Castrol Edge 5w40 or 5w40M. Difference?

C

Chris_D

Elite
 Mostly Holland. Sometimes UK.
M54B30 engine. Due for it's 7.5k mile oil service, which I usually do myself.
Noticed Castrol is now selling 'Castrol Edge 5W-40 M' (BMW LL04 spec)

Any idea what the technical / specification difference is from the regular 5w40 apart from it being a bit more expensive than the regular 5w40. Castrol uk website doesnt have any info on the 'M' variant.

I suspect the 5w40M is to satisfy demand continuation due to BMW swapping alleginace to Shell oil these days (?)

https://www.motorolien.nl/Castrol-Edge-5W-40-M-(BMW-LL-04)-5L
5w40M.png
 
Having had purchased some oil from Costco earlier in the week, I had the same dilemma for my 2.5Si. Costco had 2 sets of castrol edge titanium fst for sale (5W-30 in my case) and the only difference was the letter designation. After some research online between LL and M here is what I found:

"Castrol Edge 5W30 M is designed for BMW. Castrol Edge 5W30 LL is designed for VW group and carries the Spec VW507"

Now this is a bunch of bollocks as we have several BMWs in the household and they have always used the LL oil, which makes me think its simply marketing.
 
@ iiNNeX, There is a difference between LL and LL04 which you ought to be aware of. LL as I understand IS for VW group cars and LL04 is specifically for BMW and there will be a technical difference in the form of additives/specific viscosity/operational longevity linked to engine as-designed operational temps and suitability to component materials etc.

I always used Castrol Edge 5w30-LL04 but obviously I can't find this anywhere now as it doesn't align with BMW's new alleginance/specification for Shell oils. I suspect any remaining stock of Castrol LL04 will now be past it's best shelf life too.
Hence why I suspect that the 5w30M is possibly just a re-brand of the old LL04 type.
 
iiNNeX said:
Having had purchased some oil from Costco earlier in the week, I had the same dilemma for my 2.5Si. Costco had 2 sets of castrol edge titanium fst for sale (5W-30 in my case) and the only difference was the letter designation. After some research online between LL and M here is what I found:

"Castrol Edge 5W30 M is designed for BMW. Castrol Edge 5W30 LL is designed for VW group and carries the Spec VW507"

Now this is a bunch of bollocks as we have several BMWs in the household and they have always used the LL oil, which makes me think its simply marketing.
Click to expand...

The reason why the Castrol 5w-30 M split away from the normal 5w-30 LL is BMW changed their test requirements for the LL04 spec, and changed the test engine. Castrol thought they would be smart by bringing out a seperate oil and some others did the same, Mobil 1 ESP 5w-30 for example dropped the LL04 spec. Others waitied until they could upgrade their existing oil to the new test requirements. All in all, the whole thing was a bit of a cluster f....

Cheers,

Guy
 
Does it mean that we can now put an M badge on our cars? :poke:

Well someone had to say it............. :D
 
Chris_D said:
@ iiNNeX, There is a difference between LL and LL04 which you ought to be aware of. LL as I understand IS for VW group cars and LL04 is specifically for BMW and there will be a technical difference in the form of additives/specific viscosity/operational longevity linked to engine as-designed operational temps and suitability to component materials etc.

I always used Castrol Edge 5w30-LL04 but obviously I can't find this anywhere now as it doesn't align with BMW's new alleginance/specification for Shell oils. I suspect any remaining stock of Castrol LL04 will now be past it's best shelf life too.
Hence why I suspect that the 5w30M is possibly just a re-brand of the old LL04 type.
Click to expand...

That is true, totally forgot about that. Just double-checked my LL oil and it doesn't have BMW on the back :(

oilman said:
iiNNeX said:
Having had purchased some oil from Costco earlier in the week, I had the same dilemma for my 2.5Si. Costco had 2 sets of castrol edge titanium fst for sale (5W-30 in my case) and the only difference was the letter designation. After some research online between LL and M here is what I found:

"Castrol Edge 5W30 M is designed for BMW. Castrol Edge 5W30 LL is designed for VW group and carries the Spec VW507"

Now this is a bunch of bollocks as we have several BMWs in the household and they have always used the LL oil, which makes me think its simply marketing.
Click to expand...

The reason why the Castrol 5w-30 M split away from the normal 5w-30 LL is BMW changed their test requirements for the LL04 spec, and changed the test engine. Castrol thought they would be smart by bringing out a seperate oil and some others did the same, Mobil 1 ESP 5w-30 for example dropped the LL04 spec. Others waitied until they could upgrade their existing oil to the new test requirements. All in all, the whole thing was a bit of a cluster f....

Cheers,

Guy
Click to expand...

I see, that makes sense. In that case do we have to now put the M oil or can we still use LL without the BMW designation?

Thanks
SK
 
The official line is you should use the Edge M 5w-30 as that meets the BMW LL04 spec. The unofficial line is the changes were made after the E85/86 Z4 was produced (the new LL04 was December 2018), and both oils are based around ACEA C3 so will be fine to use. I would have to dig through some files, but somehwere I have in much more detail about the changes. Essentially they changed test engine as they were having some problems with the new generation engines, I can't remember if it was LSPI or something else. But the fact that the Castrol M meets API SN Plus would indicate possible LSPI issues. They also added three new bench tests that the oil had to pass, an aeration test, an additonal wear test and a turbo coking test.

To start there was supposed to be a hard launch, from a certain date old LL04 oils would no longer meet the new LL04 spec, as Castrol helped developed the new spec with BMW they thought they were going to get the monopoly on BMW after market oil, being the only one on the market to carry the new BMW LL04 spec. However, BMW in the end, deciced to extend the expiry date and this allowed all the other oil manufacturers time to catch up.

Cheers,

Guy
 
iiNNeX said:
Chris_D said:
@ iiNNeX, There is a difference between LL and LL04 which you ought to be aware of. LL as I understand IS for VW group cars and LL04 is specifically for BMW and there will be a technical difference in the form of additives/specific viscosity/operational longevity linked to engine as-designed operational temps and suitability to component materials etc.

I always used Castrol Edge 5w30-LL04 but obviously I can't find this anywhere now as it doesn't align with BMW's new alleginance/specification for Shell oils. I suspect any remaining stock of Castrol LL04 will now be past it's best shelf life too.
Hence why I suspect that the 5w30M is possibly just a re-brand of the old LL04 type.
Click to expand...

That is true, totally forgot about that. Just double-checked my LL oil and it doesn't have BMW on the back :(

oilman said:
iiNNeX said:
Having had purchased some oil from Costco earlier in the week, I had the same dilemma for my 2.5Si. Costco had 2 sets of castrol edge titanium fst for sale (5W-30 in my case) and the only difference was the letter designation. After some research online between LL and M here is what I found:

"Castrol Edge 5W30 M is designed for BMW. Castrol Edge 5W30 LL is designed for VW group and carries the Spec VW507"

Now this is a bunch of bollocks as we have several BMWs in the household and they have always used the LL oil, which makes me think its simply marketing.
Click to expand...

The reason why the Castrol 5w-30 M split away from the normal 5w-30 LL is BMW changed their test requirements for the LL04 spec, and changed the test engine. Castrol thought they would be smart by bringing out a seperate oil and some others did the same, Mobil 1 ESP 5w-30 for example dropped the LL04 spec. Others waitied until they could upgrade their existing oil to the new test requirements. All in all, the whole thing was a bit of a cluster f....

Cheers,

Guy
Click to expand...

I see, that makes sense. In that case do we have to now put the M oil or can we still use LL without the BMW designation?

Thanks
SK
Click to expand...

I wouldn't lose too much sleep about it, especially if you haven't notcied anything detrimental. But certainly consider changing to the correct spec oil, if not LL04, or the new 'M' designation from Castrol then the non-longlife at every 7500 miles would suffice I would suggest.

I'm changing from 5W30 to 5W40 now as my engine is on 150k miles as it is probably a prudent preventive maintenance step.
 
Thanks Chris, will do.

I usually do oil changes every 5k or once a year, car is only on 74k miles so I ll keep using 5w30 for another 30k then switch also.

SK
 
It is very confusing, I've now got 4 castrol 10/40 or 5/40 all slightly different..

For reference Low speed pre-ignition (LPSI) is a big issue for turbo charged direct injection engines only so E85/E86 or OK anyway.. :thumbsup:
 
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