Eskimos and Other Cold Hard Facts

by Ed Newman
AMSOIL Marketing and Advertising Manager
This article appeared in the December 2000 Issue of National Oil & Lube News

In 1999 the map of Canada changed for the first time in 50 years. A new territory was carved out of the Northwest Territories and returned to the Inuit people, formerly called Eskimos. Inuit means "The People" and the name of their new country is called Nunavet, which means "Our Land." The vast arctic region they inhabit is larger than the State of Texas, even though their population of 27,000 could comfortably occupy the World Trade Center in New York (except for the lack of caribou.) With its sub-zero winter temperatures few of us are surprised to discover there is no population explosion in Nunavet.

In case you didn't know, Eskimos are racially distinct from the Native American Indians that inhabit the more hospitable climates of the North American Continent. In Eastern Siberia, Alaska, Labrador and Greenland they're still called Eskimos, which in Algonquin meant "Eaters of Raw Meat."

While growing up it seldom entered my mind to think of Eskimos in terms of their diet. Like most people, I always made the association of Eskimo with cold, inhospitable environments, and igloos. As it turns out, Eskimos live in all sorts of houses, including tents made of skins and underground sod homes, though most live in ordinary houses like ours. Certainly the Arctic environment places demands on these people to which most of us are unaccustomed, though it also helps reduce panhandling and street people.

One of my favorite short stories from high school days was Jack London's To Build A Fire. The story takes place in Alaska's Yukon region. It is a life and death struggle between a man and the elements, with everything hinging on his ability to build a fire. At the beginning of the story the man spits and he realizes, by the crackling sound of the spittle turning to ice in mid-air, that it is more than fifty below, colder than he realized.

Three decades after I first read this story I was clearing my driveway one December night in Duluth, Minnesota. There had been a fair dump of snow followed by a blistering cold Alberta Clipper. I knew it was cold, but discovered how severe the wind chill was when I spit and it became a marble before hitting the crust of snow and rolling away.

I knew right then it was cold. Fortunately that kind of weather is not the norm, even in Minnesota. Now for really cold conditions, think about what it's like to live in the arctic. The average December temperature at Gate of the Arctic National Park is twenty below during the day and forty below at night. Add wind chill temps and you've got weather!

Certainly the perception of what is "too cold" is relative. When Max Henton, Senior Chaplain and Founder of Motor Racing Outreach, spoke here in Duluth recently he told us that Charlotte was too far north for his taste, but his ministry to Nascar drivers demanded that he endure the hardship. I remember flying to Charlotte on business at apple blossom time, and Lake Superior here was still ice. Charlotte hardly seemed "too cold" in my opinion.

There are some measures that are not a matter of perception or taste or preference. That's what modern science is all about, isn't it? Ever measuring and quantifying, scientists create tests to help benchmark product characteristics. When it comes to motor oil and winter time performance, one critical measure is the pour point.

Pour point has been defined as the lowest temperature at which a motor oil will continue to flow under prescribed conditions. ASTM D 97 spells out the standardized procedure for determining an oil's pour point. Basically, after heating it to 45 degrees C the sample is slowly cooled and tilted sideways every time the temp drops three degrees Celsius (five degrees F). When the oil stops flowing it has reached the pour point. Another important test of an oils cold temp performance is the Cold Crank Simulator. It does what its name suggests.

Synthetic motor oils have a significantly lower pour points and better cold cranking capabilities than petroleum based products. The cold weather performance of synthetic motor oils and lubricants is probably the most recognizable feature of these high tech lubes. Long after petroleum oils have solidified, premium synthetics continue to flow. Some synthetics on the market have a pour point of sixty and seventy below zero. 

The problems with solidified oil are numerous. First, when its cold, its hard to start the car... and when very cold, impossible. A second problem: petroleum motor oils, diesel fuels and home heating fuels usually contain small amounts of dissolved waxes (long paraffinic molecular strings) which, if they agglomerate, could plug filters and pumps. Synthetic motor oils have uniform molecular structure and do not act this way. 

The problem goes beyond this, however. Our definition of pour point indicates when the oil has ceased to be capable of flowing at all. Motor oils really need to be heated well above the pour point to achieve the desired pumping viscosity. Even if the motor oil is not solidified it can be so thick that it can hardly be pumped into the engine. It sits in the pan while the friction from moving parts heats the engine and conducts this heat down into the pan. As you can imagine, this lack of oil in the engine with fast moving parts is not a good thing. It should come as no surprise that cold weather start-ups are a leading cause of engine wear.

TRANSMISSIONS AND GEAR BOXES, TOO

If you are a cold climate lube shop, your customers will notice immediate improvement in the ease of shifting when they switch to synthetic transmission fluids. Not only do synthetics provide better high temperature protection in the summer, they especially help cold weather operations.

I recently watched a video presentation of a demonstration, conducted by the Auto Research Laboratory, comparing cold temp performance between synthetic and petroleum gear lubes. At the beginning of the test two gear oils were cold soaked and stabilized at minus fifteen degrees F. 

The petroleum based gear oil had become a solid in the differential. The gear cut a channel in the gear oil. After five minutes there was no change in the solidified oil. Seventeen minutes into the test the gear oil finally began to flow into the top ring gear and after eighteen minutes finally flowed to the lube sensor at the front of the test apparatus. 

The synthetic gear oil began to flow immediately. In forty-five seconds there was top channel flow. It took less than two minutes to trigger the same lube sensor. The difference was dramatic. 

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Very few of us live inside the arctic circle, but many of us are well acquainted with freezing weather. This kind of weather is ideal for skiing, skating, ice racing, curling, and snowmobiling. It is not ideal weather for cars, light trucks, diesels. Synthetic motor oils, gear lubes and tranny fluids will protect better and help your customers vehicles last longer. Moving parts need lubrication at start-up -- not one, two or five minutes later. Synthetics provide this kind of cold weather protection, even if you are an Eskimo.