Purchasing gear lubricants: be careful when playing the numbers game
Written by John Sander
Introduction
In the movie Rain Man, starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, Cruise's character, Charlie Babbit, discovers after the death of his father that he will not be receiving the large inheritance he had been expecting. Instead, it will go to his idiot savant older brother, Raymond, played by Hoffman, whom Charlie had not known existed. As a way to get the fortune he felt was his due, Charlie takes his brother from the care home and transports him all the way across the country where he can take care of him himself. On the way, he discovers that Raymond can rapidly calculate numbers in his head. Charlie takes advantage of his brother's innate ability by taking him to a Las Vegas casino where Raymond is able to beat the odds and win big at Black Jack.
Unfortunately, most of us do not have this innate ability to win at numbers games. When we try, the odds are generally stacked against us and we lose more than we win. Yet, when it comes to purchasing gear lubricants, many people on both the sales and purchasing sides decide to play the numbers game. The person with the most numbers, or the biggest numbers, or the lowest numbers, must have the best product – right? Wrong. Gear oil selection is not a game, and numbers alone cannot determine the right product for an application. Too much information can be just as much a problem as too little. A purchaser can be tricked into selecting the wrong oil if he does not completely understand what the numbers mean.
As the old saying goes, "Figures don't lie, but liars do figure". This is not to suggest that gear lubricant sales representatives are liars, but rather that too often neither the sales rep nor the purchaser completely understands what the numbers on a technical sheet or price list really mean. An attempt will be made here to explain what you should consider when choosing a gear lubricant for a specific application and to show why choosing solely based on the numbers is not the best bet.
