ORLANDO, Florida – ILSAC GF-6, the passenger car engine oil upgrade now under development, has slipped behind schedule again and may not get its commercial launch until May 2019, a meeting here heard last week.
The Auto-Oil Advisory Panel, meeting alongside ASTM Committee D2 on Petroleum Products and Lubricants, heard that the new Sequence IIIH for wear and oil thickening, based on a Chrysler Pentastar engine, has completed its test matrix, but the ballot for acceptance by ASTM was withdrawn pending resolution of some questions. Another test, the Sequence VH test for wear, sludge and varnish, which uses a 4.6-liter V8 engine from Ford, had not started its matrix, but should before year end.
More worrisome, the new Sequence IVB engine test for valvetrain wear is even further behind and struggling to get ready for matrix testing. William Buscher of the independent test laboratory Intertek, in San Antonio, Texas, told the AOAP meeting that Toyota, the IVB tests sponsor, hopes to successfully run the matrix and have the data analyzed by May 2017.
AOAP Chairman Scott Lindholm, of Shell, soberly spelled out the impact of these delays for meeting participants: Given past experience and American Petroleum Institute licensing procedures, that would mean that the final ILSAC GF-6 specification probably wouldn’t be approved until May 2018. So barring any extraordinary catch-up measures, API licensing of the new oils would begin 12 months later, May 2019.
See next weeks issue of Lube Report for more details on GF-6s progress.