Hairy wrote:
>
>> Please, give yourself some credibility by scanning and posting a link to
>> this "printed promotional material".
>> You're not related to 'Snoman', are you?
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
>
>You can start by reading
>"
formatting link
" and >"
formatting link
">
>It's all marketing, ever since Castrol won the lawsuit that Mobil filed
>regarding base stocks and the the use of "synthetic." Amusingly, most of
>the synthetic oil sold in the U.S., including the current formulation of
>Mobil 1 (except their new 5W20 Extended Performance), and the only API
>certified oil from Amsoil (XL-7500), could not even be sold as synthetic
>oil in Europe, because the base stocks are extracted from petroleum.
What difference does it make where the molecules are extracted from to synthesize a lubricant? The advantage of synthetic is that it is a consistent engineered product with known, controlled structure and performance. I don't care if the building blocks come from oil, natural gas, wheat straw or horse dung. If the oil is "synthesized", or built up from the chemical elements, wherever they are derived from, the oil is synthetic.
From the Merriam Webster On-Line dictionary: 1 a : the composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole b : the production of a substance by the union of chemical elements, groups, or simpler compounds or by the degradation of a complex compound c : the combining of often diverse conceptions into a coherent whole; also : the complex so formed
Mobil 1 at least used to use synthetic base stock, but since they lost
>the lawsuit they just could not continue using the "true synthetic" base
>stock, and had to switch to the "legally synthetic" base stock that
>Castrol uses, and that Amsoil uses in their XL-7500 line.
>
>Note that the other Amsoil products, while they cannot be API certified
>due to the ZDDP level, do use synthetic base stock. Don't use them in
>vehicles with catalytic converters, despite what your local MLM person
>may tell you. Mobil 1 EP does use synthetic base stock.
>
>However the issue here was the additive package, which is not synthetic
>on any of these oils. I think there are a couple of 100% synthetics
>available, but not on the shelf at Pep Boys. Practically speaking, there
>is nothing wrong with the non-synthetic additives.
>
>Again, it's important to understand that "100% synthetic" in the U.S.
>refers to oils that have 100% legally synthetic base stock. In Europe it
>refers to oil that have 100% true synthetic base stock.