[M.D. Holloway]

Randy - the whole ZDDP debate is a sticky mess. In one camp you have folks saying that it doesn't play havoc on emissions and on the other side you have folks wanting to drive down the concentraion of sulfur and phosphorus in products in general. Still others claim that the product will corrode yellow metals found in various componants. I agreee and to some extent disagree with them all - there is much more that goes into it then you can imagine. AT the end of the day you want incrased relaibility and increase oil life and a decrease in emissions. It can be achieved but through a few different ways. focusing on one player is myopic.

We have some pretty active R&D going on trying to come up with a viable alternate. Some Boron products are looking promising while certain oil sol molybdium and or molybdium disulfide (which have always been of interest) have been working out well. There are even some other non-conventional compounds that have shown very good promise. All will take many years to bring to the market and the reason is the API.

The American Petroleum Institute pretty much sets the standards for engine oils. Any and all formulations have to pass their aceptance criteria. Various new additives have to be blessed - if not, the oil will not get the API blessing. I would npt suggest ever using an oil with API approval. The API watchdag keeps many of the snakeoils off the market (think Slick 50!).