Talked with Mark Betner recently, manager of heavy-duty lubricants for Citgo, at the Technology & Maintenance Council’s annual meeting down in Florida (And NO, there won’t be any video of me flapping my gums this time – which I’m sure is a relief to many out there).

Betner’s been a longtime advocate that the U.S. trucking industry needs to switch to a lighter weight for its engine oils – dropping to a 5W-40 grade from the 15W-40 standard almost all heavy-duty truck owners now use. His contention, backed by long experience in the European market, is that heavier-weight oil doesn’t provide extra protection, which is a widely held belief among truckers.

(Mark Betner, Citgo’s manager of heavy-duty lubricants)

In fact, lightweight 5W-40 oil can provide even better protection, as it offers a much wider temperature range (down to minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit) of operating effectiveness. That thinner viscosity is good in another way, said Betner, as it means there’s less fluid for the engine to “work” through – and if the engine doesn’t have to work as hard, fuel economy can improve.

“Europe’s been a far stronger advocate of lightweight viscosity engine oil grades because their fuel coats are almost double ours,” Betner explained to me. “And we’re just now recognizing that lighter viscosity grades can give you a fuel economy advantage. In fact, Eaton just did a study showing that lighter weight synthetic lubricants can translate into fuel efficiency gains.”

On-highway tests conducted by Roadranger – a marketing partnership between Eaton and Dana Corp. – indicates that using synthetic lubricant in both components can translate into fuel economy gains of more than 1%.

The tests – comparing new Roadranger Synthetic Lubricants to traditional synthetic blends and semi-synthetic blends – involved two U.S. linehaul fleets, with a third conducted by an independent research facility. The tests – using an SAE Type III 1526 test, a TMC/SAE J1321 test, along with a modified J1376 test – showed both linehaul carriers on average improved fuel economy 1.029%, with the independent research facility generating fuel savings of 1.112%.

“This is a significant finding when you take into account that every 1% improvement amounts to about $500 in annual fuel savings per truck,” commented Rick Muth, lubricants manager for Roadranger. “Our previous Roadranger lubricant blends were already producing fuel saving benefits of 2% and 4% over mineral-based lubricants, so the additional savings is a further bonus.”

Citgo’s Betner told me that while a 1% fuel efficiency improvement may not sound like much, when you extrapolate that gain out across a fleet of 100 trucks operating in typically longhaul on-highway applications, you’re talking about saving $80,000 a year in fuel costs. “Three dollar-plus diesel has changed everything,” Betner said.

Will thinner, lightweight engine oils gain traction in the U.S. market? The jury is still out for now on that. One thing is for certain, though: as fuel continues to get more costly, fleets are going to look at everything and anything to try and improve fuel efficiency – and that includes what grade of engine oil they use, I suspect.

“Kick the hell out of the status quo.” –Motto of Ed Cole, master automotive engineer

If you are a car enthusiast, you know who Edward Nicholas Cole is – the man who directed the invention of the small-block V8 engine to power the 1955 Chevy passenger car. We’re not just talking about some one-off racing engine either, or something relevant only to halcyon automotive age of the 1950s. Oh no.

According to Larry Carley, blogger and car fanatic, Chevrolet has produced about 90 million small block V8s since 1955 – following an evolutionary arc that took it from 265 cubic inches and 110 horsepower in 1955 to 427 cubic inches (7.0 liters) and more than 500 horsepower for today’s smokin’ Corvette LS7. “That’s a huge number of engines, probably more than any other engine that’s ever been built – an amazing record of longevity,” said Carley.

Think about this for minute. Cole – killed tragically in a light plane crash in 1977 while flying solo in the rain and fog on his approach to an airport in Mendon, Michigan – single-handedly revolutionized the design of the V8 automotive engine on the one hand while also creating a platform that could be improved upon for decades to come. Quite an accomplishment for a Michigan native born on a farm in 1909 who originally wanted to be a lawyer, yet found his instinctive – some say obsessive – need to tinker with things drove him into vehicle engineering.

I bring Cole up because I wonder where the trucking version of him exists today – indeed, where a near-aproximation of him might be found anywhere in the automotive world of the 21st century. I mean, he’s the “classic” engineer, if you ask me: a guy so consumed with building something new, something better, something that breaks the mold, that he kept a prototype of the ’55 Chevy and his V8 in his garage at home, tinkering with it endlessly on weekends and at night.

Back then, GM’s executives were all in his corner, too, giving him almost carte blanche to create an engine that would blow the doors off the competition. The ranks of Chevrolet’s engineers ballooned from 850 to 3,000 between 1952 and 1954 as Cole directed the creation of the small block V8 (a process vividly chronicled in the late, great David Halberstam’s book “The Fifties.”)

That kind of engineering derring-do is needed today, I think, as trucking grapples with the need to lower emissions, improve fuel economy, maintain power and performance, while in many cases burning non-petroleum fuels. That’s a tall order, but one I think the Cole’s of the world would relish and, perhaps, achieve.

Cole proved a classic in other ways, too – a break-the-rules, bull-in-the-china shop type of personality, totally focused on building great cars … and then fighting on to make them better. And then there’s the sad epilogue to his GM career – the 1959 Corvair, a “small car” project that got hamstrung by the same GM brass that once backed his engineering efforts to the hilt. For these executives in many ways become focused solely on profits and stock prices, not good products.

“The issue … was nothing less than the entire purpose of American industry: whether it was to make the best product possible or whether it was merely to make the maximum profit possible each year,” Halberstam wrote. “The two, as it turned out, were not compatible – not by a longshot.”

Cost cutting condemned Cole’s Corvair design, as the car’s power overwhelmed the suspension system. He wanted to add a stabilizing system to the rear end – something that would’ve cost a mere $14 to $15 more per car back then – but GM nixed it. The car — though now considered a classic — proved disastrous for GM.

GM executive Harlow Curtice’s comments to Cole about the Corvair sums up, I think, why American automotive engineering went off track – and would take a generation or two to fully recover. “This is amazing – there’s as much headroom in here as a Buick,” Curtice said. Then, according to Halberstam, he paused for a long moment. “Take some of the headroom out. We can’t have a little car like this with as much room as a big car.”

Cole’s iron will didn’t help matters, either, as he forged ahead with the Corvair despite major engineering compromises that made it difficult to handle, especially at high speeds and around sharp turns. Ralph Nader, as we all know, used the Corvair to humble GM and put product safety on the map, but GM learned the wrong lesson from this experience, said Halberstam, “convinced that their great mistake had not been in trying to do the car too cheaply, thus making it a dangerous vehicle, but in bothering to produce a small car in the first place.”

Still, the engineering acumen of Cole – despite his flaws – would be well used today, I think. And who knows? Maybe there is indeed a later-day Cole (make or female, I stress) waiting in the wings out there to lead the industry in new and perhaps surprising directions.

Animal fat – the nasty gloop that clogs up our arteries, yet makes fried chicken just so scrumptious! – has long been consider a source material to make fuel for diesel-powered cars and trucks, though its typically blended with traditional diesel. Now a company is making engine oil from such fats – but sans petroleum altogether.

Green Earth Technologies (GET) rolled out “G-OIL” late last year (around November to be precise), touted as a totally biodegradable motor oil guaranteed to protect engines – in this case both gasoline and diesel models – just as well as petroleum-based brands, but without the environmental hazards or dependence on foreign oil.

G-OIL is manufactured from tallow – culled from beef and once used to make animal feed and soap – that it buys from American farmers (note the stress on “American” here: they don’t miss a chance to tout that fact). The company uses nanotechnology to convert tallow from a solid raw material into completely biodegradable motor oil – making roughly one barrel of G-OIL from one barrel of animal tallow, as compared to the three barrels of petroleum needed to make one barrel of traditional engine oil.

This “green oil” product is currently undergoing a program of testing being conducted by an independent third party testing facility that uses (reportedly) testing procedures & guidelines established by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). Thus far, the company says its product has successfully completed fiterability, ball bearing rust, sulfur, calcium, zinc and phosphorus tests, with the 10W-30 G-OIL’s results so far showing to be comparable to published data for synthetic and crude oil based motor oils.

Obviously, if this stuff works – and that’s a very BIG if … I have not yet found a fleet that uses it, let me stress – it could be a major deal. I mean, the U.S. market for motor oil – cars and trucks combined – is just north of $7 billion a year. Imagine if we didn’t need to use petroleum to make one drop of engine oil, yet get all the wear protection and viscosity a long-haul commercial truck demands?

And imagine also if this stuff congealed into gloop similar to what clogs up our arteries, only in your engine cylinders? That would spell disaster in a hurry. So yes, this stuff needs to be tested as rigorously as any new product, in this case against Society of Automotive Engineer and Technology & Maintenance Council standards.

But still … wouldn’t it be great if this worked? If wasted animal fast could be recycled into engine oil? It’s an enticing possibility. We’ll have to see if it comes to fruition here down the road.

It’s a study in contrasts, the truck engine production process today. On the one hand you have the foundry: the dark, smokey place where metal is melted in giant pots to create all the components that going into making an engine. On the other is the production process itself — today a place where robots increasingly hold sway, where the light is soft, the air clean, and the floor scrubbed to high polished sheen.

Rapidly disapearing are the clangs and clashes, shouts and yells, all the sounds that represent the controlled chaos of the old production line. Now automated guided vehicles — AGVs for short — silently but surefootedly take each engine from station to station where humans use computer controls to guide them in the construction process. The milling of engine blocks, too, has changed, with humans only monitoring the robot’s progress from outside a sound-dampening protective box that also serves to keep the air free of pollution.

These are the contrasts of engine factories today that I’ve seen, from Volvo’s powertrain facility in Hagerstown, Maryland, and Detroit Diesel’s factory in Redford, Michigan all the way across the pond into Daimler AG’s truck engine plant in Mannheim, Germany.

And these factories produce ever larger quantities of goods with fewer and fewer people. Take Mannheim, for example: it spat out 410,000 engines and 107,000 tonnes worth of castings in 2006 and should equal that tally in 2007. Yet it only needed some 4,400 people to do it. And these are workers that are no mere cogs on the production line anymore, more number than name. They submitted 19,000 suggestions in 2006 — roughly 3.7 per person — of which about 55% were adopted. The savings from those suggestions? About 5.3 million Euros — nearly $10 million in U.S. at today’s exchange rate. That’s pretty impressive if you ask me and it’s not surprising, either, when you learn that employees get a cut of those savings in the form of bonuses for their suggestions.

Still, it’s an almost otherworldly collision of milieu when you tour engine foundries and production lines. In the foundries, you still feel like you’ve stumbled through a crack in time and space into Mordor in Middle Earth, with the heat, sparks, and rank smells assaulting your senses. You can almost see Orcs amid the haze, laboring over this almost unearthly alchemy that turns solid metal into bright orange fiery liquid, then into the common engine parts truckers use day in and day out.

And then you leap forward into the future — something right out of an Arthur C. Clarke novel — on the production line, where robots do most of the work. They spare the humans the tiresome and at times physically wearying chore of routine component installation — something that must done right every single time with exact precision so the end user gets an engine that delivers power, fuel economy, and long durable life.

It’s an interesting mix of the old and new, but one designed purposefully to extract the utmost in efficiency, capability, and longevity from what was once hunks of inert ore sitting under the earth. And its one where the tools and techniques to do it will only get refined with an even sharper edge in the years ahead.

That seems to be the big question today as engine makers focus on the 2010 emission standards: do you incorporate selective catalytic reduction (SCR) into your emission solution … or not?

International Truck & Engine Corp. joined Cummins Engine Co. in the ‘No SCR’ catergory today, announcing that it won’t use SCR at least for its highway products. Cummins said Sept. 24 that it would use SCR only for its medium-duty engines, not its big bore units. Meanwhile, Volvo and Detroit Diesel Corp. are both adopting SCR to meet 2010 emission regulations — and may be joined by Paccar, which is bringing its European-built MX heavy-duty engine line to the U.S. sometime in 2009, after it opens a new $400 million engine plant in Missouri.

Paccar’s MX line uses SCR to meet European truck emission regulations, as do Volvo and DDC’s products, so it’s a no-brainer to do the same in the U.S. as all three build “global engine platforms” designed to be tweaked only slightly for the specific regions of world they are sold in. For example, DDC — which unveiled its new DD15 in mid-October — said only 10% of the components in its new global engine platform change from market to market; the rest remains the same.

Though Caterpillar as yet hasn’t committed to a 2010 solution, it’s already on-record against SCR. In 2005, J. Parker — then-VP at Caterpillar Power Systems Marketing — issues a statement urging the on-highway market to keep the technology options open regarding 2010 emissions. “Several engine manufacturers have indicated that SCR is the only viable path for meeting the 2010 EPA standard—however, our research indicates SCR might not be the best choice for on-highway applications,” he said two years ago.

What’s the hang up with SCR? Basically, it’s an emissions after-treatment technology that relies on injecting urea — an amonia compound — into the exhaust stream to reduce NOx emissions. Not only does such a system require its own complex array of sensors and electronic controls, it needs a tank or urea solution on board that must be refilled as the truck travels down the highway. Dan Ustian, chairman, president nand CEO of Navistar (International’s parent company) said that means North America’s highways would need a urea distribution infrastructure to be operationally mature when 2010 vehicles hit the road.

Also, while International found SCR to be a way to effectively meet 2010 emissions standards, it adds to the cost and complexity of use of commercial vehicles for truck and bus fleet operators. I’ve heard that “extra cost” could be another $10,000 above what truckers are paying for 2007-compliant engines, but I caution that this is only an estimate. Urea itself is a cheap chemical compound and requires no special storage — a simple plastic tank will do. Even if it freezes, it’s still good — once it thaws and becomes liquid again, it’s ready for use. And DDC and Volvo both believe using SCR can help boost fuel economy, recovering MPG lost to the technology demands of 2007.

The upshot is that 2010 is already looking very different that 2007, as the engine makers are going to be offering different emission compliance solutions — something that didn’t happen this year. How that affects trucking’s bottom line, however, remains to be seen.

Ever heard of a company called Green Power Inc.? How about a waste-to-fuel process called catalytic pressure-less depolymerization, or CDP for short?

I’m no engineer, and I didn’t understand a third of what I looked at, but this interesting company reputedly takes everything from plastics, discarded tires, waste oils, medical wastes, biological materials such as wood pulp, leftover refinery tars, even spoiled foood and makes diesel fuel out of it — all using a nice handy refinery system build into a 53-foot truck trailer.

It sounds too good to be true — and lord knows I’ve seen a lot of snake oil in my short time covering this industry — but you can’t help but be curious about this. Green Power reportedly uses special crystal catalysts that, combined with their unique mobile refinery process, makes diesel fuel with a cetane rating above 54, a fuel Green Power calls ‘NanoDiesel.’

Now, mind you, I saw this on the Waste Expo trade show floor, without any independent chemist at hand to tell me if this is really feasible on a large scale. But you can’t help but think about the possibilities — turning all those landfills scattered across the U.S. into our very own Saudi-style oil fields — no drilling necessary. Heck, we wouldn’t have a littering problem in the U.S. anymore if this process really worked, because everyone would carefully hoard their garbage as raw fuel stock for their cars and trucks.

Of course, this fuel has to be tested using the SAE standards we all know and love to see if it really works for commercial trucks. But I really hope someone does step up to test NanoDiesel very soon. Check out Green Power at www.CleanEnergyProjects.com and tell me what you think.

Here’s a question for you, generated in coversations with some drivers and stories passed on from others. As everyone knows, the American Trucking Association and assorted fleets are pushing to set the maximum speed for truck engines at 68 mph — using engine governors pre-programmed at the factory to make sure trucks go no faster than 68 mph.

Now, what I am hearing is that some engine makers say equipping an over-the-road truck engine with a speed governor can damage it — and that if you, the truck’s owner, use a governor to restrict engine speed this way, it will void your engine warranty.

It’s perplexing, to say the least, to hear this rumor — for aren’t slower speeds safer for the industry? And wouldn’t restricting top-end speed actually improve the life cycle of an engine, since it there would create a ‘ceiling’ on how hard it would have to work? Let me know what you think.