I'm fairly ignorant in this area of 2 stroke oils, so I'm looking forward to learning something.
It seems that combustion chamber conditions would be more severe in a diesel engine than in a gasoline one. Is the primary goal of adding lubricant to diesel fuel to help lube the injection pump, or cylinder components, or both?
I thought TC3W was a formulation specific to outboards, that spend a lot of time at idle or low rpm. Some of the high-powered 2 stroke watercraft used to, at least, call for a different specification: API-TC, as I recall. Basically it's an oil for higher stress conditions. Apparently, the TC3W specification oils have caused difficulties with the powervalves (an adjustable section of the exhaust port that changes port timing and thus output traits) in high performance 2 strokes because of deposits left on the moving parts of the powervalves. (Powervalves are not the same, in design or function, as the poppet valves in our diesel engines, for the record.)
So, is it a smarter idea to choose oil intended for more severe conditions, or less severe conditions?
I'm not trying to cause trouble, I'm just wondering how it has been determined that one type of oil is better for our purposes than others.
In full disclosure, I have run a bunch of leftover synthetic racing oil from my 2 stroke dirt bike days in my tractor's fuel until that supply ran out, and I've been using whatever is on sale at Wal-Mart/Costco. I'm not disapproving of either use, I just like to know what I'm doing, and why. I don't have a why at the moment...
