a

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 22m 26s):

Lift. Yeah, because I’m telling you, they’re so handy.

7 (1h 22m 29s):

I was lucky enough to be on the development team for the Ezp pack originally when we launched it in 2016, And, we really did have the DIY consumer in mind. We knew that the gear oil pumps that you put Oh, horrible. In the rigid bottles.

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 43s):

They’re, and then once you’re done using ’em, they’re still full of gear oil. You gotta clean them, you put ’em on the shelf, they fall on your floor and then like spiderwebs and dirt from your, you know, garage floor get stuck to them and then you, instead of cleaning ’em, you just go buy another one the next time you do gear oil. And it’s like all of that is, is completely done away with, ’cause all you can do is cut off the nipple, open my deal, pour it in. I mean it’s so simple. It’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 23m 6s):

So clean. Well who was doing their, their who was brushing their teeth in the morning and like was, you know, squeezing out the last bit of toothpaste and said, I have an idea. I’m gonna put oil in one of these.

7 (1h 23m 16s):

That’d be Matt Erickson, our vice president of product development. Yeah. It really did come down to the hassle factor with pumps and the fact that the consumer who is changing their own differential fluid is also likely the person who’s changing their own transmission fluid. And then you have the opportunity for contamination between the two if you were to use the same pump or you’re buying multiple pumps and you’re changing that pump from bottle to bottle to bottle and it’s just a complete mess. So we sat down one day and we’re really thinking, how do we make that process easier similar to our oil change kit, how, how do we make the process easier? And it really came down to how do we build the pump into the package. And the simplest way to do it is make it a flexible package.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 23m 58s):

And the pump is your hands now

7 (1h 23m 59s):

And the pump is now your hand. Yep. And so we’re continually expanding our product offering in easy packs. They’ve been a huge success in the market for us and they are very tough pouches. We’ve, we’ve gone as far as parking four wheelers on them to test if they could be run over by a car. you know, we’ve,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 24m 21s):

All you have to do is put ’em to the UPS process and start shipping ’em around the country. ’cause those UPS guys will drop, kick them on the front yard. you know, on the doorsteps And we sent thousands around the country and they’ve been incredible.

7 (1h 24m 33s):

Yeah, we like to say that everything around here ships air freight because whether it goes UPS or or otherwise, it’s going

Sean P. Holman (1h 24m 40s):

The

7 (1h 24m 40s):

At some point. Exactly.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 24m 42s):

Well congratulations on the product line and the fact that it keeps growing and the fact that your existing customers love it and newbies are adopting it every day. So that’s a huge testament to, to you and your work.

7 (1h 24m 53s):

Well thank you and thank you for having me on the show. Thanks for

Sean P. Holman (1h 24m 56s):

Having us out. Alright, Lightning, that was more information than I think I could possibly. Yep. Hold on. Are you, you’re laying down in front of Anzo? I’m

8 (1h 25m 6s):

Laying down. I just, I can’t stand any longer.

Sean P. Holman (1h 25m 9s):

I’m gonna tell you this. Great.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 25m 10s):

But I’m

8 (1h 25m 11s):

Just so tired.

Sean P. Holman (1h 25m 12s):

I’m just happy that we recorded our entire experience because I can’t remember all of it there. There’s just, there’s just too much.

8 (1h 25m 19s):

We’re gonna have to go back like posthumously and, and listen to it. And is that what you do? Is it posthumously? Is that the right

Sean P. Holman (1h 25m 25s):

Word? I only if you’re gonna lay on the ground forever and never get up. You’re taking

8 (1h 25m 29s):

A photograph of me right now laying in front Ofwell? Yes. Really? Yes. Oh geez. Don’t kick me in the nuts. Stop it. All. right. Let’s thank Oh, thank AMS oil. Let’s thank Nissan Banks and EGR you’re first.

Sean P. Holman (1h 25m 42s):

Well we definitely have to thank AMS oil because it was a lot of effort that they put into having us going around all their heavy machinery and their manufacturing plant. So they did trust

8 (1h 25m 50s):

Us with their orange jackets. Yes,

Sean P. Holman (1h 25m 52s):

That’s true. You tried to steal a win at the end of the day. And of course, we also have to thank our presenting sponsor, Nissan The truck Show Podcast is brought to you by Nissan. And if you are looking for a new mid-size truck or a full-size SUV, you can check out the Nissan Frontier or the Nissan Armada. Head on over to nissan usa dot com and you can build and price your vehicle and find out all the features that fit your lifestyle or head on down to your local dealer for a Test Drive. And

8 (1h 26m 13s):

I’m gonna deliver this read laying down on the ground in front of the MSO front door. Get that worn out now this is, I am totally worn out. Only you’re dragging the box, dude. Hang tight. What are you doing there? All? right. So listen, when you’re at Banks Power dot com and you’re searching for your duramax parts and you come across the cool runner oil pan, you’re like, what is this? I can buy an oil pan that will cool my motor oil and I could buy AMS oil with it. This is the greatest day ever. That’s what you’re gonna say. And then your mind is gonna be blown when you discover the Ram Air Trans pan that you can get AMSOIL ETF with it. What? Head over to Banks Power dot com to buy your oil and trans pans with AMSOIL

Sean P. Holman (1h 26m 58s):

And. we have to thank our friends over at EGR who want you to know that they make some of the highest quality best truck accessories for your ride. You can head on over to egr usa dot com, whether you need fender flares or hood guards, or even one of the best Tono covers on the market in the roll track. Egr usa dot com.

8 (1h 27m 14s):

Does that mean I have to get up now?

Sean P. Holman (1h 27m 16s):

Only if you wanna ride to the airport.

8 (1h 27m 18s):

Yeah, I’ll get up. Thanks. Samso.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 27m 22s):

The truck Show Podcast is a production of truck famous LLC. This podcast was created by Sean Holman and Jay Tillis with production elements by DJ Omar Khan. If you like what you’ve heard, please open your Apple Podcast or Spotify app and give us a five star rating. And if you’re a fan, there’s no better way to show your support than by patronizing our sponsors. Some vehicles may have been harmed during the making of this podcast.