Voltronic Motor Oil

Update May 16th 2014
Finally got the time to pen this down. Used Voltronic 10W40 in an oil change last week at Bok Tyres. Cost RM120++ for the can. Not sure if I could have gotten it cheaper at other place. They had the 15W40 at RM85. Mayb I should have opted for that instead?

Butt feel after oil change: Car feels light and revvy (with exception of that tensioner rattle i have. Gotta get that fix). What car doesn't feel fresh after an oil change? But considering they poured ALL the oil in, it was light. Usually with Castrol Magnatec the techs will leave just a little bit in the bottle.

Lets see how this behaves at the end of the 5k or the 7k fuel change.

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Recently a friend introduce me to a brand of motor oil that I have never seen before. Voltronic. The seller claims its from Germany. I told him that there are plenty of motor oil brands in the market and its likely there are plenty of them that we never seen before.

Their website is located at http://www.voltronic-germany.com/

The have a vast range of automotive oil products and additive. Too long for me to list here you should just head over to their website and check it out.

Out of curiosity I did a lookup on whois.  The results of the query reveals:-

Domain Service Provided By: AKYWEB.COM PTE LTD
Website:
Domain Name: voltronic-germany.com
Domain nameservers listed in order: 
ns1.akyweb.com
ns2.akyweb.com
ns3.akyweb.com


Registration Date: 2007-06-27
Expiration Date: 2013-06-27
Domain last updated on: 2012-07-05

Registrant Contact:
Organization: VOLKER KLEBTECHNIK PTE. LTD.
Name: Agustinus Hadi
Street 1: No. 8 Yung Ho Road, #02-03.
Street 2: 
City: singapore
Postal Code: 12345
Country: Singapore
Email Address: jason@akyweb.com
Tel: 65.62888811
Fax: 65.

Administrator Contact:
Organization: AKYWEB.COM PTE LTD
Name: Jason Ang
Street 1: 110 Middle Road #07-03A
Street 2: Chiat Hong Building
City: Singapore
Postal Code: 188968
Country: Singapore
Email Address: jason@akyweb.com
Tel 1: 65.67698185
Fax: 65.63992775


Technical Contact:
Organization: AKYWEB.COM PTE LTD
Name: Jason Ang
Street 1: 110 Middle Road #07-03A
Street 2: Chiat Hong Building
City: Singapore
Postal Code: 188968
Country: Singapore
Email Address: jason@akyweb.com
Tel 1: 65.67698185
Fax: 65.63992775


Billing Contact:
Organization: AKYWEB.COM PTE LTD
Name: Jason Ang
Street 1: 110 Middle Road #07-03A
Street 2: Chiat Hong Building
City: Singapore
Postal Code: 188968
Country: Singapore
Email Address: jason@akyweb.com
Tel 1: 65.67698185
Fax: 65.63992775

That was interesting. Asking the great Google it turns out that Voltronic is trademark by

ACT AEROSOL CHEMIE TECHNIK GMBH

Weidenweg 12
Bad Boll DE 73087

ACT themselves is a company specializing in chemicals and additive.

All search seems to reveal the brand was started in 2007.

Since I haven't use their oil, I wouldn't be in a position to comment on the quality of their products.

I might just try the oil one day if I can get my hands on some. Hopefully its economical enough for my pockets.

12-12-12

This update has been long overdued haha..  I've been extending my service range from 5000 to 10k sometimes. Everything is well with the X except for the usual wear and tear. Fuel economy has maintained itself about 7++km/litre in town and 11++ km/litre on the highway.

Did the following repairs.

- Replace bushes supporting the radiator fan (about RM20 DIY)
- Replaced rusting muffler with OEM (RM330)
- Repainted (RM2.5k @_@). A so so job in my opinion though people say that place is great.

What is breaking down
- Door rubber seals
- Window moulding (some call it cat whiskers)
- shock boots are torn
- front wiper washer pump
- tyres are 2007 WW49
- fog lamp plastic heat burn LF, right bulb needs replacement
- O2 sensor potentially due
- want some new clear headlights



Each piece is roughly RM300++
Total could be another RM2.5k. To fix or not to fix... sigh

Well its 9 days to so called Mayan Doomsday. If that happens then I probably wont need to fix it anymore.

Yellow Headlights

Recently read up a post in Lifehacker, a solution to clean yellow headlights. Their recommendation - denatured alcohol. After a few weeks, I decided to give it a try. The version of the alcohol I found was white spirit. The kind they use for painting. Can be purchased from any hardware shop. Cheap.

Next part is cleaning. This involves A LOT of elbow grease. As usual, test on a small area before working on a large area just in case there are some unwanted reaction.

Make sure you have plenty of rags and rubber gloves (if possible). Why gloves? Cause spirit will drain the moisture and oil from your hands faster than you can clean the headlights. SAFETY FIRST.

When you first apply spirit on the area, rubbing it off will give it a cloudy look after the spirit evaporates. Keep this up with a clean rag repeatedly until there is no more cloudiness. At times this will take a LONG TIME and A LOT of effort. It all depends on how bad those lights are.

Most headlights nowadays are made from polycarbonate. Some might know it by its commercial name Lexan. According to a spec sheet from GE, white spirit and isopropyl alcohol (IPA) are ok to use for cleaning polycarbonate.

I've tried a lot of stuff for yellow lights.... still waiting to see how long will this last until my arm has to go for extra training again.

Also at the same time I'm trying some polishing/rubbing compound to see if i can get better results. Some of you may have read about wet sanding method. I've not tried that yet.

Links and pictures later when I have time.

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Update 12/12/12: The IPA solution works to keep the yellow away about a month. Recently I had my car repainted and they polished and lacquered my headlamps. Slightly better than before. As the car wash applies their cheap wax on the lights when the do the car, that turns yellow quickly.

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Update 3 April 2012: Car already sold but just wanted to comment on headlights, the lacquer that Ah Huat (from the paint shop) applied had been peeling off. So much for its proclaimed high quality lacquer. Proper sanding does keep it sparkly much longer.

Identifying a Head Gasket Failure

Chances that you are here readings this means you need to know more about head gasket failures and it is also likely someone told you your car needs a top overhaul or your head gasket has failed. Before going on further the first thing we need to know what is a head gasket and what does it do.

The definition per Wikipedia is as below.
A head gasket is a gasket that sits between the engine block and cylinder head in an internal combustion engine. Its purpose is to seal the cylinders to ensure maximum compression and avoid leakage of coolant or engine oil into the cylinders; as such, it is the most critical sealing application in any engine, and, as part of the combustion chamber, it shares the same strength requirements as other combustion chamber components

To summarize - head gasket ensure separation of engine oil, coolant and combustion chamber. Also you need to note that  the end product of the combustion chamber are exhaust gases.

With this you should rough have an idea by now, what happens when the head gasket fail. Right, the possibilities of coolant, engine oil and gases mixing. We can come to the following scenario when the head gasket fails.

1. Coolant + Engine Oil
2. Coolant + Combustion Gases
3. Engine Oil + Combustion Gases
4. Coolant + Engine Oil + Combustion Gases

Of the 4 scenario only those with combination of 1 or 2 are detectable in the system with visual inspection. Your friendly neighbourhood mechanic will usually suspect a head gasket failure based on the signs provided by these 2 failures.

1. Bubbles in radiator spare tank
2. Engine oil cap has water vapour
3. Engine oil is discoloured (think: black coffee + evaporated milk)
4. Radiator spare tank water level drops regularly and require top up

Air Cond Service

I finally decided to go get the truck's a/c serviced. It has been smelling 'sweet' for months when I start up the a/c in the morning. Come to think of it, the air conditioning system in the car is the least serviced system in the whole car. Can't really blame everyone considering everyone that you know that has serviced the a/c ends up telling you how expensive it is or how they got ripped off.


Banly Auto was the hangout for today's service. They have been in business since 1980. The place is definitely the cleanest and most organized one I have visited so far. It feels like visiting a 3S center. Total damage today was RM887.50. Breakdown is as below.

The 2 items that surprised me was the condition of the thermal expansion valve and the cooling coil (aka evaporator). The thermal expansion valve had yellow mouldy looking stuff and bolts on them are super rusted. 

The other surprise was the cooling coil. They it was filled with black gunk all over the surface. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it. The one below shows a dirty cooling coil also but its filled with dust. To imagine how bad mine was, just add water and oil to it.

For those that don't know the cooling coil (evaporator) is located in the passenger cabin. Usually its in the area right under the dashboard in the area under the main blowers behind the console. To think I was driving around with all that gunk gives me the shivers. I asked the guys working on my X to see if they seen any signs that the a/c system had been serviced before. I got a big NO. Gosh.. 8 years of mouldy gunk. Yuck !


After what I've seen today, I'll obediently send it for service every year or two. Maybe 18 months. 


Oh yea.. the nice guys at Banly also put in a nice mod by glueing the outside air intake vent with a thin piece of superlon. Even more prevention for outside odour coming in. 

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